alt Hacker NewsI dunno: this is pure anecdata but software engineers I know well - including me - all say they’re delivering multiple times faster, so it’s definitely good for something.
I don’t know about other tasks, but it’s pretty rad for coding, testing, DevOps, and config.
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This research is specifically NOT about tech companies. It is about the rest of the fortune 500.
If you are in software or IT at a non-tech company that is in the fortune 500, the impact of significantly better productivity may not be measurable in aggregate in the company's P&L.
In smaller companies I expect it could be more measurable because some of them really are using AI much more effectively across many functions. But we're finding it very hard to measure meaningful outcomes.
If only I wasn’t using all that productivity on fixing vulnerabilities
One weird trick that devs learn to deliver faster: simply just drop all guard rails and push directly to prod. We need to make sure our velocity report looks good after all.
Same story here in my first hand experience + colleagues experience in corporate strategy, FP&A, Marketing and corporate development.
People are not reliable narrators on their own productivity. They often mistake activity for productivity.
AI EM here, same. The level of productivity has increased dramatically in the last 2 months. Reliable code also has increased due to AI.
This train isn't stopping.
What trips up a lot of SEs where I work is their techniques. Everyone who follows our process delivers faster and with higher reliability so far.
But is it churn or value? Most of the software I use has gotten visibility worse as you deliver multiple times faster.
I would pay extra for a company that just slowed down and moved deliberately.
I'm not sure I'm any faster, but I think the end result is better and I've attempted some big refactors and new architectures that I would never have tried without AI.
N=1 but I'm not sure it's made my bosses any richer. What we're shipping has better tests and documentation than it ever would have before AI.
Most, not all, are just delivering more bad stuff faster. I personally also think I deliver more good stuff with AI, but the products I use are just getting worse daily it feels like. Just the other day I noticed Slack had installed some disgusting menu bar icon for their AI bot, without asking, just to take a fresh example of this.
A friend of mine works in fashion. Very briefly for background: there are runway models (who walk on live shows), and catalogue models (who work in studios presenting clothes against a neutral background in standard poses, more or less as living mannequins). The latter are being increasingly replaced by AI.