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My compsci brain suggests large orgs are a distributed system running on faulty hardware (humans) with high network latency (communication). The individual peop
by Herring 8mo ago
My compsci brain suggests large orgs are a distributed system running on faulty hardware (humans) with high network latency (communication). The individual people (CPUs) are plenty fast, we just waste time in meetings, or waiting for approval, or a lot of tasks can't be parallelized, etc. Before upgrading, you need to know if you're I/O Bound vs CPU Bound.
- Haven880 8mo agoI think both. Most organizatuons lack someone like Steve Jobs to prime their product lines. Microsoft is a good example where you see their products over the years are mostly meh. Then meetings are pervasive and even more so in most companies due to msteam convenience. But currently they faced reduced demands due softer market as compare 2-3 years ago. If you observed that no effect while they layoff many and revenue still hold or at least no negative growth, I would surmise that AI is helping. But in corporate, it only counta if directly contributed sales numbers.
- amrocha 8mo agoThen where are all the amazing open source programs written by individuals by themselves? Where are all the small businesses supposedly assisted by AI?
- Herring 8mo ago> 4% of GitHub public commits are being authored by Claude Code right now. At the current trajectory, we believe that Claude Code will be 20%+ of all daily commits by the end of 2026. https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/claude-code-is-the-inflection-point https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/claude-code-is-the-inf...
- amrocha 8mo agoThere’s lots of slop out there, that doesn’t mean it’s actually good or useful code.
- simonw 8mo agoKeep moving those goal posts.
- amrocha 8mo ago[flagged]
- DiggyJohnson 8mo agoYou could have easily made the same point and just not included the last sentence. Guidelines an all that
- entrox 8mo agoI feel different: the last line is very important in this context, since it communicates the underlying thoughts and values of the poster. Asking for "amazing" open source projects in this case is not asking out of genuine curiosity or want for debate, it is a rhetorical question asked out of frustration at the general trajectory of AI and who profits off of it -- namely the boot-wearers.
- simonw 8mo agoHere are a few of mine from the past month - for all of them 90%+ of the code written by Claude Code: - https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-history-json https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-history-json - https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-ast https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-ast - https://github.com/simonw/showboat https://github.com/simonw/showboat - 292 stars - https://github.com/simonw/datasette-showboat https://github.com/simonw/datasette-showboat - https://github.com/simonw/rodney https://github.com/simonw/rodney - 290 stars and 4 contributors who aren't me or Claude - https://github.com/simonw/chartroom https://github.com/simonw/chartroom Noting the star counts here because they are a very loose indication that someone other than me has found them useful.
- LunaSea 8mo ago
- simiones 8mo ago> Honestly, AI slop PRs are becoming increasingly draining and demoralizing for #Godot maintainers. > If you want to help, more funding so we can pay more maintainers to deal with the slop (on top of everything we do already) is the only viable solution I can think of https://www.pcgamer.com/software/platforms/open-source-game-engine-godot-is-drowning-in-ai-slop-code-contributions-i-dont-know-how-long-we-can-keep-it-up/ https://www.pcgamer.com/software/platforms/open-source-game-...
- lelanthran 8mo ago> If you want to help, more funding so we can pay more maintainers to deal with the slop (on top of everything we do already) is the only viable solution I can think of This is exactly the wrong approach! Funnel even more money away from productive tasks and into AI? Madness![1] The only viable solution is being quick with a banhammer - maybe someone should start up a spamhaus type list of every github user who submitted AI slop. Force them to burn these accounts on the very first spam. ------------ [1] Imagine if we chose this approach to deal with spam - we ask people for more money to hire a warm body to individually verify each email. Do you think spam would be the solved problem it is today?
- com2kid 8mo agoSeemingly every day on Show HN? Also small businesses aren't going to publish blog posts saying "we saved $500 on graphic design this week!"
- amrocha 8mo agoIs saving 500$ by generating some shitty AI art the bar? I thought this supposed to replace entire departments
- afavour 8mo agoSomeone asked “where are all the small businesses”, this was a reply to that. Small businesses don’t have entire art departments.
- amrocha 8mo agoGotcha, so the impact of AI is small businesses get to save a couple hundred dollars and the cost is only 2% of your countries GDP. That’s good.
- com2kid 8mo agoPrior to industrialization if you wanted to paint something you had to know how to mix your own paints. And make your own brushes. Before the printing presses came along, putting up flyers was not even imaginable. Signs for businesses used to hand carved. Then printed. A store sign was still produced by a team of professionals, but small businesses coils reasonably afford to print a sign. Not often updated, but it existed. Then desktop publishing took off. Now lone graphic designers could design and send work off to a print shop. Small businesses could now afford regularly updated menus, signage, and even adverts and flyers. Now small businesses can make their own creatives. AI can change stylesheets, write ad copy, and generate promotional photos. Does any of this have the artistry of hand carved signs from 600 years ago? Of course not. But the point is technology gives individuals control.
