Comment on Tech's Dumbest Mistake: Why Firing Programmers for AI Will Destroy Everything
cyrano@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Imagine a company that fires its software engineers, replaces them with AI-generated code, and then sits back, expecting everything to just work. This is like firing your entire fire department because you installed more smoke detectors. It’s fine until the first real fire happens.
This is a bad analogy.
It would be more akin to firing your fire departments, because you installed automatic hoses in front of everyone’s homes. When a fire starts, the hoses will squirt water towards the fire, but sometimes it’ll miss, sometimes it’ll squirt backwards, sometimes it’ll squirt the neighbour’s house, and sometimes it’ll squirt the fire.
I don’t know. I look at it like firing all your construction contractors after built out all your stores in a city. You might need some construction trades to maintain your stores and your might need to relocate a store every once in a while, but you don’t need the same construction staff on had as you did with the initial build out.
In my experience, you actually need more people to maintain and extend existing software compared to the initial build out.
Usually because of scalability concerns, increasing complexity of the system and technical debt coming due.
Most extension today is enshitification. We’ve also seen major platforms scale to the size of Earth.
If you’re only going to maintain and don’t have a plan on adding features outside of duct taping AI to the software, what use is it maintaining a dev team at the size you needed it to be when creating new code?
While true, that is a weak analogy. Software rots and needs constant attention of competent people or shit stacks.
I’m not saying you can fire everyone, but the maintenance team doesn’t need to be the size of the development team if the goal is to only maintain features.
It works for a while. Keep a few seniors and everything will be fine. Then you want new features and that’s when shit hits the fan. Want me to add a few buttons? 1 month because I have to study all the random shit that was generated last week.
Software engineer here. You’re completely wrong. The amount of work it takes to maintain and extend functionality to existing software is even bigger than the original cost of building it. Get some time understanding how software teams work and you’ll understand. There’s a reason C Suites are hoping AI generated code can replace developers. They can’t hire enough of them.
Is there really a need to extend functionality like there was 10 years ago?
Yes. That’s at least half of the work I do on a daily basis. How else do companies in the same market compete with each other if they cannot add on to functionality and remain static? That’s a quick way to lose market share to your competition.
athairmor@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Sure but they’re not going to fire all of them. They’re going to fire 90% then make 10% put out the fires and patch the leaks while working twice as many hours for less pay.
The company will gradually get worse and worse until bankrupt or sold and the c-suite bails with their golden parachutes.