21 ms·

I’ve seen Picallilli’s stuff around and it looks extremely solid. But you can’t beat the market. You either have what they want to buy, or you don’t. > Landing

• tonyhart7 10mo ago
  what happen if the market is right and this is "new normal"????? same like StackOverflow down today and seems like not everyone cares anymore, back then it would totally cause breakdown because SO is vital
  • indemnity 10mo ago
    I haven’t visited StackOverflow for years.
    • nrhrjrjrjtntbt 10mo ago
      I stopped using it much even before the AI wave.
    • ido 10mo ago
      Ive honestly never intentionally visited it (as in, went to the root page and started following links) - it was just where google sent me when searching answers to specific technical questions.
      • jv22222 10mo ago
        It became as annoying as experts exchange the very thing it railed against!
        • wizzwizz4 10mo ago
          What was annoying about it?
          • deleted 10mo ago
            [deleted]
          • forgetfulness 10mo ago
            They SEOd their way into being a top search result by showing crawlers both questions and answers, but when you visited the answer would be paywalled Stack Overflow’s moderation is overbearing and all, but that’s nowhere near at the same level as Expert Exchange’s baiting and switching
          • rkachowski 10mo ago
            the gatekeeping, gaming the system, capricious moderation (e.g. flagged as duplicate), and general attitude led it to be quite an insufferable part of the internet. There was a meme about how the best way to get a response is to answer your own question in an obviously incorrect fashion, because people want to tell you why you're wrong rather than actively help.
            • nxor 10mo ago
              Why do you think those people behave that way?
              • wahnfrieden 10mo ago
                Unpaid labor finds a variety of impulses to satisfy
    • deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
    • throwaway2037 10mo ago
      I don't get these comments. I'm not here to shill for SO, but it is a damn good website, if only for the archive. Can't remember how to iterate over entries in JavaScript dictionary (object)? SO can tell you, usually much better than W3Schools can, which attracts so much scorn. (I love that site: So simple for the simple stuff!) When you search programming-related questions, what sites do you normally read? For me, it is hard to avoid SO because it appears in so many top results from Google. And I swear that Google AI just regugitates most of SO these days for simple questions.
      • wonderwonder 10mo ago
        I think that's OP's point though, Ai can do it better now. No searching, no looking. Just drop your question into Ai with your exact data or function and 10 seconds later you have a working solution. Stackoverflow is great but Ai is just better for most people. Instead of running a google query or searching in Stackoverflow you just need a chatGPT, Claude or your Ai of choice open in a browser. Copy and paste.
      • indemnity 10mo ago
        It's not a pejorative statement, I used to live in Stack Overflow. But the killer feature of an LLM is that it can synthesize something based on my exact ask, and does a great job of creating a PoC to prove something, and it's cheap from time investment point of view. And it doesn't downvote something as off-topic, or try to use my question as a teaching exercise and tell me I'm doing it wrong, even if I am ;)
  • m463 10mo ago
    buggywhips are having a temporary setback.
    • throwaway2037 10mo ago
      I had a "milk-up-the-nose" laughter moment when I read this comment.
    • balamatom 10mo ago
      leaded gasoline is making a killing, though
    • vkou 10mo ago
      The coach drivers found other work, their horses got turned into glue.
  • lmm 10mo ago
    > what happen if the market is right and this is "new normal"????? Then there's an oversupply of programmers, salaries will crash, and lots of people will have to switch careers. It's happened before.
    • yungwarlock 10mo ago
      I'm young, please when was that and in what industry
      • forgetfreeman 10mo ago
        .com implosion, tech jobs of all kinds went from "we'll hire anyone who knows how to use a mouse" to the tech jobs section of the classifieds was omitted entirely for 20 months. There have been other bumps in the road since then but that was a real eye-opener.
