7 ms·

Ceding the premise that the AGI is gonna eat my job, my job involves reading the spec to be able verify the code and output so the there’s a human to fire and s

by bonesss 6mo ago

Ceding the premise that the AGI is gonna eat my job, my job involves reading the spec to be able verify the code and output so the there’s a human to fire and sue. There are five layers of fluffy management and corporate BS before we get to that part, and the AGI is more competent at those fungible skills. With the annoying process people out of the picture, even reviewing vibeslop full time sounds kinda nice… Feet up, warm coffee, just me and my agents so I can swear whenever I need to. No meetings, no problems.

taurath 6mo ago
There’s gonna be one guy in charge of you, and he’s going to expect you to be putting out 20x output while thanking him for the privilege of being employed, assuming all goes the way every management team seems to want I dont think this will happen because AI has become a straight up cult and things that are going well don’t need so many people performatively telling each other how well things are going.
- Forgeties79 6mo ago
  To add to this, I remember somebody here on HN pointing out a few months ago that they’ve never seen so much investment in businesses that are going “we don’t actually know what the billion dollar application is so we’re going to sell y’all some rough tools and bank on the rest of you figuring it out for us.”
- heroicmailman 6mo ago
  > There’s gonna be one guy in charge of you, and he’s going to expect you to be putting out 20x output while thanking him for the privilege of being employed, assuming all goes the way every management team seems to want A perfect summation.
- tedggh 6mo ago
  If a SWE could truly output 20x their effort, that person would probably be better at freelancing or teaming up with another SWE. If something can be automated away to AI is Project Management. Also, there has to be a point where delivering more and faster code doesn’t matter, because the choke points are somewhere else in the Project Life Cycle, say waiting for legal, other vendors, budgets, suppliers, etc, so productivity could max out at say 3X, after which, unless you have a strong pipeline of work, your engineers will be sitting around waiting for the next phase of the project to start.
  - jimbokun 6mo ago
    > If a SWE could truly output 20x their effort, that person would probably be better at freelancing or teaming up with another SWE. Yes but this requires the willingness to take on the additional stress and risk of managing your own sales, marketing, accounting, etc.
    - taurath 6mo ago
      If AI can 20x an engineer, it can handle all this too. Sadly it can’t.
    - harshalizee 6mo ago
      Except now you also team up with people who are adept at sales, marketing, accounting, etc. now to form a cooperative instead of a corporation. Maybe workers can get back some of the rights and fruits of their labor.
- jimbokun 6mo ago
  But that's really not the point of this particular article. The point being made is, do you know what financial impact your work is having in terms of increasing revenues or decreasing costs? If the company revenue is going down and costs increasing, developers will be laid off regardless of how many tickets they close.
ben_w 6mo ago
> my job involves reading the spec to be able verify the code and output so the there’s a human to fire and sue. So, you're the programmer (verify code) and the QA (verify output) and the project manager (read the spec)?
- virgilp 6mo ago
  qa has long ago merged with programming in "unified engineering". Also with SRE ("devops") and now the trend is to merge with CSE and product management too ("product mindset", forward-deployed engineers). So yeah, pretty much, that's the trend. What would you trust more - an engineer doing project management too - or a project manager doing the engineering job?
  - ben_w 6mo ago
    The PMs and QAs I know would disagree with that assessment. > What would you trust more - an engineer doing project management too - or a project manager doing the engineering job? If one of the three, {PM, QA, coder}, was replaced by AI, as a customer I'd prefer to pick the team missing the coder. But for teams replacing two roles with AI, I'd rather keep the coder. But a deeper problem now is, as a customer, perhaps I can skip the team entirely and do it all myself? That way, no game of telephone from me to the PM to the coder and QA and back to me saying "no" and having another expensive sprint.
    - robertlagrant 6mo ago
      > The PMs and QAs I know would disagree with that assessment. It just depends on the org structure and what the org calls different skills. In lots of places now PM (as in project, not product) is in no way a leadership role.
    - throwway120385 6mo ago
      If I'm managing a company of about 10 people to do something in the physical world, I'd probably skip the PM & QA and hire the engineer and have the engineer task the LLM with QA given a clear set of requirements and then manage the projects given a clear set of deadlines.A good SE can do a "good enough" job at QA and PM in a small company that you won't notice the PM & QA is missing. But the PM & QA can always be added or QA can be augmented with a specialist assuming you're LLM-driven. Of course if none of your software projects are business-critical to the degree that downtime costs money pretty directly then you can skip it all and just manage it yourself. The other thing you should probably understand is that the feedback cycle for an LLM is so fast that you don't need to think of it in terms of sprints or "development cycles" since in many cases if you're iterating on something your work to acceptance test what you're getting is actually the long pole, especially if you're multitasking.
tsukikage 6mo ago
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitzredakteur https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitzredakteur
- bwestergard 6mo ago
  Amazing bit of history, thank you!
grvdrm 6mo ago
I got 99 problems but an agent ain’t one.
cyanydeez 6mo ago
I think you missed the key capitalist part: There needs to be someone to benefit from all your labor. No, no, it can't be you. You have conflicts of interest!
- jimbokun 6mo ago
  What if your work isn't benefitting anyone?
  - cyanydeez 6mo ago
    If it sells, you don't own it! No one said a product needs to benefit people.
boxingdog 6mo ago
[dead]

by bonesss 6mo ago

taurath 6mo ago

There’s gonna be one guy in charge of you, and he’s going to expect you to be putting out 20x output while thanking him for the privilege of being employed, assuming all goes the way every management team seems to want I dont think this will happen because AI has become a straight up cult and things that are going well don’t need so many people performatively telling each other how well things are going.

