alt Hacker News> The frontier models are not good enough to replace an experienced engineer.
Yeah they are.
Two pizza team = 2 person team + Opus 5.5
Or for the really enterprising, solopreneur scaling to > $2.5 ARR (more than Goog's revenue per employee).
This is a fundamentally different game now.
I don't know why anyone assumes it just stops here.
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It's a game where you are obsolete, unless you are independently rich, so not much to cheer about
That's dumb and just an excuse. If it were true, why not keep the whole team and empower them and deliver 10x the existing value?
The dark truth is that tech executives have been extremely pissed off by tech workers in the 2010s leveraging their specialist knowledge into exorbitant salaries, autonomous working conditions and even political demands (remember the Google in China backlash?), and they are now using AI as an excuse to do mass layoffs in order to scare the uppity proles-craftsmen into falling in line. As Kalecki said, they value discipline in the factories more than raw profits
If you think AI can replace experienced engineers you're not working on anything complicated. If your product is a web app, sure, maybe. If you're working on actually difficult problems, then people who know what they're doing are irreplaceable. AI can supplement them and make them more productive, sure. AI does not know what NOT to build.
Had to Google "two pizza team". On what planet does 2 large pizzas feed 5-10 people? One pizza barely feeds me.
Thing is that you cannot do 24/7 oncall with two person and Opus 5.5 . Also bus factor start to be pretty big if there is only two persons etc. There is still reasons why FAANGS are so big.