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There are hundreds of thousands of developers here including me who would vouch that AI does make them vastly more productive.

skydhash 11mo ago
Productive how? If you’re not measuring the thing, how can you tell that the thing improved?
- saxenaabhi 11mo ago
  Feature velocity has increase manifold. And this is despite decreased team size. A small startup now has the chance to compete with incumbents without raising from VCs. Not talking about you, but I think cynics just look at it with too much pessimism and therefore can't see it.
  - jcgrillo 11mo ago
    It's not really about optimism or pessimism, it's effect vs no effect. Self reported anecdotes like yours abound, but as far as I'm aware the effect isn't real. That is, it's not in fact true that if a business buys AI tools for its developers their output will increase in some way that impacts the business meaningfully. So while you may feel more productive using AI tooling, in fact you probably aren't, actually.
    - saxenaabhi 11mo ago
      If there was no effect we wouldn't be seeing so many mass layoffs and people complaining about this job market being worst than even dot com crash.
      - jcgrillo 11mo ago
        No. If you're trying to make a causal link between some layoffs and AI tooling you need to bring the receipts. Show that the layoffs were caused by AI tooling, don't just assume it. I don't think you can, or that anyone has.
        saxenaabhi 11mo ago
        Most public companies aren't attributing it to AI yet due to fear of backlash, but it's obvious to most of us. And Startups and SMB's are more open to attributing it to efficiency gains due to AI. If you aren't seeing it then probably it's because you are in a niche vertical. Which is great for you, but not representative on the whole.
        rockemsockem 11mo ago
        I am very much not an AI skeptic, I use AI every day for work, and it's quite clear to me that most of the layoffs of the past few years are correcting for the absurd over hiring from the Covid era. Every software company really convinced themselves that they needed like 2-3x the workforce they actually did because "the world changed". Then it became clear that the world in fact did not fundamentally change in the ways they thought. Chat GPT just happened to come out around the same time so we get all this misattribution
  - marcosdumay 11mo ago
    > Feature velocity has increase manifold. And yet, every time somebody not paid by the AI companies tries to measure it, they don't find it.
  - franktankbank 11mo ago
    I agree, the first thing I asked copilot to write me was a feature estimator: def mult2(points): return 2xpoints Its going to be really interesting what happens to this labor pool once you've finally sunk all the ships youre let aboard.
Vegenoid 11mo ago
And AI skeptics are waiting to see the proof in the pudding. If we have a new tool that makes hundreds of thousands of devs vastly more productive, I expect to see the results of that in new, improved software. So far, I'm just seeing more churn and more bugs. It may well be the case that in a couple years we'll see the fruits of AI productivity gains, but talk is cheap.
- saxenaabhi 11mo ago
  The proof is in feature velocity of devs/teams that use it and in the layoffs due to efficiency gains. I think it's very hard to convince AI skeptics since for some reason they feel more threatened by it than rest. It's counterproductive and would hinder them professionally but then it's their choice.
  - jcgrillo 11mo ago
    Without rigorous, controlled study I'm not ready to accept claims of velocity, efficiency, etc. I'm a professional software engineer, I have tried various AI tools in the workplace both for code review and development. I found personally that they were more harmful than effective. But I don't think my personal experience is really important data here. Just like I don't think yours is. What matters is whether these tools actually do something or whether instead they just make some users feel something. The studies I've seen--and there are very few--seem to indicate the effect is more placebo than pharmacological. Regardless, breathless claims that I'm somehow damaging my career by wondering whether these tools actually work are going to do nothing to persuade me. I'm quite secure in my career prospects, thank you kindly. I do admit I don't much like being labeled an "AI skeptic" either. I've been following developments in machine learning for like 2 decades and I'm familiar with results in the field going back to the 1950s. You have the opportunity here to convince me, I want to believe there is some merit to this latest AI summer. But I am not seeing the evidence for it.
    - saxenaabhi 11mo ago
      > You have the opportunity here to convince me, I want to believe there is some merit to this latest AI summer. But I am not seeing the evidence for it. As I said the evidence is in companies not hiring anymore since they don't need as many developers as before. If you want rigorous controlled studies you'll get it in due time. In the meantime maybe just look into the workflows of how people are using re AI skeptics: I started pushing AI in our company early this year, and one of the first questions I got was that "are we doing it to reduce costs". I fully understood and sympathize with the fact many engineers feel threatened and feel they are being replaced. So I clarified it's just to increase our feature velocity which was my honest intention since ofc I'm not a monster. I then asked this engineer to develop a feature using bolt, and he partially managed to do it but in the worst way possible. His approach was to spend no time on planning/architecture and to just ask AI to do it in a few lines. When hit with bugs he would ask the AI "to fix the bug" without even describing the bug. His reasoning was that if he had to do this prep work then why would he use AI. Nonetheless he finished entire month's worth of credit in a single day. I can't find the proper words, but there's a certain amount of dishonesty in this attitude that really turns me off. Like turbotax sabotaging tax reforms so they can rent seek.

