9 ms·

As much as people on Hacker News complain about subscription models for productivity and creativity suites, the open arms embrace of subscription development to

As much as people on Hacker News complain about subscription models for productivity and creativity suites, the open arms embrace of subscription development tools (services, really) which seek to offload the very act itself makes me wonder how and why so many people are eager to dive right in. I get it. LLMs are cool technology. Is this a symptom of the same phenomenon behind the deluge of disposable JavaScript frameworks of just ten years ago? Is it peer pressure, fear of missing out? At its root, I suspect so; of course I would imagine it's rare for the C-suite to have ever mandated the usage of a specific language or framework, and LLMs represent an unprecedented lever of power to have an even bigger shot at first mover's advantage, from a business perspective. (Yes, I am aware of how "good enough" local models have become for many.) I don't really have anything useful nor actionable to say here regarding this dialling back of capability to deal with capacity issues. Are there any indications of shops or individual contributors with contingency plans on the table for dialling back LLM usage in kind to mitigate these unknowns? I know the calculus is such that potential (and frequently realised) gains heavily outweigh the risks of going all in, but, in the grander scheme of time and circumstance, long term commitments are starting to be more apparently risky. I am purposefully trying to avoid "begging the question" here; if instead of LLMs, this were some other tool or service, reactions to these events would have been far more pragmatic, with less of a reticence to invest time on in-house solutions when dealing with flaky vendors.

