[fercircularbuf]

My broader team organized a 2 day hackathon and created teams of 4 each with a mix of engineers, designers, data scientists, admin, localization, and project managers from across the team and gave us 5 pain points our product was experiencing and let us loose. The amount of leverage AI tools give small interdisciplinary teams to apply their existing skill sets is kind of crazy. Lots of very impressive demos, several of which were nearly shippable and provided real value.

[bensyverson]

> The amount of leverage AI tools give small interdisciplinary teams to apply their existing skill sets is kind of crazy.

This is 100% true, and this type of building is where AI is adding real value beyond the "I automated my entire business" hype.

Unfortunately, most companies don't have small interdisciplinary teams who have autonomy to scope and ship software. I spent 10 years at IDEO telling clients this was the way, but it's virtually impossible to replicate on the client side.

[onion2k]

If you were to say 'doing the same work a bit faster' isn't life-changing then that's evidence that the hypothesis in the article is actually correct.

[cahaya]

I'm not disagreeing with the article, but I think you are right that if you use AI in the right setting it can do much more than the average ChatGP that outputs Linkedin like crap:

interdisciplinary teams/person + SOTA AI + Right context (customer/ internal pain points, access to the code, focussed Hackathon) = amazing cool things.

[throwaway219450]

The biggest benefit for me has been getting side projects done. Little bugs or todos that would take more time than I have to spare, but don’t detract from the project.

I’ve had Claude do stuff like interrogate IoT devices, look into proprietary file formats and even assisted debugging electronics from a text description and datasheets. It has stupidly broad knowledge as long as you watch out for things like getting part numbers/boards correct. Have you ever tried to ask for help on an electronics forum full of miserable greybeards? $20/mo for getting ballpark answers immediately is excellent value.

Do assess if you want the learning experience or not, and whether you care if the problem is solved for you.

For writing I get the appeal to bloggers, but I can’t stand reading anything that has the hallmarks of generative AI.

[fibonachos]

Same here. Little side projects and convenience tooling for $day_job that otherwise wouldn’t have gotten built for lack of time. Doesn’t need to be perfect, beautiful code for an audience of one. It just needs to work.

[natsucks]

Do you think it was the AI itself that gave you the boost here or the discussion and brainstorming?