4 ms·

They should think about what happens when expectations are so high that a single dev must deliver and maintain multiple products. What stops that single dev fro

They should think about what happens when expectations are so high that a single dev must deliver and maintain multiple products. What stops that single dev from leaving and offering the same product on his own.

uberex 4mo ago
Yep there is the grind em to be so efficient they may as well start on their own. And now the sales and marketing side of things can ne assisted with AI, albeit not as good as pros but better than a dev and no AI to help.
adrianN 4mo ago
The engineer might not be good at sales or at raising money or at doing taxes or doesn’t have the appetite for risk.
- abroszka33 4mo ago
  That was true before. Who wants to live on their saving for three years to build a product that might flop and do all the extra accounting and legal stuff. But now it takes 3 months with AI, making a business and charging money has never been easier. Legal is a problem, but AI is a big help there as well.
  - adrianN 4mo ago
    If you can build a product in three months that customers actually want, somebody else can copy it in two after they saw your version. Why should customers pay a lot of money for that?
    - abroszka33 4mo ago
      I'm not convinced that me copying is making it easier for the next guy to copy it. But you are asking the right question. And if the AI hype is real then the customer won't pay the big company premium for software and even small one dev, no overhead companies will be competing with each other.
luckylion 4mo ago
Moats for software/web companies that are entirely "we've built it, it would be too expensive for you to replicate it" are getting much weaker. It's now quick to produce something that at least looks close to an existing product. You can't clone the backend, the know-how to handle some weird interactions etc, but still, you can get fairly far mimicking the frontend, and LLMs can write you the fancy marketing buzzwords too. I think the part you can't easily clone will turn out to be the institutional processes that allow you to run at scale, onboard new people, deal with common requests that AI cannot on its own (e.g. legal compliance), the relationships you have with partners and vendors, the legal setups you have in place etc. I'd assume that plenty of developers feel capable to building a better jira, and some try, and few/none succeed despite atlassian doing everything in their power to drive clients away, because cloning the project isn't the hard part with that type of product.

uberex 4mo ago

Yep there is the grind em to be so efficient they may as well start on their own. And now the sales and marketing side of things can ne assisted with AI, albeit not as good as pros but better than a dev and no AI to help.

adrianN 4mo ago

The engineer might not be good at sales or at raising money or at doing taxes or doesn’t have the appetite for risk.

abroszka33 4mo ago
That was true before. Who wants to live on their saving for three years to build a product that might flop and do all the extra accounting and legal stuff. But now it takes 3 months with AI, making a business and charging money has never been easier. Legal is a problem, but AI is a big help there as well.
- adrianN 4mo ago
  If you can build a product in three months that customers actually want, somebody else can copy it in two after they saw your version. Why should customers pay a lot of money for that?
  - abroszka33 4mo ago
    I'm not convinced that me copying is making it easier for the next guy to copy it. But you are asking the right question. And if the AI hype is real then the customer won't pay the big company premium for software and even small one dev, no overhead companies will be competing with each other.

luckylion 4mo ago

Moats for software/web companies that are entirely "we've built it, it would be too expensive for you to replicate it" are getting much weaker. It's now quick to produce something that at least looks close to an existing product. You can't clone the backend, the know-how to handle some weird interactions etc, but still, you can get fairly far mimicking the frontend, and LLMs can write you the fancy marketing buzzwords too. I think the part you can't easily clone will turn out to be the institutional processes that allow you to run at scale, onboard new people, deal with common requests that AI cannot on its own (e.g. legal compliance), the relationships you have with partners and vendors, the legal setups you have in place etc. I'd assume that plenty of developers feel capable to building a better jira, and some try, and few/none succeed despite atlassian doing everything in their power to drive clients away, because cloning the project isn't the hard part with that type of product.