rurp 6mo ago
HN is a big community that has always had a mix of people who value newness as a feature vs those who prioritize simplicity and reliability. Unless you're recognizing the exact same names taking these contradictory opinions it's probably different groups of people for the most part. It seems like every LLM thread for the past couple years is full of posts saying that the latest hot AI tool/approach has made them unbelievably more productive, followed by others saying they found that same thing underwhelming.
- echelon 6mo ago
  > I get it. LLMs are cool technology. I don't think many of you have legitimately tried Claude Code, or maybe you're holding it wrong. I'm getting 10x the work done. I'm operating at all layers of the stack with a speed and rapidity I've never had before. And before anyone accuses me of being some "vibe coder", I've built five nines active-active money rails that move billions of dollars a day at 50kqps+, amongst lots of other hard hitting platform engineering work. Serious senior engineering for over a decade. This isn't just a "cool technology". We've exited the punch card phase. And that is hard or impossible to come back from. If you're not seeing these same successes, I legitimately think you're using it wrong. I honestly don't like subscription services, hyperscaler concentration of power, or the fact I can't run Opus locally. But it doesn't matter - the tool exists in the shape it does, and I have to consume it in the way that it's presented. I hope for a different offering that is more democratic and open, but right now the market hasn't provided that. It's as if you got access to fiber or broadband and were asked to go back to ISDN/dial up.
  - embedding-shape 6mo ago
    > and I have to consume it in the way that it's presented I'm just curious, why do you "have to"? Don't get me wrong, I'm making the same choice myself too, realizing a bunch of global drawbacks because of my local/personal preference, but I won't claim I have to, it's a choice I'm making because I'm lazy.
    - echelon 6mo ago
      My job title is "provide value". I'm given a tool that lets me 10x "provide value". My personal preferences and tastes literally do not matter.
      - embedding-shape 6mo ago
        As a professional you have a choice in how you produce whatever it is you produce. Sure, you can go for the simplest, most expensive and "easiest" way of doing things, or you can do other things, depending on your perspective and requirements. None of this is set in stone, some people make choices based on personal preferences, and that matters as much to them as your choices matter to you.
onlyrealcuzzo 6mo ago
[dead]
supriyo-biswas 6mo ago
> if instead of LLMs, this were some other tool or service, reactions to these events would have been far more pragmatic, with less of a reticence to invest time on in-house solutions when dealing with flaky vendors As an example, a long term goal at the employer I work for is exactly this: run LLMs locally. There's a big infrastructure backlog through, so it's waiting on those things, and hopefully we'll see good local models by then that can do what Claude Sonnet or GPT-5.3-Codex can do today.
dyauspitr 6mo ago
I think most people understand the need for subscriptions here. It is an ongoing massive compute cost, and that’s what you’re paying for. Your local system is not capable of running the massive amount of compute required for this. If it were then we would see more people up in arms about it.
- stephbook 6mo ago
  We could run it locally, but the problems that matter simply don't change. We're paying for servers that sit idle at night, you don't find enough sysadmins for the current problems, the open source models aren't as strong as closed source, providing context (as in googling) means you hook everything up to the internet anyway, where do you find the power and the cooling systems and the space, what do you do with the GPUs after 3 years? Suddenly that $500/month/user seems like a steal.
- xantronix 6mo ago
  Is this pace necessary? I feel like this is causing people to consider code to be disposable, and I think that both are a massive mistake.
michael_j_x 6mo ago
I really enjoy coding. I've build a number of projects, personal and professional, with Python, Rust, Java and even some Scala in the mix. However, I've been addicted to Claude Code recently, especially with the superpowers skill. It feels like I can manifest code with my mind. When developing with Claude, I am presented with design dilemmas, architectural alternatives, clarification questions, things that really make me think about the problem. I then choose a solution, propose alternatives, discuss, and the code manifests. I came to realize that I enjoy the problem solving, not the actual act of writing the code. Like I have almost cloned my self, and my clones are working on the projects and coming back to me for instructions. It feels amazing
- withinboredom 6mo ago
  I feel this sentiment. It’s more like pair programming with someone both smarter and dumber than you. If you’re reviewing the code it is putting down, you’re likely to spot what it’s getting wrong and discussing it. What I don’t understand, are the people who let it go over night or with whole “agent teams” working on software. I have no idea how they trust any of it.
- snarfy 6mo ago
  Yep, I want to make stuff. Writing the code by hand was just a means to an end.
- throw4847285 6mo ago
  "Addicted" "Superpowers" "manifest with my mind" "it feels amazing" Why does it sound like you're on drugs? I know that sounds extremely rude, but I can't think of any other reasonable comparison for that language. It's hard to take these kinds of endorsements seriously when they're written so hyperbolically, in terms of the same cliches, and focused on entirely on how it makes you feel rather than what it does.
  - guzfip 6mo ago
    > Why does it sound like you're on drugs, specifically cocaine? This has basically been what all of Silicon Valley sounds like to me for a few years now. They are known for abusing many psycho-stimulants out there. The stupid “manifesto” Marc Andreessen put out a while back sounded like adderall-produced drivel more than a coherent political manifesto.
garganzol 6mo ago
[dead]
jimmaswell 6mo ago
Contingency plan? Just code without it like before. AI could disappear today and I would be very disappointed but it's not like I forgot how to code without it. If anything, I think it's made me a better programmer by taking friction away from the execution phase and giving me more mental space to think in the abstract at times, and that benefit has certainly carried over to my work where we still don't have copilot approved yet.
- xantronix 6mo ago
  [dead]
woctordho 6mo ago
Apart from local AI, a serious choice is aggregated API such as new-api [0]. An API provider aggregated thousands of accounts has much better stability than a single account. It's also cheaper than the official API because of how the subscription model works, see e.g. the analysis [1]. [0] https://github.com/QuantumNous/new-api https://github.com/QuantumNous/new-api [1] https://she-llac.com/claude-limits https://she-llac.com/claude-limits
- gruez 6mo ago
  >An API provider aggregated thousands of accounts has much better stability than a single account Isn't this almost certainly against ToS, at least if you're using "plans" (as opposed to paying per-token)?
  - woctordho 6mo ago
    You don't even need to be a customer served by Anthropic or OpenAI so the Terms of Service are irrelevant. That's how I live in China and use almost free Claude and GPT which they don't sell here.
    - gruez 6mo ago
      Wait, is this just something like openrouter, that routes your requests to different API providers, where you're paying per-token rates? Or is this taking advantage of fixed price plans, by offering an API interface for them, even though they're only supposed to be used with the official tools?
      - woctordho 6mo ago
        It's taking advantage of fixed price plans or even free plans.
  - throwaway27448 6mo ago
