Hahahaha this idiot thinks that it’s the speed of our typing that ships code faster. He’s in a knowledge shortage.
I’ve found that the people who understand these “agents” the least are the ones who are promoting them the most.
And everyone promotes them for tasks they aren’t experts in.
Managers think they could replace devs, but never a manager.
Devs think they could replace management but never a senior developer.
Storyboard drawers think they can write screenplays. Screenplay writers think they can draw storyboards. Etc.
As an expert, you know how shit AI is in your own field, but surely those other jobs are simple enough to be replaced.Let’s be honest, though: they absolutely could replace management.
It’s very easy to replace something that was never critical to the process in the first place. My manager essentially updates my git tickets with what I did. We talk for 5 minutes a week. He just kinda lets me do my thing, I am fully aware of how lucky I am.
some management, sure. just like some of your coworkers could probably be replaced by AI. but not the competent ones, and not the essential ones.
and personally, I’d still rather work with an incompetent person who can improve than four incompetent chatbots
although I’d rather work with no incompetence at all
The principal task of a competent manager is, primarily, intervening between incompetent upper managers and actual workers. Replacing the incompetent manager removes the need for the competent one.
90% of my experience with management is having none at all would be a net benefit
why would we want to add ai to that mix
This.
They’re incredibly useful, but you have to treat their output as disposable and untrustworthy. They’re reinforcement trained to generate a solution, regardless of if it’s right, because it’s impossible to AI evaluate that these solutions are correct at scale.
If you’re writing some core code: you can use an agent to review it, refactor parts, stump the original version, infill methods, and to run your test/benchmark scripts.
but you still have to manage it, edit it, make sure it’s not recreating the same code in 6 existing modules, generating faked tests, etc.
As an example this week on my side project I had Claude Opus write some benchmarks. Total throwaway code.
It actually took my input files, generated a static binary payload from it using numpy, and loaded that into my app’s memory (on its own that’s really cool), then it ran my one function and declared the whole system 100x faster than comparable libraries that parse the original data. Not a fair test at all, nor was it a useful test.
You cannot trust this software.
You’ll see these games metrics, gamed tests, duplicate parallel implementations, etc.
spend more time fixing slop compared to just doing it manually and correct the first time
“The new skill isn’t typing faster”.
Since I added a second keyboard I am programming twice as fast and don’t even need AI!
We pair-code on the same keyboard for maximum efficiency.
You should quad-code on two keyboards, really pump up those LOC stats.
It’s also the second-best way to combat hackers.
Are you guys using your feet yet? That’s how I run 4 keyboards.
I use 5. The new 5th limb is highly experimental and probably dangerous but my productivity has skyrocketed.
Its hard to maintain structural integrity of the 5th limb long enough for consistent productivity
I just have to get through this last sprint! Just one more sprint…
Do people actually use agents for production code? I feel like it is one of those things that people don’t use but is sold to us that everyone uses. A lie to promote bullshit.
I have an engineer that uses it heavily.
It adds so much extra and he’ll push thousands of lines of code into a PR every week. He had one bug and tried to refactor it, he bloated that single file by 16%.
It’s almost impossible to review.
Yes, they do.
I sometimes do, but very sparsely, it’s hard to come across a task that’s good fit for an LLM unless you’re prototyping something, imo
“We’re not in X, we’re in Y”
squints suspiciously
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But could you imagine all the exploits we would have found by now? That special little coast line would have been nothing. Missing Number? Bet we would have had the whole Missing Alphabet haha.
3 months later they rehired all of those four engineers to fix all that bullshit useless code.
I hate LinkedIn and all the fuck holes on it so god damn bad
guy in the business of vibe coding hypes up vibe coding
I think my management is decent about receiving feedback, but are also very into AI utilization right now. I’m not sure what level of feedback to give, because I do feel being too obstinate and negative would mark me, and with my adhd I often dont have a good read on where that line is. But I’d love to press them on where it will stop being worth it to keep pushing it? When the venture capital dries up? Climate/local data center regulations finally get implemented? Because those will all drive token cost up by a lot
I’ve learned they don’t actually understand either your craft pr the AI, but the AI is very convincing and more people in high places just go “sure, that validates my preconceived notions”
I’m getting ready to take over an org that’s doing this. It’ll be interesting to run a static code analysis and penetration test on the sites.
“Talent utilization crisis”
“Hire 1 engineer instead of 4”
Yes