skydhash 11mo ago

Productive how? If you’re not measuring the thing, how can you tell that the thing improved?

saxenaabhi 11mo ago
Feature velocity has increase manifold. And this is despite decreased team size. A small startup now has the chance to compete with incumbents without raising from VCs. Not talking about you, but I think cynics just look at it with too much pessimism and therefore can't see it.
- jcgrillo 11mo ago
  It's not really about optimism or pessimism, it's effect vs no effect. Self reported anecdotes like yours abound, but as far as I'm aware the effect isn't real. That is, it's not in fact true that if a business buys AI tools for its developers their output will increase in some way that impacts the business meaningfully. So while you may feel more productive using AI tooling, in fact you probably aren't, actually.
  - saxenaabhi 11mo ago
    If there was no effect we wouldn't be seeing so many mass layoffs and people complaining about this job market being worst than even dot com crash.
    - jcgrillo 11mo ago
      No. If you're trying to make a causal link between some layoffs and AI tooling you need to bring the receipts. Show that the layoffs were caused by AI tooling, don't just assume it. I don't think you can, or that anyone has.
      - saxenaabhi 11mo ago
        Most public companies aren't attributing it to AI yet due to fear of backlash, but it's obvious to most of us. And Startups and SMB's are more open to attributing it to efficiency gains due to AI. If you aren't seeing it then probably it's because you are in a niche vertical. Which is great for you, but not representative on the whole.
        rockemsockem 11mo ago
        I am very much not an AI skeptic, I use AI every day for work, and it's quite clear to me that most of the layoffs of the past few years are correcting for the absurd over hiring from the Covid era. Every software company really convinced themselves that they needed like 2-3x the workforce they actually did because "the world changed". Then it became clear that the world in fact did not fundamentally change in the ways they thought. Chat GPT just happened to come out around the same time so we get all this misattribution
- marcosdumay 11mo ago
  > Feature velocity has increase manifold. And yet, every time somebody not paid by the AI companies tries to measure it, they don't find it.
- franktankbank 11mo ago
  I agree, the first thing I asked copilot to write me was a feature estimator: def mult2(points): return 2xpoints Its going to be really interesting what happens to this labor pool once you've finally sunk all the ships youre let aboard.

Vegenoid 11mo ago

And AI skeptics are waiting to see the proof in the pudding. If we have a new tool that makes hundreds of thousands of devs vastly more productive, I expect to see the results of that in new, improved software. So far, I'm just seeing more churn and more bugs. It may well be the case that in a couple years we'll see the fruits of AI productivity gains, but talk is cheap.

saxenaabhi 11mo ago
The proof is in feature velocity of devs/teams that use it and in the layoffs due to efficiency gains. I think it's very hard to convince AI skeptics since for some reason they feel more threatened by it than rest. It's counterproductive and would hinder them professionally but then it's their choice.
- jcgrillo 11mo ago
  Without rigorous, controlled study I'm not ready to accept claims of velocity, efficiency, etc. I'm a professional software engineer, I have tried various AI tools in the workplace both for code review and development. I found personally that they were more harmful than effective. But I don't think my personal experience is really important data here. Just like I don't think yours is. What matters is whether these tools actually do something or whether instead they just make some users feel something. The studies I've seen--and there are very few--seem to indicate the effect is more placebo than pharmacological. Regardless, breathless claims that I'm somehow damaging my career by wondering whether these tools actually work are going to do nothing to persuade me. I'm quite secure in my career prospects, thank you kindly. I do admit I don't much like being labeled an "AI skeptic" either. I've been following developments in machine learning for like 2 decades and I'm familiar with results in the field going back to the 1950s. You have the opportunity here to convince me, I want to believe there is some merit to this latest AI summer. But I am not seeing the evidence for it.
  - saxenaabhi 11mo ago
    > You have the opportunity here to convince me, I want to believe there is some merit to this latest AI summer. But I am not seeing the evidence for it. As I said the evidence is in companies not hiring anymore since they don't need as many developers as before. If you want rigorous controlled studies you'll get it in due time. In the meantime maybe just look into the workflows of how people are using re AI skeptics: I started pushing AI in our company early this year, and one of the first questions I got was that "are we doing it to reduce costs". I fully understood and sympathize with the fact many engineers feel threatened and feel they are being replaced. So I clarified it's just to increase our feature velocity which was my honest intention since ofc I'm not a monster. I then asked this engineer to develop a feature using bolt, and he partially managed to do it but in the worst way possible. His approach was to spend no time on planning/architecture and to just ask AI to do it in a few lines. When hit with bugs he would ask the AI "to fix the bug" without even describing the bug. His reasoning was that if he had to do this prep work then why would he use AI. Nonetheless he finished entire month's worth of credit in a single day. I can't find the proper words, but there's a certain amount of dishonesty in this attitude that really turns me off. Like turbotax sabotaging tax reforms so they can rent seek.