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Whatever happened to "show, don't tell"? Other productivity boosters certainly didn't need such memos; they were naturally adopted because the benefits were una

Whatever happened to "show, don't tell"? Other productivity boosters certainly didn't need such memos; they were naturally adopted because the benefits were unambiguous. There were no "IDE-first company memos" or "software framework-first company memos"; devs organically picked these up because the productivity gains were immediately self-evident.

malfist 8mo ago
Remember when companies all forced us to buy smartphones? Or switch to search engines instead of books? Or when Amazon announced it was "react native first"?
- deleted 8mo ago
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  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
- Mordisquitos 8mo ago
  I agree with the sentiment you're expressing but, to be fair, companies forcing us all to use smartphones (as consumers or as citizens) is, unfortunately, happening implicitly.
jezzamon 8mo ago
Productive output is a lagging indicator. Using AI tools is theoretically leading???
- nitwit005 8mo ago
  I had you a power tool, and your productivity goes up immediately. Your IDE highlights problems, same story. Everyone can observe that this has happened.
Noumenon72 8mo ago
On the other hand, there were surely memos like "our facility will be using electric power now. Steam is out". Sometimes execs do set a company's direction.
- MontyCarloHall 8mo ago
  AI adoption is a bottom-up decision at the level of the individual worker. Converting an entire factory is a top-down decision. No single worker can individually decide to start using electricity instead of steam power, but individuals can choose whether/how to use AI or any other individual-level tool.
  - wussboy 8mo ago
    > AI adoption is a bottom-up decision at the level of the individual worker. Ah, but that is the question, isn't it. Is it bottom up or top down?
    - sensanaty 8mo ago
      I think they're saying it should logically be a bottoms-uo initiative, since it's the rank and file that use it day in, day out, but instead it's top-down because we're in a massive bubble
- nitwit005 8mo ago
  That's a choice individual employees couldn't make. Or, at least, one management wouldn't let them make. It'd require a huge amount of spending.
- abtinf 8mo ago
  That transition took 40-50 years. Electrical power in manufacturing was infeasible for lot of reasons for a longtime. Any company issuing such an edict early on would have bankrupted themselves. And by the time it became practical, no such edict was needed.
nilkn 8mo ago
People will voluntarily adopt modest productivity boosters that don't threaten their job security. They will rebel against extraordinary productivity boosters that may make some of their skills obsolete or threaten their career.
- MontyCarloHall 8mo ago
  That’s simply not true. Developers hand-writing assembly readily adopted compilers, accountants readily adopted spreadsheets, and farmers readily adopted tractors and powered mills.
  - nilkn 8mo ago
    That's false. Those things were in fact resisted in some cases. For instance, look up the swing riots of the 1830s.
    - munk-a 8mo ago
      There might be a temporary resistance from violence but eventually competition will take over. The issue in this case is that we're not looking at voluntary adoption due to a competitive advantage - we're seeing adoption by fiat. AI is a broad category of tools, some of which are highly useful to some people - but mandating wide adoption is going to waste a lot of people's time on inefficient tools.
      - nilkn 8mo ago
        The competitive advantage belongs to companies, not engineers. That's exactly the conflict. What you're predicting -- voluntary adoption due to advantages -- is precisely what is happening, but it's happening at the company level. It's why companies are mandating it and some engineers are resisting it. Just like in the riots I mentioned -- introduction of agricultural machinery was a unilateral decision made by landowners and tenant farmers, often directly against the wishes of the laborers.
        8mo ago
munificent 8mo ago
Think about the Industrial Age transition from individual craftspeople working on small shops using hand tools to make things into working in factories on large-scale assembly lines. The latter is wildly more productive than the former. If you owned a business that employed a bunch of cobblers, then moving them all out of their little shops into one big factory where they can produce 100x as many shoes means you just got yourself 100x richer. But for an individual cobbler, you basically got fired at one job and hired at another. This may come as a surprise to those who view work as simply an abstract concept that produces value units, but people actually have preferences about how they spend their time. If you're a cobbler, you might enjoy your little workshop, slicing off the edge of leather around the heel, hammering in the pegs, sitting at your workbench. The nature of the work and your enjoyment of it is a fundamental part of the compensation package of a job. You might not want to quit that job and get a different job running a shoe assembly line in a factory. Now, if the boss said "hey, since you're all going to be so much more productive working in the factory, we'll give you all 10x raises" then perhaps you might be more excited about putting down your hammer. But the boss isn't saying that. He's saying "all of the cobblers at the other companies are doing this to, so where are you gonna go?". Of course AI is a top-down mandate. For people who enjoy reading and writing code themselves and find spending their day corralling AI agents to be a less enjoyable job, then the CEO has basically given them a giant benefits cut with zero compensation in return.
