GitHub CEO delivers stark message to developers: Embrace AI or get out.
Submitted 10 hours ago by mesamunefire@piefed.social to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.businessinsider.com/github-ceo-developers-embrace-ai-or-get-out-2025-8
Comments
brown567@sh.itjust.works 1 hour ago
Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 10 hours ago
CEOs, embrace torches and pitchforks.
Copilot is shit.
NotSteve_@piefed.ca 54 minutes ago
Copilot is shit
Yes and no. I find its terrible at solving more complex problems but its great at writing out tests for a function/view that covers every flow. My team went from having like 40% (shit) coverage to every PR having every case tested (inb4 they're not good tests, they are good)
With that being said, fuck CEOs and fuck AI.
Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org 9 hours ago
I'm looking out in the street. I see a lack of torches, pitchforks, or any pressure on corporate interests.
PleaseLetMeOut@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 hours ago
Don’t worry, they’re gonna eat themselves doing shit like this. It’s not a matter of if, but when.
“AI” has it’s uses (medicine, engineering, etc.), but 99.99% of the snake oil they’re selling are just gimmicky cash grabs. Classic cases of Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
Let them burn their money, I say. Fuck it. Just sit back and enjoy the fire.
nocturne@slrpnk.net 9 hours ago
Be the change you want to see.
the_q@lemmy.zip 9 hours ago
You can’t point this out! People will flip the responsibility to you!
takeda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 hours ago
Copilot is shit.
Exactly, my company provides license for copilot and I use it, and while it has some highlights most of the time it actually is more a nuisance than help.
It especially annoys me because it hijacks autocomplete based on types with is own that frequently has subtle bugs, so now if I have it enabled I need to be on guard all the time. With the traditional autocomplete I could just trust it to be correct.
Buckshot@programming.dev 6 hours ago
This is my experience. It saves a bit of typing sometimes but that’s probably cancelled out by the time spent correcting it, rewriting nonsense it produced, and reviewing my corworkers PRs that didn’t notice the nonsense.
Pieisawesome@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 hours ago
You can turn off the copilot autocomplete in the ide and JUST use agent/edit/ask mode
mx_smith@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
You have to put it in Ask mode so it doesn’t touch your code also ChatGPT models are free so if you want to ring up an AI bill use the Claude and Sonnet models.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 hours ago
And now we understand why MSFT buying github a some years back was a really big deal actually, and not just some kind of mostly neutral, generic expansionary business move.
Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 6 hours ago
Get out or what? GitHub?
I don’t understand this insistence that all developers must use AI.
If AI made a developer better, why insist, wouldn’t the vibe coders outcompete all others?
Wouldn’t they need non AI coders to train things?
Or is it because this snake oil pitch only works when everyone does it so no one notices it’s detrimental effects?
WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 6 hours ago
Studies show AI coding tools make the task slower. It only makes people feel they’re faster, but reality is different. So it’s the snake oil pitch. Nobody can know it doesn’t really work and they keep throwing money at it in an increasingly more desperate “fake it till you make it”. Because, if this thing implodes, it’ll take a large part of the market and economy with it to do a rerun of the 2008 financial crisis.
peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 5 hours ago
It’s because we’re expensive. That’s the long and short of it.
10 developers in Silicon Valley can run you $1-$2m in salary alone (it’s more expensive with benefits added).
The industry constantly conspires to keep the salary of software engineers down. It does it cyclically too. In 2008 I was told I would have no problem getting a 6 figure job when I graduated by 2013. Of course the economy had other ideas. Same thing with the dot Com bubble.
I currently make double what I did 10 years ago. It doesn’t actually matter much as inflation and a divorce has had my costs balloon just as much, but it’s still loads more than any other job out there.
They’ll get what they want, one way or another. Then when none of their shit works they inevitably come back begging us and we request better pay and benefits again, because we know they do this. They don’t learn, much like those reliant on AI.
Pieisawesome@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 hours ago
10 engineers in the Bay Area would easily be 2-3 million without additional benefits or support personnel
zephiriz@lemmy.ml 3 hours ago
It’s funny how so many people make big businesses and think they are the GOAT when in reality the true GOAT is Linus Torvalds.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 1 hour ago
The Github CEO didn’t even “make” the big business. He was appointed by Microsoft after they purchased it and their first pick for CEO of Github resigned after 2 years.
lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 hours ago
Agreed. And he is very humble about it in interviews.
muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 5 hours ago
GitHub is being pushy? Fucking GitHub?