        • tonyhart7 10mo ago
          well same like covid right??? digital/tech company overhiring because everyone is home and at the same time the rise of AI reduce the number of headcount covid overhiring + AI usage = massive layoff we ever see in decades
          • short_sells_poo 10mo ago
            It was nothing like covid. The dot com crash lasted years where tech was a dead sector. Equity valuations kept declining year after year. People couldn't find jobs in tech at all. There are still plenty of tech jobs these days, just less than there were during covid, but tech itself is still in a massive expansionary cycle. We'll see how the AI bubble lasts, and what the fallout of it bursting will be. The key point is that the going is still exceptionally good. The posts talking about experienced programmers having to flip burgers in the early 2000s is not an exaggeration.
            • nradov 10mo ago
  • _zoltan_ 10mo ago
    you mixed up "is dead" with "is vital" :-)
• jillesvangurp 10mo ago
  This is the type of business that's going to be hit hard by AI. And the type of businesses that survive will be the ones that integrate AI into their business the most successfully. It's an enabler, a multiplier. It's just another tool and those wielding the tools the best, tend to do well. Taking a moral stance against AI might make you feel good but doesn't serve the customer in the end. They need value for money. And you can get a lot of value from AI these days; especially if you are doing marketing, frontend design, etc. and all the other stuff a studio like this would be doing. The expertise and skill still matter. But customers are going to get a lot further without such a studio and the remaining market is going to be smaller and much more competitive. There's a lot of other work emerging though. IMHO the software integration market is where the action is going to be for the next decade or so. Legacy ERP systems, finance, insurance, medical software, etc. None of that stuff is going away or at risk of being replaced with some vibe coded thing. There are decades worth of still widely used and critically important software that can be integrated, adapted, etc. for the modern era. That work can be partly AI assisted of course. But you need to deeply understand the current market to be credible there. For any new things, the ambition level is just going to be much higher and require more skill. Arguing against progress as it is happening is as old as the tech industry. It never works. There's a generation of new programmers coming into the market and they are not going to hold back.
  • wartywhoa23 10mo ago
    > Taking a moral stance against AI might make you feel good but doesn't serve the customer in the end. They need value for money. And you can get a lot of value from AI these days; especially if you are doing marketing, frontend design, etc. and all the other stuff a studio like this would be doing. So let's all just give zero fucks about our moral values and just multiply monetary ones.
    • senordevnyc 10mo ago
      [flagged]
      • nothrabannosir 10mo ago
• jimmydddd 10mo ago
  Not wanting to help the rich get richer means you'll be fighting an uphill battle. The rich typically have more money to spend. And as others have commented, not doing anything AI related in 2025-2026 is going to further limit the business. Good luck though.
  • Aurornis 10mo ago
    Rejecting clients based on how you wish the world would be is a strategy that only works when you don’t care about the money or you have so many clients that you can pick and choose. Running a services business has always been about being able to identify trends and adapt to market demand. Every small business I know has been adapting to trends or trying to stay ahead of them from the start, from retail to product to service businesses.
    • bluGill 10mo ago
      Rejecting clients when you have enough is a sound business decision. Some clients are too annoying to serve. Some clients don't want to pay. Sometimes you have more work than you can do... It is easy to think when things are bad that you must take any and all clients (and when things are bad enough you might be forced to), but that is not a good plan and to be avoided. You should be choosing your clients. It is very powerful when you can afford to tell someone I don't need your business.
      • tacker2000 10mo ago
        Sure, but it seems here that they are rejecting everything related to AI, which is probably not a smart business move, as they also remark, since this year was much harder for them. The fact is, a lot of new business is getting done in this field, with or without them. If they want to take the "high road", so be it, but they should be prepared to accepts the consequences of worse revenues.
        • bluGill 10mo ago
          Is it though? We don't know the future. Is this just a dip in a growing business, or sign of things to come? Even if AI does better than the most optimistic projections it could still be great for a few people to be anti-ai if they are in the right place selling to the right people. Without knowing the future I cannot answer.
