All I see it doing, as a SWE, is limiting the speed at which my co-workers learn and worsening the quality of their output. Finally many are noticing this and using it less...
I recently had a very interesting interaction in a few small startups I freelanced for recently.
In a 1-year company, the only tech person that's been there for more than 3-4 months (the CTO), only really understands a tiny fraction of the codebase and infrastructure, and can't review code anymore. Application size has blown up tremendously despite being quite simple. Turnover is crazy and people rarely stay for more than a couple months. The team works nights and weekends, and sales is CONSTANTLY complaining about small bugs that take weeks to solve.
The funny thing is that this is an AI company, but I see the CTO constantly asking developers "how much of that code is AI?". Paranoia has set in for him.
This sounds just like a typical startup or small consultancy drunk on Ruby gems and codegen (scaffolding) back in the Rails heyday.
People who don’t yet have the maturity for the responsibility of their roles, thinking that merely adopting a new technology will make up for not taking care of the processes and the people.
Bingo. The founders have no maturity, responsibility and believe they "made it" because they got somewhere AI. Now they're pushing back against AI because they can't understand the app anymore.
Your probably bosses think it's worth it if the outcome is getting rid of the whole host of y'all and replace you with AWS Elastic-SWE instances. Which is why it's imperative that you maximize AI usage.
They’ll be replaced with cheaper humans in Mexico using those Copilot seats, that’s much more tangible and obvious, no need to wait for genius level AI
No one's switching to AI cold turkey. Think of it as training your own, cheaper replacement. SWEs & their line managers develop & test AI workflows, while giving the bosses time to evaluate AI capabilities, then hopefully shrink the headcount as close to 0 as possible without shrinking profits. Right now, it's juniors who're getting squeezed.
Increasing profits by reducing the cost of doing business isn't a complicated scheme. It's been done thousands of times, over many decades; first with cheaper contractors replacing full-time staff, then offshore labor, and now they are attempting to use AI.
It's not complicated because "bosses" accomplish this by saying "let's reduce the cost of doing business" to someone who actually does whatever is needed.
The value of a boss/manager when there's no employees to do the work is negative. AI won't change this.
> "bosses" accomplish this by saying "let's reduce the cost of doing business" to someone who actually does whatever is needed
I don't know where you work, but in my experience, headcount reductions are strictly a top-down exercise. At best, the bosses may ask line managers who the essential people on their teams are. At worst, they get handed a list of people to fire, and they themselves may get the boot right after.
My bosses aren't pushing it at all. The normal cargo-cult temptations have pulled on some fellow SWEs, but its being pretty effectively pushed back on by its own failings, paired with SWEs who use it being outperformed by those who dont.
