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by nathan_compton17 hours ago |
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upvoteby ryandrake17 hours ago|
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To these kinds of companies, what's even better than a rack of mediocre programmers? AI agents that you can just conjure up and prompt. They take up no facility space, don't require lunch breaks or vacations, obey all commands and direction, and produce a predictable and consistent amount of output per dollar.

This is the earworm the leaders of these companies have allowed into their minds. Like Agent Mulder, they Want To Believe in this so badly...

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upvoteby overfeed14 hours ago|
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> This is the earworm the leaders of these companies have allowed into their minds. Like Agent Mulder, they Want To Believe in this so badly...

If you assume they are not idiots and analyze the FOMO incentives via a little game-theory, it becomes clear why.

Assuming the competition has adopted AI, leadership can ignore it, or pursue it. If they adopt it, then they are level with the completion whether AI actually succeeds or fails - they get to keep their executive job.

If leadership ignores AI, and it actually delivers the productivity gains to the competition, they will be fired. If they ignore AI and it's a bust, they gain nothing.

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upvoteby m4x7 hours ago|
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If AI turns out to be a bust, ignoring it could become a significant win. One possible outcome of AI adoption is that existing code bases are degraded, and existing programmer capability is allowed to atrophy. In that situation, companies that adopt AI lose out relative to companies that eschew it.
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upvoteby untrust10 hours ago|
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What if the outcome is the competition burns their money on LLM usage for little to no gain? If you're an exec and you jumped into LLMs as well then you also lose any advantage you would have had by saving your money or hiring a few more humans.
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upvoteby overfeed7 hours ago|
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> What if the outcome is the competition burns their money on LLM usage for little to no gain?

The company does better than the money-burning competition, but the executives personally gain nothing; there are no bonuses just because the competition took a misstep.

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upvoteby sanderjd13 hours ago|
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Yeah but does this work? Are there companies doing this successfully?
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upvoteby duskdozer7 hours ago|
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It's also true that a lot of times, it doesn't even matter how shitty the code is. For example, I'm locked in to a company whose web "app" hasn't functioned for me for the vast majority of the last two to three years. I can't leave without effectively being required to leave my job. So, they still get my business.
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upvoteby datsci_est_201517 hours ago|
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Glad I find myself employed under a division called Research and Development. Poaching and retaining highly compensated individuals is the entire purpose.
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upvoteby anal_reactor13 hours ago|
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Bingo. This is something that many people fail to understand.
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upvoteby hyperadvanced8 hours ago|
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I think you can understand that line of reasoning, but you can question its feasibility. You might not have any “star coders”, nor need them day-to-day, but I think the cost of not having one true expert, or having a completely vibe coded system that crashes in production will be extremely high.
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