[latexr]

> The excitement of getting a day's work done in an hour* (for example) is likely to fade once the expectation is to produce 8 of such old-days output per day.

That dumb attitude (which I understand you’re criticising) of “more more more” always reminds me of Lenny from the Simpsons moving fast through the yellow light, with nowhere to go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QR10t-B9nYY

> I suspect it doesn't matter how we feel about it mind you. If it's going to happen it will, whether we enjoy the gains first or not.

That is quite the defeatist attitude. Society becoming shittier isn’t inevitable, though inaction and giving up certainly helps that along.

[popcorncowboy]

> "If it's going to happen it will" - That is quite the defeatist attitude. Society becoming shittier isn’t inevitable

You're right in general, but I don't think that'll save you/us from OP's statement. This is simple economic incentives at play. If AI-coding is even marginally more economically efficient (i.e. more for less) the "old way" will be swept aside at breathtaking pace (as we're seeing). The "from my cold dead hands" hand-coding crowd may be right, but they're a transitional historical footnote. Coding was always blue-collar white-collar work. No-one outside of coders will weep for what was lost.

[sarchertech]

> If AI-coding is even marginally more economically efficient (i.e. more for less) the "old way" will be swept aside at breathtaking pace (as we're seeing).

On the scale I’ve been doing this (20 years), that hasn’t been the case.

Rails was massively more efficient for what 90% of companies where building. But it never had anywhere near a 90% market share.

It doesn’t take 1000 engineers to build CRUD apps, but companies are driven to grow by forces other than pure market efficiency.

There are still plenty of people using simple text editors when full IDEs have offered measurable productivity boosts for decades.

>(as we’re seeing)

I work at a big tech company. Productivity per person hasn’t noticeably increased. The speed that we ship hasn’t noticeably increased. All that’s happening is an economic downturn.

[throw10920]

I think that you're correct in that Rails and IDEs offer significant productivity benefits but aren't/weren't widely adopted.

But AI seems to be different in that it claims to replace programmers, instead of augment them. Yes, higher productivity means you don't have to hire as many people, but with AI tools there's specifically the promise that you can get rid of a bunch of your developers, and regardless of truth, clueless execs buy the marketing.

Stupid MBAs at big companies see this as a cost reduction - so regardless of the utility of AI code-generation tools (which may be high!), or of the fact that there are many other ways to get productivity benefits, they'll still try to deploy these systems everywhere.

That's my projection, at least. I'd love to be wrong.

[sarchertech]

I believe you’re 100% right about trying to replace devs. In that respect it’s like offshoring.

But no matter how hard cost cutters wanted to, they were never able to actually reduce the total number of devs outside of major economic downturns.

[shkkmo]

> more economically efficient

I suspect we'll find that the amount of technical debt and loss of institutional knowledge incured by misuse of these tools was initially underappreciated.

I don't doubt that the industry will be transformed, but that doesn't mean that these tools are a panacea.

[loandbehold]

I read about AI assistants allegedly creating tech debt but my experience is opposite. Claude Code makes it easy to refactor helping to reduce tech debt. Tech debt usually happens because refactoring takes time but is hard to justify to upper management because upper management only sees new features but not quality of code. With Claude Code refactoring is much faster so it gets done.

[chongli]

Are you talking about refactoring code you’re already familiar with? Or a completely unknown codebase that no one else at the company knows anything about and you’ve been tasked with fixing?

[loandbehold]

Both. But I'm not talking about fixing. I'm talking about refactoring.

[chongli]

It’s often the case that in order to fix an issue you need to refactor first.

[shkkmo]

I would argue that you should only allow Claude to refactor code that you understand. Once that institutional knowledge is lost you would then have to regain it before you can safely refactor it, even with Claude's help.

I also specifically used the term "misuse" to significantly weaken my claim. I mean only to say that the risks and downsides are often poorly understood, not that there are no good uses.

[zdragnar]

> “more more more”

If you're a salaried or hourly employee, you aren't paid for your output, you are paid for your time, with minimum expectations of productivity.

If you complete all your work in an hour... you still owe seven hours based on the expectations of your employment agreement, in order to earn your salary and benefits.

If you'd rather work in an output based capacity, you'll want to move to running your own contacting business in a fixed-bid type capacity.

[SketchySeaBeast]

That's funny, because, at more than one place I've worked as a salaried employee, when I had to work OT, the narrative was "you're salary because you're paid to get the job done, doesn't matter how many hours it takes". Unfortunately, "the job" somehow never worked out to be less than 40 hours a week.

