[Moto7451]

Yes-Anding you, if one developer is suddenly 3x more productive and does 40 hours of work in 15 with AI tools, any reasonable manager would still want the same three people to keep working at 3x productivity.

I don’t see Keynes’ theory we would all be working drastically fewer hours per week suddenly materializing due to AI. As always we’re just going to try to output more in the same time. The fact I, a manager, can “vibe code” some bugs away between meetings does not mean I will benefit from having one less dedicated engineer.

[laughing_man]

You need paying customers for whatever those developers are producing. If your market size is relatively fixed, you don't need three people anymore.

Look at it this way: if there really was a 3x market potential, why wouldn't that manager have hired six more people already?

[Moto7451]

No because you have the customers and budget in that moment for three already and I’m not interjecting that more budget is given or any taken away.

Restated, I’m not saying we’re hiring more or less because of LLM AI productivity changes. I’m rejecting the idea we need less people for all the previous reasons stated and my own two cents that we’re yet to see the reduced work hours Keynesian economics predicted as output per hour increased. We humans just keep working the same hours even if that hour is massively more productive.

This last point is well studied and not my own original thought. I’m just poorly regurgitating college level Macro Economics.

My own point I’ll add here is we’re not seeing companies bragging about their two day work weeks.

My personal experience with layoffs is that it’s all been financial engineering and the lack of nearly free financing that we had in the 2010s, again in the Pandemic, CapEx tax changes last year, and/or over hiring similar to but not nearly as massive as Google and Facebook. I worked for a European company that hired a dozen Americans to become more “US Tech Company” like and eventually let us all go two years ago once the fun money ran out when rates increased. They did a little bit of the AI babbling but realistically they couldn’t get the financing to keep it all rolling.

The companies reducing to one developer for a product are likely not doing this because of LLM AI work but likely will survive better because of it.

To your point, I’m actually living it and it’s nothing to do with AI. One of my teams was cut to 25% of its size a year ago and the whole QA team let go. Roughly this was an EBITA play. Basically the only way we get anything done is by doing what I mentioned in my earlier post where the front end dev uses LLMs to build a prototype backend they can use to support their front end expertise and the back end dev does the same for the front end. Eventually they meet in the middle and I can juggle some of the KTLO myself. Is this fun? Absolutely not. If we had the headcount back we’d be able to meet the ‘25-26 roadmap but instead we’re doing 40% of it.

[laughing_man]

Budget is based on revenue, though, at least in broad terms. If you thought you could triple your revenue by hiring a few extra programmers, you would, even if it meant raising money somehow.

I doubt you will ever see two day work weeks. Instead of cutting hours it makes a lot more sense for companies to cut people and have the remaining employees work full time. Or more. There are a lot of fixed costs for each employee, and most people would rather make more money than work less.

I worked at a company which, faced with slow period, reduced everyone's pay by 20% and switched to a 32 hour work week instead of cutting people. Most of my colleagues were bitter about it and a few even quit. Personally I was happy, but I was in a small minority.

Sorry to hear about your rocky employment experience. I feel like that's getting to be the norm these days.

[kuboble]

One thing could be that there is an extra management cost for each person to manage.

It's much easier to manage 3 people with better tools than to manage 9 people even if their output would be the same

[lanfeust6]

You have to account that expectations are set in part owing to bottlenecks, not just limits to desire/needs. Consumer expectations will adapt to the ability to improved productivity.

On the multimedia consumption (tv/film/music/games) side it seems like we are approaching a saturation point (between time sunk and desire to do so), but for business applications I don't see this being the case. Things sometimes move at a glacial pace.

[returnInfinity]

Lets take the example of Uber. If Uber ships 10x the code and features, I will still not 2x my rides.

Even if Uber makes the cost of travel to 0, I will still not 2x my rides.

[ehnto]

Uber needs to prove that they are growing though to validate their stock value, one of the tricks used to be increasing headcount to show growth.

But other tricks include new ventures, essentially public companies and VC companies have an almost unlimited appetite for new ventures, as that is how they keep validating their future growth and stock prices.

Currently financial realities are forcing layoffs, and the AI story is covering for the "growth" validation to keep stock prices going up.

But what's next? After you've fired everyone, what's the next growth story? They'll start hiring again, for new projects, even if AI can handle the coding there is still gobs of work surrounding building a software business or department that needs meat moving it forward.

[creamyhorror]

The end of ZIRP (cheap money) is precisely what ended the new-ventures/new-projects drive among big companies and turned them all to cost-cutting and maintenance mode.

[Moto7451]

This is precisely my experience. Except our roadmaps didn’t change much.

[ghaff]

0, yes you will. Or at least most would unless piblic transit were a genuinely better way to get around. But it won’t be zero as it’s bounded by the base cost of operating the vehicle.

[KellyCriterion]

How would they lower the prices to 0 in this scenario, if they have to keep operating their AI-driver-army?

[thaumasiotes]

Lowering the cost of travel to 0 would mean implementing a technology by which anyone can simply desire to be somewhere else, and they will instantly teleport to that new location.

returnInfinity is simply lying about not doing double (or more!) the amount of travel in that case.

[theobreuerweil]

I’m sure that he/she would ride a lot more if it cost nothing, but I think the point is valid: even if Uber could 10x or 100x productivity, they could not do the same with income, because there is a limit to how much people actually need to go places.

[ghaff]

That’s true but fully autonomous driving alone might double my car travel. Going into the nearest major city is a pain. So is driving into the mountains. Operating costs and time are still costs. But not having to drive would really change the game for me.

[dmurray]

Who said anything about instantly teleporting? Uber could cut the cost in money to 0 but still operate cars which are bound by the laws of physics and the rules of the road.

Maybe returnInfinity already spends 12 hours a day in Ubers, or otherwise has them satisfy all his transportation needs, and couldn't usefully double his usage of them.

[thaumasiotes]

Uber can cut the price of their service to 0.

It's impossible for them to cut the cost to 0 (without using magic), but that doesn't make it impossible for us to talk about what the cost being 0 would involve. Travel time is one of the costs you pay for Uber's service. That you don't pay it to Uber doesn't matter. If Uber reduced that cost to 0, you would use Uber a lot more.

[idiotsecant]

This is a silly easily falsifiable example, though. My Uber usage is approximately zero. If cost was zero my Uber usage would increase.

[jghn]

The concern isn't that a dev sees 3x. Rather that at some point devs become a pointless middleman in the workflow. If the manager/PM can just tell the computer what they want, why do they need the dev in the middle to do it for them?

Will we ever achieve that world? Who knows. We've heard these promises before, with things like COBOL and 4GLs. Yet we're still here coding.

[ej88]

the role of a 'developer' is ever-shifting, even now a lot of swe roles expect a good amount of product or customer-facing skills