alt Hacker NewsOverheard recently: "Thanks to AI we're producing more code and more MRs, faster than ever, but the milestones aren't getting hit any sooner. Actually the opposite, if anything."
I wonder how widespread that phenomenon is. Perhaps it's no wonder the prominent actors are trying to rush to IPO...
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That's exactly what's happening. Many claim they are more productive with AI, but individual rise in productivity just doesn't translate to projects being completed any sooner.
And by "projects", I mean corporate ones with big teams involved. Hobby projects actually do get finished much faster.
My take from working at a Big Corp is that individuals using coding agents can increase velocity substantially and produce good quality work, assuming they are proficient with the tools. But it falls apart quickly when you have a team trying to work together.
imo we either need to centralize the agent and and submit plan, spec, reference doc MRs rather than submitting code changes. Or develop SCM systems/workflows that incorporate plan/spec/reference/prompt metadata with code so intent can be factored into merges.
We're planning for Q1 and don't have requirements yet for features, but are expected to have detailed estimates ready... This has happened before AI, this is happening after AI. The problem has rarely been "it takes too long to build ". The problem was "what do you want me to build? wait, no, not like that. now we must iterate"
Goodharts law. The metrics were always measuring the wrong thing, and now that we've finally optimized for the wrong thing successfully management will be forced to admit it and move on to another, slightly different, metric that doesn't actually equate to shareholder value.
It doesn't matter what the line actually measures, just that it goes up.