[zdragnar]

> you are paid for your time, with minimum expectations of productivity

There's legal distinctions between part time and full time employment. Hence, you are expected to put in a minimum number of hours. However, there's nothing to say that the minimum expectation is the minimum for classification for full time employment.

If AI lets you get the job done in 1 hour when you otherwise would have worked overtime, you're still technically being paid to work more than that one hour, and I don't know of any employer that'll pay you to do nothing.

[tom_]

In many (most?) salary jobs, employees are typically paid both to get the job done, and to supply at least N hours of their time for the company to have them use as it sees fit.

[SketchySeaBeast]

Yeah, I've been in industry for over a decade, still don't understand the value of salary for the devs.

[brailsafe]

> That is quite the defeatist attitude. Society becoming shittier isn’t inevitable, though inaction and giving up certainly helps that along.

If the structures and systems that are in-place only facilitate life getting more difficult in some way, then it probably will, unless it doesn't.

Housing getting nearly unownable is a symptom of that. Climate change is another.

[dfxm12]

moving fast through the yellow light, with nowhere to go.

My company has been preparing for this for a while now, I guess, as my backlog clearly has years' worth of work in it and positions of people who have left the org remain unfilled. My colleagues at other companies are in a similar situation. Considering round after round of layoffs, if I got ahead a little bit and found that I had nothing else to do, I'd be worried for my job.

Society becoming shittier isn’t inevitable

Yes, I agree, but the deck is usually stacked against the worker, especially in America. I doubt this will be the issue that promotes any sort of collectivism.

[atoav]

> That is quite the defeatist attitude. Society becoming shittier isn’t inevitable, though inaction and giving up certainly helps that along.

Correct. But it becoming shittier is the strong default, with forces that you constantly have to fight against.

And the reason is very simple: Someone profits from it being shittier and they have a lot of patience and resources.

[creesch]

> That dumb attitude (which I understand you’re criticising) of “more more more” always reminds me of Lenny from the Simpsons moving fast through the yellow light, with nowhere to go.

Realizing that attitude in myself at times has given me so much more peace of mind. Just in general, not everything needs to be as fast and efficient as possible.

Not to mention the times where in the end I spend a lot of time and energy in trying to be faster only to end up with this xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1319/

As far as LLM use goes, I don't need moar velocity! so I don't try to min max my agentic workflow just to squeeze out X amount more lines code.

In fact, I don't really work with agentic workflows to begin with. I more or less still use LLMs as tools external to the process. Using them as interactive rubber duckies. Things like deciphering spaghetti code, do a sanity check on code I wrote (and being very critical of the suggestions they come up with), getting a quick jump start on stuff I haven't used again (how do I get started with X of Y again?), that sort of stuff.

Using LLMs in the IDE and other agentic use is something I have worked with. But to me it falls under what I call "lazy use" where you are further and further removed from the creation of code, the reasoning behind it, etc. I know it is a highly popular approach with many people on HN. But in my experience, it is an approach that makes skills of experienced developers atrophy and makes sure junior developers are less likely to pick them up. Making both overly reliant on tools that have been shown to be less than reliable when the output isn't properly reviewed.

I get the firm feeling that velocity crowd works in environments where they are judged by the amount of tickets closed. Basically "feature complete, test green, merged, move on!". In that context, it isn't really "important" that the tests that are green are also refactored by the thing itself, just that they are green. It is a symptom of a corporate environment where the focus is on these "productivity" metrics. From that perspective I can fully see the appeal for LLM heavy workflows as they most certainly will have an impact on metrics like "tickets closed" or "lines of code written".

[jckahn]

> Just in general, not everything needs to be as fast and efficient as possible.

It does when you are competing for getting and keeping employment opportunities.

[creesch]

Even then it is not always needed, but I also more directly address this already in the comment you are replying to.

[bigfudge]

> That is quite the defeatist attitude. Society becoming shittier isn’t inevitable, though inaction and giving up certainly helps that along.

This feels like kicking someone when they’re down! Given the current state of corporate and political America, it doesn’t look likely there will be any pressure for anything but enshittification to me. Telling people at the coal face to stay cheerful seems unlikely to help. What mechanism do you see for not giving up to actually change the experience of people in 10 ish years time?

[tehjoker]

Unionization. Work speed-ups are a classic management assault on the working man.