    That seems like Anthropic's problem.
DeathArrow 6mo ago
>I get it. LLMs are cool technology. It would be cool to run SOTA models on my own hardware but I can't. Hence, the subscription.
cookiengineer 6mo ago
The great part is that you can always build your own selfhosted tools. There is nothing that can't be done at home, it's just a calculation of how much you're willing to spend. Lately though the RAM crisis is continuing and making things like this more unfeasible. But you can still use a lot of smaller models for coding and testing tasks. Planning tasks I'd use a cloud hosted one, for now, because gemma4 isn't there yet and because the GPU prices are still quite insane. The cool and fun part is that with ollama and vllm you can just build your own agentic environment IDE, give it the tools you like, and make the workflow however you like. And it isn't even that hard to do, it just needs a lot of tweaking and prompt fiddling. And on top of that: Use kiwix to selfhost Wikipedia, stackoverflow and devdocs. Give the LLM a tool to use the search and read the pages, and your productivity is skyrocketing pretty quickly. No need anymore to have internet, and a cheap Intel NUC is good enough for self-hosting a lot of containers already. Source: I am building my own offline agentic environment for Golang [1] which is pretty experimental but sometimes it's also working. [1] https://github.com/cookiengineer/exocomp https://github.com/cookiengineer/exocomp
- xantronix 6mo ago
  I'm definitely all in on self-hosting, though I rent my compute and pay for bandwidth with Linode and storage with rsync.net. The LLM bit though, personally, is just not for me.
- aaztehcy 6mo ago
  [flagged]
stefan_ 6mo ago
I would love nothing more than ditching Claude for a local solution tomorrow. But it doesn't exist today, so it is what it is - you gotta keep up with the joneses. Maybe in 5 years we'll have an open weights model that is in the "good enough" category that I can run on a RTX 9000 for 15k dollars or whatever.
- xantronix 6mo ago
  I don't want to get too much into the details but I don't work in or for the Valley and I don't think I'll ever be able to afford that sort of expenditure on computing. A down payment on a car, or a vital medical procedure? Sure. I'm probably not alone here.
torben-friis 6mo ago
People will always go along with a removal of friction even against their benefit. It's natural bias, we have a preference for not spending energy. It's why we pay stupid amounts for takeout when it's a button away, it's why we accept the issues that come with online dating rather than breaking the ice outside, it's why there's been decades scams that claim to get you abs without effort... LLMs are the ultimate friction removal. They can remove gaps or mechanical work that regular programming can, but more importantly they can think for you. I'm convinced this human pattern is as dangerous as addiction. But it's so much harder to fight against, because who's going to be in favor of doing things with more effort rather than less? The whole point of capitalism is supposed to be that it rewards efficiency.
- xantronix 6mo ago
  > stupid amounts for takeout Aw hell. You found my vice and my own cognitive dissonance here. If I want to truly stand by my convictions, I should probably cook more and log off. Waiting for signs that the tides are turning and that people are beginning to value a slower, more methodical approach again isn't doing anything in the current moment to stave off the genuine feelings of dread that have honestly led to some suicidal ideation. (this is serious and not sarcasm, by the way)
  - abnercoimbre 6mo ago
    Stand strong. Plenty of us working towards healthy offline communities.
    - xantronix 6mo ago
      Thanks friend. I really appreciate that. This is genuinely hard right now.
  - torben-friis 6mo ago
    Think that you're likely average! By which I mean, it's likely you're not the only one feeling that dread. We're due for a counter movement, and it's a matter of time to see it flower.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
benterix 6mo ago
Well, I wanted to understand what is this cool new tech everybody is talking about so I bought a Max plan, experimented with various setups recommended by various experts, vibe-coded a few apps and then threw it all away. I still use more traditional approach for finding bugs and other issues in my code, but the agentic workflow doesn't give me any net value.
jlokier 6mo ago
> the open arms embrace of subscription development tools (services, really) which seek to offload the very act itself makes me wonder how and why so many people are eager to dive right in Here's a reason not in your list. Short version: A kind of peer pressure, but from above. In some circles I'm told a developer must have AI skills on their resume now, and those probably need to be with well known subscription services, or they substantially reduce their employment prospects. Multiple people I know who are employers have recently, without prompting, told me they no longer hire developers who don't use AI in their workflow. One of them told me all the employers they know think "seniors" fall into two camps, those who are embracing AI and therefore nimble and adaptive, and those who are avoiding it and therefore too backward-looking, stuck-in-their-ways to be a good hire for the future. So if they don't see signs of AI usage on a senior dev's resume now, that's an automatic discard. For devs I know laid off from an R&D company where AI was not permitted for development (for IP/confidentiality reasons), that's unfair as they were certainly not backward-looking people, but the market is not fair. Another "business leader" employer I met recently told me his devs are divided into those who are embracing AI and those who aren't, said he finds software feature development "so slow!", and said if it wasn't for employment law he'd fire all his devs who aren't choosing to use AI. I assume he was joking, but it was interesting to hear it said out loud without prompting. I've been to several business leadership type meetups in recent months, and it seems to be simply assumed that everyone is using AI for almost everything worth talking about. I don't think they really are, so it's interesting to watch that narrative playing out.
therealpygon 6mo ago
Think of the stupidest product you can think of and you likely only know about it because people buy/bought them en masse. AI is no different from any other product; plenty will pay/adopt for exactly the reasons you said. There is powerful motivations for people to feel “ahead” of others (or more informed, or more “cool”, or more knowledgeable, or more experienced, or whatever their ego requires), even if their situation is exactly the same. That said, I’m not sure I follow your statement of less resistance to the development of internal tools when the opposite seems to be the case; companies (or more specifically developers) are perhaps too quick to think they can just vibe-code a replacement for any vendor in a weekend these days.
raxxorraxor 6mo ago
I think some workflows are just that much faster with AI. And if not I can spare the time for a prompt to get work done in parallel to the stuff I work on. There is a cost though, the context switches of topics aren't free. But if I need to visualise a something, I let an LLM create a page. If I have two tables of data that needs to be joined/mapped, I let an LLM do the first shot, often that is enough. I cannot even hope to reach that speed. It isn't a magic tool, but it really accelerates some task. That speed allows for in-house solutions to become viable again, software that really adapts specific business processes instead of some wonky ERP package that never really fit what you were trying to do. I have our dbs schema checked into a Gitea repository, which our AIs can just access to quickly ingest schema definitions. If data safety is an issue, use a local model. It is extremely beneficial if you quickly can establish context and let your AI deal with real problems. And it is quite good at that.

