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I can't agree with 4 - it's sophomoric reasoning at it's best. The code is the product, it's what the system (human/ai/factory/combo/etc) is producing. The IC w

I can't agree with 4 - it's sophomoric reasoning at it's best. The code is the product, it's what the system (human/ai/factory/combo/etc) is producing. The IC will always be more familiar with the nuance and the implications of the decisions than the manager. There is only one real stat to track - profit. As for the size of your team, not all human developers are equal, but agentic tend to behave similarly. A small team of highly coordinated things will always outproduce a pile of generic ones acting will little or no methodology. Please deeply re-evaluate at a philosophical level what quality over quantity really means for delivering outcomes.

iforgotmypasswo 15d ago
Not to be tautological, but isn’t the product the product? Which code? The high level code? The transpiled intermediate code? The assembly it runs on eventually? The microcode optimizations on the processor? I’ve written assembly professionally. That code matters occasionally. But mostly I don’t worry about it. I don’t worry much about the transpiled JavaScript tsc output either. Or the intermediate code generated for LLVM. Or the bytecode most managed languages make for their interpreters. Like I said, you still have to do the hard parts, but most of software development is boilerplate or yet another implementation around the hard parts. AI is a tool you have. Using it effectively does not mean it is your only tool. Also, profit is not the ultimate metric. Value provided is the metric. Optimizing for money, to paraphrase a great book, is like trying to get better at tennis by studying the score board.
- officialchicken 12d ago
  No company is measured by "value provided" on any market, it's a feel-good metric. And you\re playing word-games now despite even saying you're not trying. Like I stated earlier, it's entirely a sophomoric take. And now I understand why.
  - iforgotmypasswo 10d ago
    I’ll try to explain value provided a bit. I think it’s a useful concept to share. A company or organization, generally speaking, has a purpose. It either produces something for or provides a service to end customers which they perceive as valuable. Over time, a company figures out what that purpose is and what it is not. If you are trying to manage a company and you are fixated on dollars, you’re usually not adding anything useful. You’ll likely make decisions completely misaligned with the purpose of the company. If you run a business by jumping from department to department trying to figure out how to maximize profit, you’re just an administrator looking to squeeze efficiency out of existing processes. You want some employees who do this, but it’s certainly not going to keep your company alive and relevant for the long term in an evolving market. Instead, you want to be jumping between departments trying to figure out if the core value proposition of the company is being realized. Are you maximizing value provided to your customers? Is your value proposition still relevant? Chasing value is targeted and intelligent. You’re correct that it’s much harder to create metrics for this, but the metrics you find are substantially more useful than profit margins. These metrics tell you if you’re succeeding. If you’re providing value and profit is an issue, then you either charge more or you never had a viable business model in the first place. Early stage companies chase cashflow by necessity. But once you’re no longer early stage and you have a margin of safety and some success, you can start to think differently. Chasing dollars at this point might put you out of business. Chasing value provided to your end customers leads to substantially more opportunities for continued success.

iforgotmypasswo 15d ago

Not to be tautological, but isn’t the product the product? Which code? The high level code? The transpiled intermediate code? The assembly it runs on eventually? The microcode optimizations on the processor? I’ve written assembly professionally. That code matters occasionally. But mostly I don’t worry about it. I don’t worry much about the transpiled JavaScript tsc output either. Or the intermediate code generated for LLVM. Or the bytecode most managed languages make for their interpreters. Like I said, you still have to do the hard parts, but most of software development is boilerplate or yet another implementation around the hard parts. AI is a tool you have. Using it effectively does not mean it is your only tool. Also, profit is not the ultimate metric. Value provided is the metric. Optimizing for money, to paraphrase a great book, is like trying to get better at tennis by studying the score board.

officialchicken 12d ago
No company is measured by "value provided" on any market, it's a feel-good metric. And you\re playing word-games now despite even saying you're not trying. Like I stated earlier, it's entirely a sophomoric take. And now I understand why.
- iforgotmypasswo 10d ago
  I’ll try to explain value provided a bit. I think it’s a useful concept to share. A company or organization, generally speaking, has a purpose. It either produces something for or provides a service to end customers which they perceive as valuable. Over time, a company figures out what that purpose is and what it is not. If you are trying to manage a company and you are fixated on dollars, you’re usually not adding anything useful. You’ll likely make decisions completely misaligned with the purpose of the company. If you run a business by jumping from department to department trying to figure out how to maximize profit, you’re just an administrator looking to squeeze efficiency out of existing processes. You want some employees who do this, but it’s certainly not going to keep your company alive and relevant for the long term in an evolving market. Instead, you want to be jumping between departments trying to figure out if the core value proposition of the company is being realized. Are you maximizing value provided to your customers? Is your value proposition still relevant? Chasing value is targeted and intelligent. You’re correct that it’s much harder to create metrics for this, but the metrics you find are substantially more useful than profit margins. These metrics tell you if you’re succeeding. If you’re providing value and profit is an issue, then you either charge more or you never had a viable business model in the first place. Early stage companies chase cashflow by necessity. But once you’re no longer early stage and you have a margin of safety and some success, you can start to think differently. Chasing dollars at this point might put you out of business. Chasing value provided to your end customers leads to substantially more opportunities for continued success.