- 8note 8mo agooperationally, i think new startups have a big advantage on setting up to be agent-first, and they might not be as good as the old human first stuff, but theyll be much cheaper and nimble for model improvements
- kamaal 8mo agoStart ups mostly move fast skipping the necessary ceremony which large corps have to do mandatorily to prevent a billion dollar product from melting. Its possible for start ups because they don't have a billion dollar to start with. Once you do have a billion dollar product protecting it requires spending time, money and people to keep running. Because building a new one is a lot more effort than protecting existing one from melting.
- etothepii 8mo agoThis. Once you have revenue you have downside to protect. Pre-revenue the worst that can happen is that you have to start again knowing more than you did.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- kjellsbells 8mo agoMaybe experienced people are the L2 cache? And the challenge is to keep the cache fresh and not too deep. You want institutional memory available quickly (cache hit) to help with whatever your CPU people need at that instant. If you don´t have a cache, you can still solve the problem, but oof, is it gonna take you a long time. OTOH, if you get bad data in the cache, that is not good, as everyone is going be picking that out of the cache instead of really figuring out what to do.
- canyp 8mo agoL2? I'm hot L1 material, dude. But I like your and OP's analogy. Also, the productivity claims are coming from the guys in main memory or even disk, far removed from where the crunching is taking place. At those latency magnitudes, even riding a turtle would appear like a huge productivity gain.
- MrDarcy 8mo agoInteresting analogy to explore a Distributed System as compared to Organizational Dynamics.
- al_borland 8mo agoWhen my company first started pushing for devs to use AI, the most senior guy on my team was pretty vocal about coding not being the bottleneck that slowed down work. It was an I/O issue, and maybe a caching issue as well from too many projects going at the same time with no focus… which also makes the I/O issues worse.
- noosphr 8mo agoIronically using Ai on records of meetings across an org is amazing. If you can find out what everyone is talking about you can talk to them. Privacy is non existent, every word said and message sent at the office is recorded but the benefits we saw were amazing.
- beAbU 8mo agoYep. Previous org I was at had the fancy copilot integrated into teams. All meetings were auto transcribed and you could chat with copilot about the meeting directly in the chat. It was absolutely magical at extracting action points, decisions and other salient points. It was like having a secretary for each and every meeting.
- koiueo 8mo agoSo how is it going for him? Was he able to prove his point?
- al_borland 8mo agoHe was laid off… unrelated to these opinions. He was correct though. For example, I’ve been waiting over a month for another team to set me up so I can test something they wanted me to develop. I’ve followed up multiple times. AI coding tools aren’t going to solve my blocker.
- notepad0x90 8mo agoIn my opinion, you're very wrong. There is typically lots of good communication -- one way. The stuff that doesn't get communicated down to worker bees is intentional. "CPUs" aren't all that fast either, unless you make them by providing incentives. if you're a well paid worker who likes their job, i can see why you would think that, but most people aren't that. Meetings are work, as much as IPC and network calls are work. Just because they're not fun, or what you like to do, it doesn't mean they're any less of a work. I think you're analyzing things from a tactical perspective, without considering strategic considerations. For example, have you considered that it might not be desirable for CPUs to be just fast, or fast at all? is CISC faster than RISC? different architectural considerations based on different strategic goals right? If you're an order picker at an amazon warehouse, raw speed is important. being able to execute a simpler and more fixed set of instructions (RISC), and at greater speed is more desirable. if you're an IT worker, less so. IT is generally a cost-center, except for companies that sell IT services or software. if you're in a cost center, then you exist for non-profit-related strategic reasons, such as to help the rest of the company work efficiently, be resilient, compete, be secure. Some people exist in case they're needed some day, others are needed critically but not frequently, yet others are needed frequently but not critically. being able to execute complex and critical tasks reliably and in short order is more desirable for some workers. Being fast in a human context also means being easily bored, or it could mean lots of bullshit work needs to be invented to keep the person busy and happy. I'd suggest taking that compsci approach but considering not just the varying tasks and workloads, but also the diversity of goals and user cases of users (decision makers/managers in companies). There are deeper topics with regards or strategy and decision making surrounding the state machines of incentives and punishments, and decision maker organization (hierarchical, flat, hub-and-spoke,full-mesh,etc..).
- zelphirkalt 8mo agoMeetings can be work, but often they are a waste of time. Often they are only done, because the company has not found a better way to structure itself, which is also accepted by the management lawyer, who often has a profound fear of loss of control and likes to micromanage. If you can zone out for most of the meeting, and not experience negative effects from that, then the meeting was a waste of your time.
- hackable_sand 8mo agoNone of this fits
- TimByte 8mo agoIn some cases it might even make the mismatch worse. If one person can produce drafts, specs, or code much faster, you just create more work for reviewers, approvers, and downstream dependencies, which increases queueing