rurp 6mo ago

HN is a big community that has always had a mix of people who value newness as a feature vs those who prioritize simplicity and reliability. Unless you're recognizing the exact same names taking these contradictory opinions it's probably different groups of people for the most part. It seems like every LLM thread for the past couple years is full of posts saying that the latest hot AI tool/approach has made them unbelievably more productive, followed by others saying they found that same thing underwhelming.

echelon 6mo ago
> I get it. LLMs are cool technology. I don't think many of you have legitimately tried Claude Code, or maybe you're holding it wrong. I'm getting 10x the work done. I'm operating at all layers of the stack with a speed and rapidity I've never had before. And before anyone accuses me of being some "vibe coder", I've built five nines active-active money rails that move billions of dollars a day at 50kqps+, amongst lots of other hard hitting platform engineering work. Serious senior engineering for over a decade. This isn't just a "cool technology". We've exited the punch card phase. And that is hard or impossible to come back from. If you're not seeing these same successes, I legitimately think you're using it wrong. I honestly don't like subscription services, hyperscaler concentration of power, or the fact I can't run Opus locally. But it doesn't matter - the tool exists in the shape it does, and I have to consume it in the way that it's presented. I hope for a different offering that is more democratic and open, but right now the market hasn't provided that. It's as if you got access to fiber or broadband and were asked to go back to ISDN/dial up.
- embedding-shape 6mo ago
  > and I have to consume it in the way that it's presented I'm just curious, why do you "have to"? Don't get me wrong, I'm making the same choice myself too, realizing a bunch of global drawbacks because of my local/personal preference, but I won't claim I have to, it's a choice I'm making because I'm lazy.
  - echelon 6mo ago
    My job title is "provide value". I'm given a tool that lets me 10x "provide value". My personal preferences and tastes literally do not matter.
    - embedding-shape 6mo ago
      As a professional you have a choice in how you produce whatever it is you produce. Sure, you can go for the simplest, most expensive and "easiest" way of doing things, or you can do other things, depending on your perspective and requirements. None of this is set in stone, some people make choices based on personal preferences, and that matters as much to them as your choices matter to you.