Should we tell him git doesn’t actually need GitHub? That it existed just fine before it and will continue to exist after it?
Ima tell him…
mesamunefire@piefed.social 5 hours ago
At some previous jobs, the newer devs would sometimes confuse the two. Its a real thing.
Me I lived through svn, mercerial, and file vault. So glad we ended up with git as the protocol.
Hell you can set up a git + file server and just use it without any Hub (Hob/lab/berg) if your bare metal enough. It works.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
The Linux kernel still works off emailing patches. If such a large project doesn’t need a central repo, you don’t either.
I use self-hosted Forgejo because it’s convenient, that’s it
aesthelete@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
You can literally run a single command to setup a remote git repository on a server that has ssh.
very_well_lost@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Sadly a lot of us are stuck with GitHub. Enterprise loves it because it has “Metrics”, and most companies aren’t about to jump ship over something like AI — especially when so many of them are already doubling down on AI in other areas.
rumba@lemmy.zip 2 hours ago
He probably spent millions of his owe money on AI stocks.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 1 hour ago
Considering he’s a Microsoft employee and Microsoft is leaning hard into the AI craze? His stock options are all dependent on this lol
db2@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
This makes me want it to fail harder.
hark@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Funny thing to say after using their code to train the shitty-ass AI. Developers don’t need AI, but AI certainly needs developers.
Sanctus@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Bro you are literally not necessary, not even the best at what you do. See everyone on codeberg.
mesamunefire@piefed.social 10 hours ago
Codeberg is so nice.
ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
But who else is going to micromanage and bully the employees and strut around self-importantly doing jack shit? /s
resipsaloquitur@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
What employees?
SeeFerns@programming.dev 6 hours ago
Codeberg rules
BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Already done. I moved everything to Codeberg a year or two ago. I strongly recommend it to anyone looking for safe, non-corporate, community-oriented version control. It’s also German and non-profit.
cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 7 hours ago
TotalCourage007@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Some CEO: gasp GUYS I found a new blacklisted word! Quick add non-profit to the Ai-Moderation. How dare they not pay me infinitely!
Octavio@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
I like Codeberg better anyways.
imposedsensation@lemmynsfw.com 1 hour ago
Sounds like a desperate tactic to show value to investors who are skeptical of all the insane level of cap ex… not to mention all the customers who don’t want to pay for this garbage
cantstopthesignal@sh.itjust.works 1 minute ago
Doors that go like this | | not like this / \
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 29 minutes ago
Part of the joke is who even constitutes “value investors”. As the MAG7 bloat the S&P, it’s increasingly just a handful of companies passing the same dollar back and forth as fast as possible, with the expectation that they’ll get bailed out by the Feds when the game is up.
Sad thing is, they’re probably right. Trump’s trying to get the Fed to loosen rates on the heels of an inflationary wave in order to guarantee enough exit liquidity before the market crashes.
Then we’ll get another brutal privatization wave, with conservatives preaching budget hawkery in order to justify abolishing Medicare, SS, national parks, public education, anything that can be liquidated for a quick buck.
Juice@midwest.social 2 hours ago
You can always count on the ceos of smaller companies that are owned by larger mega corporations to tell it to ya straight with no bias
kadup@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
I really don’t understand CEO’s obsession with AI… is it because when they give LLMs a go they feel smart and finally capable of doing the things others could do but they were too dumb to engage with, like reasonably good writing or drawing pictures?
alsimoneau@lemmy.ca 1 hour ago
It’s the ultimate yes man.
merc@sh.itjust.works 6 hours ago
Can this guy really be considered a CEO if GitHub is a fully owned subsidiary of Microsoft?