- frizlab 8mo ago
  Yup. It’s what I’ve come to realize. My job is probably safe, as long as I will be willing to adapt. I have still not even tried AI once, and don’t care for it, but I know at one point I probably will have to. I don’t actually think it’ll be a productivity boost the way I work. Code has never been the difficult part, but I’ll definitely have to show I have included AI in my workflow to be left alone. Oh well…
  - LPisGood 8mo ago
    Why have you never even _tried_ it? It’s very easy to try and surely you are somewhat curious.
paodealho 8mo ago
Goes to show how infested with disconnected management this industry is. All the tools that improved productivity for software devs (Docker, K8S/ECS/autoscaling, Telemetry providers) took very long for management to realize they bring value, and in some places with a lot of resistance. Some places where I worked, asking for an IntelliJ license would make your manager look at you like you were asking "hey can I bang your wife?".
badc0ffee 8mo ago
20 years ago or so, we had an exec ask us about our unit tests.
charcircuit 8mo ago
>Other productivity boosters certainly didn't need such memos; they were naturally adopted because the benefits were unambiguous. This is simply not true. As a counter example consider debuggers. They are a big productivity boost, but it requires the user to change their development practice and learn a new tool. This makes adoption very hard. AI has a similar issue of being a new tool with a learning curve.
- RandallBrown 8mo ago
  Did companies actually send out memos saying "We're going to be a company that uses debuggers!" I would have just thought that people using them would quickly outpace the people that weren't and the people falling behind would adapt or die.
  - agentultra 8mo ago
    Do they have to die though? I know some folks that use them and others who don't. They both seem to get along fine.
  - charcircuit 8mo ago
    >Did companies actually send out memos saying "We're going to be a company that uses debuggers!" I could believe it. Especially if there are big licensing costs for the debuggers. >the people falling behind would adapt or die. It is better to educate people, make them more efficient, and avoid having them die. Having employees die is expensive for the company.
palijer 8mo ago
There was an Apple memo like this though that said they were word processing first. https://writingball.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-infamous-apple-typewriter-memo-is.html?m=1 https://writingball.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-infamous-apple-...
SkyPuncher 8mo ago
That doesn't work in an environment where there are compliance and regulatory controls. In most companies, you can't just pick up random new tools (especially ones that send data to third parties). The telling part is giving internal safety to use these tools.
SatvikBeri 8mo ago
Bezos's API memo is the biggest example I can think of. It was not individually productive for teams but arguably it was very productive for Amazon/AWS as a whole.
- MontyCarloHall 8mo ago
  That's a top-down organizational change mandating certain capabilities for all Amazon software. Unlike these AI mandates, it's not dictating the exact tools developers use to write that software, but rather what the software itself should do. For reference, here's the API mandate [0]: 1. All teams will henceforth expose their data and functionality through service interfaces. 2. Teams must communicate with each other through these interfaces. 3. There will be no other form of interprocess communication allowed: no direct linking, no direct reads of another team’s data store, no shared-memory model, no back-doors whatsoever. The only communication allowed is via service interface calls over the network. 4. It doesn’t matter what technology they use. HTTP, Corba, Pubsub, custom protocols — doesn’t matter. 5. All service interfaces, without exception, must be designed from the ground up to be externalizable. That is to say, the team must plan and design to be able to expose the interface to developers in the outside world. No exceptions. 6. Anyone who doesn’t do this will be fired. This is very different from saying "any developer who doesn't use an IDE and a debugger will be fired," which is analogous to what the AI mandates are prescribing. [0] https://nordicapis.com/the-bezos-api-mandate-amazons-manifesto-for-externalization/ https://nordicapis.com/the-bezos-api-mandate-amazons-manifes...
rchaud 8mo ago
Stock valuation has moved further away from Ben Graham-era emphasis on analysis of cash flow.
apimade 8mo ago
Contract-first. API-first. Domain-driven. Platform driven. Microservice driven. Tech loves making something a top priority (and forgetting about it several years later); AI is the first one that is applicable to the masses. .. Well maybe not User-first. But that was even less clear than AI-first.

malfist 8mo ago

Remember when companies all forced us to buy smartphones? Or switch to search engines instead of books? Or when Amazon announced it was "react native first"?