onlyrealcuzzo 6mo ago

[dead]

supriyo-biswas 6mo ago

> if instead of LLMs, this were some other tool or service, reactions to these events would have been far more pragmatic, with less of a reticence to invest time on in-house solutions when dealing with flaky vendors As an example, a long term goal at the employer I work for is exactly this: run LLMs locally. There's a big infrastructure backlog through, so it's waiting on those things, and hopefully we'll see good local models by then that can do what Claude Sonnet or GPT-5.3-Codex can do today.

dyauspitr 6mo ago

I think most people understand the need for subscriptions here. It is an ongoing massive compute cost, and that’s what you’re paying for. Your local system is not capable of running the massive amount of compute required for this. If it were then we would see more people up in arms about it.

stephbook 6mo ago
We could run it locally, but the problems that matter simply don't change. We're paying for servers that sit idle at night, you don't find enough sysadmins for the current problems, the open source models aren't as strong as closed source, providing context (as in googling) means you hook everything up to the internet anyway, where do you find the power and the cooling systems and the space, what do you do with the GPUs after 3 years? Suddenly that $500/month/user seems like a steal.
xantronix 6mo ago
Is this pace necessary? I feel like this is causing people to consider code to be disposable, and I think that both are a massive mistake.

michael_j_x 6mo ago

I really enjoy coding. I've build a number of projects, personal and professional, with Python, Rust, Java and even some Scala in the mix. However, I've been addicted to Claude Code recently, especially with the superpowers skill. It feels like I can manifest code with my mind. When developing with Claude, I am presented with design dilemmas, architectural alternatives, clarification questions, things that really make me think about the problem. I then choose a solution, propose alternatives, discuss, and the code manifests. I came to realize that I enjoy the problem solving, not the actual act of writing the code. Like I have almost cloned my self, and my clones are working on the projects and coming back to me for instructions. It feels amazing

withinboredom 6mo ago
I feel this sentiment. It’s more like pair programming with someone both smarter and dumber than you. If you’re reviewing the code it is putting down, you’re likely to spot what it’s getting wrong and discussing it. What I don’t understand, are the people who let it go over night or with whole “agent teams” working on software. I have no idea how they trust any of it.
snarfy 6mo ago
Yep, I want to make stuff. Writing the code by hand was just a means to an end.
throw4847285 6mo ago
"Addicted" "Superpowers" "manifest with my mind" "it feels amazing" Why does it sound like you're on drugs? I know that sounds extremely rude, but I can't think of any other reasonable comparison for that language. It's hard to take these kinds of endorsements seriously when they're written so hyperbolically, in terms of the same cliches, and focused on entirely on how it makes you feel rather than what it does.
- guzfip 6mo ago
  > Why does it sound like you're on drugs, specifically cocaine? This has basically been what all of Silicon Valley sounds like to me for a few years now. They are known for abusing many psycho-stimulants out there. The stupid “manifesto” Marc Andreessen put out a while back sounded like adderall-produced drivel more than a coherent political manifesto.