Forgeties79 6mo ago
To add to this, I remember somebody here on HN pointing out a few months ago that they’ve never seen so much investment in businesses that are going “we don’t actually know what the billion dollar application is so we’re going to sell y’all some rough tools and bank on the rest of you figuring it out for us.”
heroicmailman 6mo ago
> There’s gonna be one guy in charge of you, and he’s going to expect you to be putting out 20x output while thanking him for the privilege of being employed, assuming all goes the way every management team seems to want A perfect summation.
tedggh 6mo ago
If a SWE could truly output 20x their effort, that person would probably be better at freelancing or teaming up with another SWE. If something can be automated away to AI is Project Management. Also, there has to be a point where delivering more and faster code doesn’t matter, because the choke points are somewhere else in the Project Life Cycle, say waiting for legal, other vendors, budgets, suppliers, etc, so productivity could max out at say 3X, after which, unless you have a strong pipeline of work, your engineers will be sitting around waiting for the next phase of the project to start.
- jimbokun 6mo ago
  > If a SWE could truly output 20x their effort, that person would probably be better at freelancing or teaming up with another SWE. Yes but this requires the willingness to take on the additional stress and risk of managing your own sales, marketing, accounting, etc.
  - taurath 6mo ago
    If AI can 20x an engineer, it can handle all this too. Sadly it can’t.
  - harshalizee 6mo ago
    Except now you also team up with people who are adept at sales, marketing, accounting, etc. now to form a cooperative instead of a corporation. Maybe workers can get back some of the rights and fruits of their labor.
jimbokun 6mo ago
But that's really not the point of this particular article. The point being made is, do you know what financial impact your work is having in terms of increasing revenues or decreasing costs? If the company revenue is going down and costs increasing, developers will be laid off regardless of how many tickets they close.

ben_w 6mo ago

> my job involves reading the spec to be able verify the code and output so the there’s a human to fire and sue. So, you're the programmer (verify code) and the QA (verify output) and the project manager (read the spec)?

virgilp 6mo ago
qa has long ago merged with programming in "unified engineering". Also with SRE ("devops") and now the trend is to merge with CSE and product management too ("product mindset", forward-deployed engineers). So yeah, pretty much, that's the trend. What would you trust more - an engineer doing project management too - or a project manager doing the engineering job?
- ben_w 6mo ago
  The PMs and QAs I know would disagree with that assessment. > What would you trust more - an engineer doing project management too - or a project manager doing the engineering job? If one of the three, {PM, QA, coder}, was replaced by AI, as a customer I'd prefer to pick the team missing the coder. But for teams replacing two roles with AI, I'd rather keep the coder. But a deeper problem now is, as a customer, perhaps I can skip the team entirely and do it all myself? That way, no game of telephone from me to the PM to the coder and QA and back to me saying "no" and having another expensive sprint.
  - robertlagrant 6mo ago
    > The PMs and QAs I know would disagree with that assessment. It just depends on the org structure and what the org calls different skills. In lots of places now PM (as in project, not product) is in no way a leadership role.
  - throwway120385 6mo ago
    If I'm managing a company of about 10 people to do something in the physical world, I'd probably skip the PM & QA and hire the engineer and have the engineer task the LLM with QA given a clear set of requirements and then manage the projects given a clear set of deadlines.A good SE can do a "good enough" job at QA and PM in a small company that you won't notice the PM & QA is missing. But the PM & QA can always be added or QA can be augmented with a specialist assuming you're LLM-driven. Of course if none of your software projects are business-critical to the degree that downtime costs money pretty directly then you can skip it all and just manage it yourself. The other thing you should probably understand is that the feedback cycle for an LLM is so fast that you don't need to think of it in terms of sprints or "development cycles" since in many cases if you're iterating on something your work to acceptance test what you're getting is actually the long pole, especially if you're multitasking.

tsukikage 6mo ago

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitzredakteur https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitzredakteur

bwestergard 6mo ago
Amazing bit of history, thank you!

grvdrm 6mo ago

I got 99 problems but an agent ain’t one.

cyanydeez 6mo ago

I think you missed the key capitalist part: There needs to be someone to benefit from all your labor. No, no, it can't be you. You have conflicts of interest!

jimbokun 6mo ago
What if your work isn't benefitting anyone?
- cyanydeez 6mo ago
  If it sells, you don't own it! No one said a product needs to benefit people.

boxingdog 6mo ago

[dead]