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
Mordisquitos 8mo ago
I agree with the sentiment you're expressing but, to be fair, companies forcing us all to use smartphones (as consumers or as citizens) is, unfortunately, happening implicitly.

jezzamon 8mo ago

Productive output is a lagging indicator. Using AI tools is theoretically leading???

nitwit005 8mo ago
I had you a power tool, and your productivity goes up immediately. Your IDE highlights problems, same story. Everyone can observe that this has happened.

Noumenon72 8mo ago

On the other hand, there were surely memos like "our facility will be using electric power now. Steam is out". Sometimes execs do set a company's direction.

MontyCarloHall 8mo ago
AI adoption is a bottom-up decision at the level of the individual worker. Converting an entire factory is a top-down decision. No single worker can individually decide to start using electricity instead of steam power, but individuals can choose whether/how to use AI or any other individual-level tool.
- wussboy 8mo ago
  > AI adoption is a bottom-up decision at the level of the individual worker. Ah, but that is the question, isn't it. Is it bottom up or top down?
  - sensanaty 8mo ago
    I think they're saying it should logically be a bottoms-uo initiative, since it's the rank and file that use it day in, day out, but instead it's top-down because we're in a massive bubble
nitwit005 8mo ago
That's a choice individual employees couldn't make. Or, at least, one management wouldn't let them make. It'd require a huge amount of spending.
abtinf 8mo ago
That transition took 40-50 years. Electrical power in manufacturing was infeasible for lot of reasons for a longtime. Any company issuing such an edict early on would have bankrupted themselves. And by the time it became practical, no such edict was needed.

nilkn 8mo ago

People will voluntarily adopt modest productivity boosters that don't threaten their job security. They will rebel against extraordinary productivity boosters that may make some of their skills obsolete or threaten their career.

MontyCarloHall 8mo ago
That’s simply not true. Developers hand-writing assembly readily adopted compilers, accountants readily adopted spreadsheets, and farmers readily adopted tractors and powered mills.
- nilkn 8mo ago
  That's false. Those things were in fact resisted in some cases. For instance, look up the swing riots of the 1830s.
  - munk-a 8mo ago
    There might be a temporary resistance from violence but eventually competition will take over. The issue in this case is that we're not looking at voluntary adoption due to a competitive advantage - we're seeing adoption by fiat. AI is a broad category of tools, some of which are highly useful to some people - but mandating wide adoption is going to waste a lot of people's time on inefficient tools.
    - nilkn 8mo ago
      The competitive advantage belongs to companies, not engineers. That's exactly the conflict. What you're predicting -- voluntary adoption due to advantages -- is precisely what is happening, but it's happening at the company level. It's why companies are mandating it and some engineers are resisting it. Just like in the riots I mentioned -- introduction of agricultural machinery was a unilateral decision made by landowners and tenant farmers, often directly against the wishes of the laborers.
      - 8mo ago

munificent 8mo ago

Think about the Industrial Age transition from individual craftspeople working on small shops using hand tools to make things into working in factories on large-scale assembly lines. The latter is wildly more productive than the former. If you owned a business that employed a bunch of cobblers, then moving them all out of their little shops into one big factory where they can produce 100x as many shoes means you just got yourself 100x richer. But for an individual cobbler, you basically got fired at one job and hired at another. This may come as a surprise to those who view work as simply an abstract concept that produces value units, but people actually have preferences about how they spend their time. If you're a cobbler, you might enjoy your little workshop, slicing off the edge of leather around the heel, hammering in the pegs, sitting at your workbench. The nature of the work and your enjoyment of it is a fundamental part of the compensation package of a job. You might not want to quit that job and get a different job running a shoe assembly line in a factory. Now, if the boss said "hey, since you're all going to be so much more productive working in the factory, we'll give you all 10x raises" then perhaps you might be more excited about putting down your hammer. But the boss isn't saying that. He's saying "all of the cobblers at the other companies are doing this to, so where are you gonna go?". Of course AI is a top-down mandate. For people who enjoy reading and writing code themselves and find spending their day corralling AI agents to be a less enjoyable job, then the CEO has basically given them a giant benefits cut with zero compensation in return.

