TBF I do burn 200k tokens just preloading the context with onboarding, not including any code, just document trees of development policy documents, style and architectural standards, code and documentation review processes, company ethos and culture, etc. it’s a token fire, but it really works for us.
Also, documentation driven development all the way down.
That's rare, though. If they could not untangle their own code after 4 months, it's because they were not making enough money to pay a team to untangle it - that's not a code problem, it's a revenue problem.
IOW, the startup failed because their revenue was too low.
I've stared at ugly LLM code, that I had just had generated, and worked well enough for my purposes. (generally, some quick recursion into a nested python dictionary in order to dig out some property -- especially for linting or quick data analysis).
And I wanted something better, sure, something a bit more readable ...but I just needed it to work well enough to recurse through a yaml file for config file linting, not be battle-hardened against every test case.
So to deal with the mess, I shoved it in a pure function, threw a few basic sanity unit tests around it, put a comment with a disclaimer of "#this is LLM generated code, it is lightly tested, do not use it for anything truly load-bearing without a lot more tests" and I moved on to something else.
Not everything has to be bulletproof.
If you are, in fact, "a technical product manager", I would hope you understand that "bad code" is identified as such specifically because it "impacts the business."
The engineers I have worked with most definitely define "bad code" as having intrinsic limitations and/or latent defects which impact successful system functionality/operation. Indicators provided to stakeholders such as yourself which support this assessment are, but not limited to:
- the system doesn't work that way
- the system lacks test coverage, so changes take longer
- adding feature "X" is not feasible
- there is no repeatable way to onboard team members
- the backlog grows exponentially
- that "one point task" is going to take a couple weeks
It is up to you, the "technical product manager", to understand what your team is trying to tell you.
Everything you're saying is true, sometimes. Assume I'm still right, and that you might be able to learn something from someone else.
I do not see how I was being rude, unless it was my use of quotations around the title you claim.
> I'm a human being ...
I did not doubt this.
> ... I'm a very experienced product manager and engineer ...
Again, if it was my use of quotations which you found to be rude, then I do not know what to say about that.
> ... and the way you are behaving sucks.
I respect your perspective and support your right to express yourself. And no, I do not think you are being rude by doing so.
> Assume I'm still right ...
Why would I? You responded to:
>> This is a site full of developers who are convinced that "proper software engineering" is 100% of what makes a business successful, and everything and everyone else is useless.
With:
> As a technical product manager, this 1000%.
Finally, you write:
> ... you might be able to learn something from someone else.
Maybe you can learn something from someone else as well.
Of all the "concise" and "beautiful" code I worked hard to produce, I was the only one to ever lay eyes on it. It didn't actually matter, and nobody cared but me. The people in charge of my raises could never perceive quality of code, because it wasn't their area of expertise. They only cared (rightly so) that it did what it was supposed to, and all the elegant abstractions didn't practically help that purpose. It was, literally, wasted life that I should have spent just getting off work early, like most of my colleagues.
People need to get to grips with that fast.
Distribution, relationships, processes, mindshare, marketing, and politics matter. Code is just ephemeral glue and implementation detail.
Just 99.999%.
Get over yourself. We're all ephemeral, dead and recycled in the blink of an eye. Our species doesn't even clock on the geologic timespan.
If you think your code (or any of your artifacts or possessions) matter beyond their immediate utility, you're mistaken. Work will either fall into disuse or be replaced. It's scaffolding for what comes next along a well-traversed path.
I can only imagine what people are doing at their jobs with unlimited token budgets.
That's irrelevant. What's the increase in revenue?
It's not just statistics either. I know for a fact that I made major progress by using LLMs. Here's a summary from around a month ago:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48407642
AI is world changing technology as far as I'm concerned.
its a lot of features that feel half complete, with the llm pretending that the job is done rather than actually being done
The opportunities available for these people are rapidly, rapidly shrinking. I believe it's possible to be a developer today who's EXCEPTIONAL and never uses AI. Most opponents are not exceptional, though, and even these opportunities are shrinking.
Most exceptional developers in my org adopted AI in their workflows and went from 10x developers to 20x developers.
If you refuse to adapt, you're going to be out of a job complaining about the kids and their newfangled technology REAL quick. You have a few years remaining, maybe less.
I can’t turn 10x work into 20x work because my Product Manager thinks changing fundamental premises of tasks I already spent two weeks on (mostly removing human blockers) is very simple. After all, when he asked Claude to update his prototype, it only took it 10 minutes.
I can’t turn 10x work into 20x work because the company dedicated entire teams to write company-wide skills for everything. They suck, but if I don’t use them, I’m not following the new “golden path for engineering”, and I lose points in my performance review.
I can, however, turn 10x work into 20x work, or even much more than that, if AI actually did what it’s promising and eliminated most of my team, the product manager, and the middle managers. Or me. I could use a break.
> Speed.
Speed of what?
Speed of understanding what needs to be done? I highly doubt it.
Speed of LoC checked into git? Sure, I'll give you that.
But one can use any number of tools to generate hundreds of thousands of lines of code. See any build tools which support specifications such as RAML, OpenAPI, CORBA, etc.
So I ask again; speed of what?
fixing more serious regression also easier. connect honeycomb mcp, ask agent to debug while i walk to coffee and get some pistachio rose dates. by time im back with my oat latte ive got a full report on what happened and can send the next slack message to fix.
life is good
I am appalled none of this is clicking with you anti-AI folks. This is all so exciting -- alarming even! --, and software careers are never going to be the same.
I don't know how you just metaphorically stand there and act like nothing at all is happening. We've never seen anything like this in our entire lives.
Some of you are standing right in front of the steam roller, yelling to all of us that steam rollers aren't real.
Speed of what?
How do LLMs increase the speed of a person understanding
what needs to be done?
A: The sky is blue! B: No it's not. A: Yes, it is, please look up. B: No, you must prove it to me through reason. A: But, if you would just pretty please look up. B: No.
I run a company, I've been running it for 10 years, we do alright. I'm a shitty manager. Every time I've hired developers, the business freezes. The business isn't anything super important, the main consequence of bugs is that my family loses money. Everything has always rested on my shoulders. In theory there is some path for me to become a good manager, but I never landed on it. But now, with Claude, it's great. So far Claude has paid itself off in real profits at least 20x over, and that's with significant API usage on top of the monthly sub. I can prototype new features in an afternoon that before were on my giant list of "maybe somedays if I ever get to breathe" list. Our user experience has improved in so many ways that I knew were probably worth it, if I could just find the time. Now I can.
There are situations where yeah, it probably isn't ready yet. But, there are so many where it's amazing. Seriously, it's worth looking up.
My point is and remains:
A) GenAI did not give you this understanding.
B) GenAI can only assist in your expressing this
preexisting understanding.
C) GenAI is a statistical token (text) generator and
cannot, by definition, "make" a person understand
what they want/need to do.For all of you people who think these LLM models are “earth shattering” how the hell do you reconcile that it’s a net positive for anyone but those who want to consolidate knowledge and power.
We are really looking at idiocracy in the making.
For actually building software, I'm starting to suspect a human with a dumber (but faster) model is going to get the job done quicker than Fable (and possibly even cheaper). Bug-finding and vulnerability detection is a different story.