• arthurfirst 10mo ago
  I get the moral argument and even agree with it but we are a minority and of course we expect to be able sell our professional skills -- but if you are 'right' and out of business nobody will know. Is that any better than 'wrong' and still in business? You might as well work on product marketing for ai because that is where the client dollars are allocated. If it's hype at least you stayed afloat. If it's not maybe u find a new angle if you can survive long enough? Just survive and wait for things to shake out.
  • trial3 10mo ago
    > but if you are 'right' and out of business nobody will know. Is that any better than 'wrong' and still in business? yes [0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raytheon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raytheon
    • anonymars 10mo ago
      Can you... elaborate?
      • jfindper 10mo ago
        Not the parent. I believe that they are bringing up a moral argument. Which I'm sympathetic too, having quit a job before because I found that my personal morals didn't align with the company, and the cognitive dissonance to continue working there was weighing heavily on me. The money wasn't worth the mental fight every day. So, yes, in some cases it is better to be "right" and be forced out of business than "wrong" and remain in business. But you have to look beyond just revenue numbers. And different people will have different ideas of "right" and "wrong", obviously.
        • arthurfirst 10mo ago
          Moral arguments are a luxury of thinkers and only a small percentage of people can be reasoned with that way anyways. You can manipulate on morals but not reason in most cases. Agreed that you cannot be in a toxic situation and not have it affect you -- so if THAT is the case -- by all means exit asap. If it's perceived ethical conflict the only one you need to worry about is the golden rule -- and I do not mean 'he who has the gold makes the rules' I mean the real one. If that conflicts with what you are doing then also probably make an exit -- but many do not care trust me... They would take everything from you and feel justified as long as they are told (just told) it's the right thing. They never ask themselves. They do not really think for themselves. This is most people. Sadly.
• skeeter2020 10mo ago
  markets are not binary though, and this is also what it looks like when you're early (unfortunately similar to when you're late too). So they may totally be able to carve out a valid & sustainable market exactly because theyu're not doing what everyone else is doing right now. I'm currently taking online Spanish lessons with a company that uses people as teachers, even though this area is under intense attack from AI. There is no comparison, and what's really great is using many tools (including AI) to enhance a human product. So far we're a long way from the AI tutor that my boss keeps envisioning. I actually doubt he's tried to learn anything deep lately, let alone validated his "vision".
• kagevf 10mo ago
  I think your post pretty well illustrates how LLMs can and can't work. Favoriting this so I can point people to it in the future. I see so many extreme opinions on it like from how LLM is basically AGI to how it's "total garbage" but this is a good, balanced - and concise! - overview.
• jimbokun 10mo ago
  Has anyone considered that the demand for web sites and software in general is collapsing? Everyone and everything has a website and an app already. Is the market becoming saturated?
  • Aperocky 10mo ago
    The demand is massively increasing, but filled by less people and more GPUs.
  • oldandboring 10mo ago
    I know a guy who has this theory, in essence at least. Businesses use software and other high-tech to make efficiency gains (fewer people getting more done). The opportunities for developing and selling software were historically in digitizing industries that were totally analog. Those opportunities are all but dried up and we're now several generations into giving all those industries new, improved, but ultimately incremental efficiency gains with improved technology. What makes AI and robotics interesting, from this perspective, is the renewed potential for large-scale workforce reduction.
  • HeyLaughingBoy 10mo ago
    And new companies are created every day, and new systems are designed every day, and new applications are needed every day. The market is nowhere close to being saturated.
    • jimbokun 10mo ago
      You're just begging the question. What are examples of these "new applications" that are needed every day? Do consumers really want them? Or are software and other companies just creating them because it benefits those companies?
      • HeyLaughingBoy 10mo ago
        Most of the software written worldwide is created for internal company usage. Consumers don't even know that it exists. I've worked (still do!) for engineering services companies. Other businesses pay us to build systems for them to either use in-house or resell downstream. I have to assume that if they're paying for it, they see profit potential.
• xnx 10mo ago
  > In my opinion this business died 2 years ago It was an offshoot bubble of the bootcamp bubble which was inflated by ZIRP.