[atoav]

> Telling people at the coal face to stay cheerful seems unlikely to help.

That isn't what they said tho. They said you have to do something, not that you should just be happy. Doing something can involve things that historically had a big impact in improving working conditions, like collective action and forming unions.

The opposite advice would be: "Everything's fucked, nothing you can do will change it, so just give up." Needless to say that is bad advice unless you are a targeted individual in a murderous regime or similar.

[furyofantares]

> That is quite the defeatist attitude. Society becoming shittier isn’t inevitable, though inaction and giving up certainly helps that along.

The hypothetical that we're 8x as productive but the work isn't as fun isn't "society becoming shittier".

[Steven420]

How is everyone working shitty jobs not "society becoming shittier"? Seems pretty awful

[furyofantares]

"Society" is more than just software developers.

We are very well paid for very cushy work. It's not good for anyone's work to get worse, but it's not a huge hit to society if a well-paid cushy job gets less cushy.

And presumably people buy our work because it's valuable to them. Multiplying that by 8 would be a pretty big benefit to society.

I don't want my job to get less fun, but I would press that button without hesitation. It would be an incredible trade for society at large.

[pempem]

Well lets think about it.

Software devs jobs getting less cushy is no biggie. We can afford to amp up the efficiency. Teachers jobs got "less cushy" -> not great for users/consumers or the ppl in those jobs. Doctors jobs got "less cushy" -> not great for users/consumers or the ppl in those jobs. Even waiters/ check-out staff, stockists jobs at restaurants, groceries and AMZ got "less cushy" -> not great for users/consumers or the ppl in those jobs. at least not when you need to call someone for help.

These things are not as disconnected as they seem. Businesses are in fact made up of people.

[pdntspa]

Maybe everybody's job should be cushy instead. We were not put on this earth to toil away for a bunch of rich fucks

[bluefirebrand]

My cushy software job has burned me out so badly that I am on medical leave with massive memory problems and a bit of concern about my heart

So I mean... Yeah

Is software more comfortable generally than many other lines of work? Yes probably

Is it always soft and cushy? No, not at all. It is often high pressure and high stress

[furyofantares]

I'm sorry for implying there can't be hardship (significant, even devastating) in this line of work. Thanks for posting about your experience.

[griffiths]

What kind of massive memory problems? I might have this but didn't think to attribute it to burnout.

[ModernMech]

When I burned out I experienced skill regression and short term memory loss. Like, an inability to remember specific events of the day before, inability to perform skills I had done for decades like play an instrument. Took over a year to stabilize and return to normal.

[mrbombastic]

Also asking for a friend…

[bluefirebrand]

Difficult to explain because it's inconsistent

But I am struggling to remember things I did not used to struggle with

Going to an event on a weekend with my wife and completely forgetting that we ran into a friend there. Not just "oh yeah I forgot we saw them", like feeling my wife is lying to me when she tells me we saw them. Texting them to ask and they agree we saw each other

These are people I trust with my life so I believe they would not gaslight me, my own memory has just failed

Many examples like this, just completely blacking out things. Not forgetting everything, but blacking out large pieces of my daily life. Even big things

[politician]

FWIW, I am not your doctor: Taking a daily antioxidant, glutathione, has helped me manage memory-related symptoms that appeared coincident with other burnout symptoms.

Disclaimer: talk to your doctor. I don’t know if your doctor can tell you whether this is a good idea, but it might help in some countries with good medical systems.

[bluefirebrand]

I might as well ask my doctor about it, thanks

[codr7]

If you think software development is cushy, I wonder what kind of software you're writing. Because there are different levels; getting something to work is not the same thing as writing maintainable, high quality software.

I've seen plenty enough people try, really try, to get into software development; but they just can't do it.

[advael]

This places a lot of faith in the following assumptions:

1. Efficiency measures as written to benchmark this coupling with economic productivity overall

2. Monetary assessments of value in the context of businesses spending money corresponding with social value

3. The gains of economic productivity being distributed across society to any degree, or the effect of this disparity itself being negligible

4. The negative externalities of these processes scaling less quickly than whatever we're measuring in our productivity metric

5. Aforementioned externalities being able to scale to even a lesser degree in lockstep with productivity without crashing all of the above, if not causing even more catastrophic outcomes

I have very little faith in any of these assumptions

[anothernewdude]

Okay, but the reality of society becoming shittier is society becoming shittier.