garganzol 6mo ago

[dead]

jimmaswell 6mo ago

Contingency plan? Just code without it like before. AI could disappear today and I would be very disappointed but it's not like I forgot how to code without it. If anything, I think it's made me a better programmer by taking friction away from the execution phase and giving me more mental space to think in the abstract at times, and that benefit has certainly carried over to my work where we still don't have copilot approved yet.

xantronix 6mo ago
[dead]

woctordho 6mo ago

Apart from local AI, a serious choice is aggregated API such as new-api [0]. An API provider aggregated thousands of accounts has much better stability than a single account. It's also cheaper than the official API because of how the subscription model works, see e.g. the analysis [1]. [0] https://github.com/QuantumNous/new-api https://github.com/QuantumNous/new-api [1] https://she-llac.com/claude-limits https://she-llac.com/claude-limits

gruez 6mo ago
>An API provider aggregated thousands of accounts has much better stability than a single account Isn't this almost certainly against ToS, at least if you're using "plans" (as opposed to paying per-token)?
- woctordho 6mo ago
  You don't even need to be a customer served by Anthropic or OpenAI so the Terms of Service are irrelevant. That's how I live in China and use almost free Claude and GPT which they don't sell here.
  - gruez 6mo ago
    Wait, is this just something like openrouter, that routes your requests to different API providers, where you're paying per-token rates? Or is this taking advantage of fixed price plans, by offering an API interface for them, even though they're only supposed to be used with the official tools?
    - woctordho 6mo ago
      It's taking advantage of fixed price plans or even free plans.
- throwaway27448 6mo ago
  That seems like Anthropic's problem.

DeathArrow 6mo ago

>I get it. LLMs are cool technology. It would be cool to run SOTA models on my own hardware but I can't. Hence, the subscription.

cookiengineer 6mo ago

The great part is that you can always build your own selfhosted tools. There is nothing that can't be done at home, it's just a calculation of how much you're willing to spend. Lately though the RAM crisis is continuing and making things like this more unfeasible. But you can still use a lot of smaller models for coding and testing tasks. Planning tasks I'd use a cloud hosted one, for now, because gemma4 isn't there yet and because the GPU prices are still quite insane. The cool and fun part is that with ollama and vllm you can just build your own agentic environment IDE, give it the tools you like, and make the workflow however you like. And it isn't even that hard to do, it just needs a lot of tweaking and prompt fiddling. And on top of that: Use kiwix to selfhost Wikipedia, stackoverflow and devdocs. Give the LLM a tool to use the search and read the pages, and your productivity is skyrocketing pretty quickly. No need anymore to have internet, and a cheap Intel NUC is good enough for self-hosting a lot of containers already. Source: I am building my own offline agentic environment for Golang [1] which is pretty experimental but sometimes it's also working. [1] https://github.com/cookiengineer/exocomp https://github.com/cookiengineer/exocomp

xantronix 6mo ago
I'm definitely all in on self-hosting, though I rent my compute and pay for bandwidth with Linode and storage with rsync.net. The LLM bit though, personally, is just not for me.
aaztehcy 6mo ago
[flagged]

stefan_ 6mo ago

I would love nothing more than ditching Claude for a local solution tomorrow. But it doesn't exist today, so it is what it is - you gotta keep up with the joneses. Maybe in 5 years we'll have an open weights model that is in the "good enough" category that I can run on a RTX 9000 for 15k dollars or whatever.

xantronix 6mo ago
I don't want to get too much into the details but I don't work in or for the Valley and I don't think I'll ever be able to afford that sort of expenditure on computing. A down payment on a car, or a vital medical procedure? Sure. I'm probably not alone here.

torben-friis 6mo ago

People will always go along with a removal of friction even against their benefit. It's natural bias, we have a preference for not spending energy. It's why we pay stupid amounts for takeout when it's a button away, it's why we accept the issues that come with online dating rather than breaking the ice outside, it's why there's been decades scams that claim to get you abs without effort... LLMs are the ultimate friction removal. They can remove gaps or mechanical work that regular programming can, but more importantly they can think for you. I'm convinced this human pattern is as dangerous as addiction. But it's so much harder to fight against, because who's going to be in favor of doing things with more effort rather than less? The whole point of capitalism is supposed to be that it rewards efficiency.