frizlab 8mo ago
Yup. It’s what I’ve come to realize. My job is probably safe, as long as I will be willing to adapt. I have still not even tried AI once, and don’t care for it, but I know at one point I probably will have to. I don’t actually think it’ll be a productivity boost the way I work. Code has never been the difficult part, but I’ll definitely have to show I have included AI in my workflow to be left alone. Oh well…
- LPisGood 8mo ago
  Why have you never even _tried_ it? It’s very easy to try and surely you are somewhat curious.

paodealho 8mo ago

Goes to show how infested with disconnected management this industry is. All the tools that improved productivity for software devs (Docker, K8S/ECS/autoscaling, Telemetry providers) took very long for management to realize they bring value, and in some places with a lot of resistance. Some places where I worked, asking for an IntelliJ license would make your manager look at you like you were asking "hey can I bang your wife?".

badc0ffee 8mo ago

20 years ago or so, we had an exec ask us about our unit tests.

charcircuit 8mo ago

>Other productivity boosters certainly didn't need such memos; they were naturally adopted because the benefits were unambiguous. This is simply not true. As a counter example consider debuggers. They are a big productivity boost, but it requires the user to change their development practice and learn a new tool. This makes adoption very hard. AI has a similar issue of being a new tool with a learning curve.

RandallBrown 8mo ago
Did companies actually send out memos saying "We're going to be a company that uses debuggers!" I would have just thought that people using them would quickly outpace the people that weren't and the people falling behind would adapt or die.
- agentultra 8mo ago
  Do they have to die though? I know some folks that use them and others who don't. They both seem to get along fine.
- charcircuit 8mo ago
  >Did companies actually send out memos saying "We're going to be a company that uses debuggers!" I could believe it. Especially if there are big licensing costs for the debuggers. >the people falling behind would adapt or die. It is better to educate people, make them more efficient, and avoid having them die. Having employees die is expensive for the company.

palijer 8mo ago

There was an Apple memo like this though that said they were word processing first. https://writingball.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-infamous-apple-typewriter-memo-is.html?m=1 https://writingball.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-infamous-apple-...

SkyPuncher 8mo ago

That doesn't work in an environment where there are compliance and regulatory controls. In most companies, you can't just pick up random new tools (especially ones that send data to third parties). The telling part is giving internal safety to use these tools.

SatvikBeri 8mo ago

Bezos's API memo is the biggest example I can think of. It was not individually productive for teams but arguably it was very productive for Amazon/AWS as a whole.

MontyCarloHall 8mo ago
That's a top-down organizational change mandating certain capabilities for all Amazon software. Unlike these AI mandates, it's not dictating the exact tools developers use to write that software, but rather what the software itself should do. For reference, here's the API mandate [0]: 1. All teams will henceforth expose their data and functionality through service interfaces. 2. Teams must communicate with each other through these interfaces. 3. There will be no other form of interprocess communication allowed: no direct linking, no direct reads of another team’s data store, no shared-memory model, no back-doors whatsoever. The only communication allowed is via service interface calls over the network. 4. It doesn’t matter what technology they use. HTTP, Corba, Pubsub, custom protocols — doesn’t matter. 5. All service interfaces, without exception, must be designed from the ground up to be externalizable. That is to say, the team must plan and design to be able to expose the interface to developers in the outside world. No exceptions. 6. Anyone who doesn’t do this will be fired. This is very different from saying "any developer who doesn't use an IDE and a debugger will be fired," which is analogous to what the AI mandates are prescribing. [0] https://nordicapis.com/the-bezos-api-mandate-amazons-manifesto-for-externalization/ https://nordicapis.com/the-bezos-api-mandate-amazons-manifes...

rchaud 8mo ago

Stock valuation has moved further away from Ben Graham-era emphasis on analysis of cash flow.

apimade 8mo ago

Contract-first. API-first. Domain-driven. Platform driven. Microservice driven. Tech loves making something a top priority (and forgetting about it several years later); AI is the first one that is applicable to the masses. .. Well maybe not User-first. But that was even less clear than AI-first.