xantronix 6mo ago
> stupid amounts for takeout Aw hell. You found my vice and my own cognitive dissonance here. If I want to truly stand by my convictions, I should probably cook more and log off. Waiting for signs that the tides are turning and that people are beginning to value a slower, more methodical approach again isn't doing anything in the current moment to stave off the genuine feelings of dread that have honestly led to some suicidal ideation. (this is serious and not sarcasm, by the way)
- abnercoimbre 6mo ago
  Stand strong. Plenty of us working towards healthy offline communities.
  - xantronix 6mo ago
    Thanks friend. I really appreciate that. This is genuinely hard right now.
- torben-friis 6mo ago
  Think that you're likely average! By which I mean, it's likely you're not the only one feeling that dread. We're due for a counter movement, and it's a matter of time to see it flower.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

benterix 6mo ago

Well, I wanted to understand what is this cool new tech everybody is talking about so I bought a Max plan, experimented with various setups recommended by various experts, vibe-coded a few apps and then threw it all away. I still use more traditional approach for finding bugs and other issues in my code, but the agentic workflow doesn't give me any net value.

jlokier 6mo ago

> the open arms embrace of subscription development tools (services, really) which seek to offload the very act itself makes me wonder how and why so many people are eager to dive right in Here's a reason not in your list. Short version: A kind of peer pressure, but from above. In some circles I'm told a developer must have AI skills on their resume now, and those probably need to be with well known subscription services, or they substantially reduce their employment prospects. Multiple people I know who are employers have recently, without prompting, told me they no longer hire developers who don't use AI in their workflow. One of them told me all the employers they know think "seniors" fall into two camps, those who are embracing AI and therefore nimble and adaptive, and those who are avoiding it and therefore too backward-looking, stuck-in-their-ways to be a good hire for the future. So if they don't see signs of AI usage on a senior dev's resume now, that's an automatic discard. For devs I know laid off from an R&D company where AI was not permitted for development (for IP/confidentiality reasons), that's unfair as they were certainly not backward-looking people, but the market is not fair. Another "business leader" employer I met recently told me his devs are divided into those who are embracing AI and those who aren't, said he finds software feature development "so slow!", and said if it wasn't for employment law he'd fire all his devs who aren't choosing to use AI. I assume he was joking, but it was interesting to hear it said out loud without prompting. I've been to several business leadership type meetups in recent months, and it seems to be simply assumed that everyone is using AI for almost everything worth talking about. I don't think they really are, so it's interesting to watch that narrative playing out.

therealpygon 6mo ago

Think of the stupidest product you can think of and you likely only know about it because people buy/bought them en masse. AI is no different from any other product; plenty will pay/adopt for exactly the reasons you said. There is powerful motivations for people to feel “ahead” of others (or more informed, or more “cool”, or more knowledgeable, or more experienced, or whatever their ego requires), even if their situation is exactly the same. That said, I’m not sure I follow your statement of less resistance to the development of internal tools when the opposite seems to be the case; companies (or more specifically developers) are perhaps too quick to think they can just vibe-code a replacement for any vendor in a weekend these days.

raxxorraxor 6mo ago

I think some workflows are just that much faster with AI. And if not I can spare the time for a prompt to get work done in parallel to the stuff I work on. There is a cost though, the context switches of topics aren't free. But if I need to visualise a something, I let an LLM create a page. If I have two tables of data that needs to be joined/mapped, I let an LLM do the first shot, often that is enough. I cannot even hope to reach that speed. It isn't a magic tool, but it really accelerates some task. That speed allows for in-house solutions to become viable again, software that really adapts specific business processes instead of some wonky ERP package that never really fit what you were trying to do. I have our dbs schema checked into a Gitea repository, which our AIs can just access to quickly ingest schema definitions. If data safety is an issue, use a local model. It is extremely beneficial if you quickly can establish context and let your AI deal with real problems. And it is quite good at that.