You know Microsoft, the company that is heavily invested in OpenAI and is spending hundreds of billions to try to make AI happen?
chocrates@piefed.world 6 hours ago
Yes. Microsoft owns them and tells them what their goals are, but the CEO has sole flexibility.
phutatorius@lemmy.zip 5 hours ago
“Sole flexibility” to do as he’s told or get sacked.
merc@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
I don’t know what “sole flexibility” is, but if Microsoft owns them and tells them what their goals are, he must not have much authority.
otacon239@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
While I don’t wish for this future, I do look forward to being one of the few that truly understands the ‘old way’ of computing like many here on Lemmy. All that knowledge I spent my youth acquiring may very well become insanely valuable in the next few decades because so many people will treat it as irrelevant.
I’ll feel a lot like this:
thatradomguy@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
I can already tell the guy is a huge fan of cheeto prez.
art@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Risky talking down to developers. Does the CEO not know that Git is like REALLY easy to move?!
Auth@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
people are so apathetic these days that ceo’s feel comfortable publically saying this shit. They know there will be no major user loss.
falcunculus@jlai.lu 3 hours ago
This is […] a strange marketing strategy by AI companies. Instead of selling products based on helpful features and letting users decide, executives often deploy scare tactics that essentially warn people they will become obsolete if they don’t get on the AI bandwagon.
Very insightful for me to read this. If AI in its present state was as useful as it is advertised, it wouldn’t need such apocalyptic language.
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 7 minutes ago
It’s almost exactly the same sales strategy as crypto and nft.
NoodlePoint@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Embrace? With so many devs constantly being laid off, how about NO?
xiwi@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 hours ago
GitHub is the worst git platform out there, I want version control not fucking Facebook for programming
Anyway,another point for "I’m just gonna make some money in this field nd fuck right off doing something actually useful "
borokov@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Moved from github to gitlab when it was acquired by Microsoft. Moved from gitlab to codeberg last month because I don’t need a behemoth with dozens of services I never use to store my 3 shitty code files.
RobotZap10000@feddit.nl 9 hours ago
Broke: selfhost Forgejo (what Codeberg runs on, for those who don’t know) because nobody looks at my code anyway
Woke: access my Git repo directly through SSH because I don’t need any other feature anyway
TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
I am embracing AI. For better or worse, it’s here to stay. The issue with the current AI models is that they are over-hyped. It would just lead to a bubble burst like had happened with dotcom. The full capability of AI will probably improve in ten or fifteen years.
jj4211@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
I’ll agree that it’s here to stay, but not so sure it’s going to obviously improve. I have had access to various LLMs and while they are useful, they are very obviously limited and have kind of been at that level for a while now. Feel like they’ve largely gotten as “capable” as the strategy is going to get, and now the game is on to make some things friendlier for LLM consumption to get that capability more usefully available.
At least in the context of coding.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
Same, but I still don’t find it particularly useful. It does help in the research phase and maybe bootstrapping, but not as much for regular development.
I use it where it makes sense, but it’s certainly over-hyped.
stoly@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Is it, though? AI has been around to stay for 20 years. The difference really is that a bunch of tech bros are worshiping it while trade rags talk it up.
TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
The previous iterations of LLMs is not even that close enough to be called AI unlike the current ones we have right now. In many years to come, the AI will improve.
IcedRaktajino@startrek.website 10 hours ago
If those are my two options…start looking for my projects on Codeberg I guess.
pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 9 hours ago
Would AI be better CEO’s? They would cost a lot less and probably make better decisions. Just saying.
floofloof@lemmy.ca 9 hours ago
A CEO’s main job is to spout bullshit, which is also AI’s particular talent.
WindyRebel@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
So, yes?
cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 5 hours ago
an ai is also often wrong but confidently says they're not wrong so that sounds perfect for ceos too
CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 hours ago
A CEOs main job is to be the fall guy when the company goes fubar.
sasquash@sopuli.xyz 7 hours ago
I am convinced AI could replace CEO’s very easily. Making decisions based on trends and lots of data is an easy use case. And if it’s the wrong decision who cares? CEO’s also don’t take and responsibility at all. AI is also a very good lair too.
leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 hours ago
It already has.
They’ve drunk their own coolaid. They actually believe their own bullshit. They’ve offloaded what little thinking they used to do onto LLMs. They have them manage their schedules, summarise their emails, write their emails and speeches, and make every single decision for them.
They’re brain-dead computer operated zombies.
The problem is that they keep getting paid absurd amounts of money for being completely useless (and that they’ve always been so useless that no one can tell the difference).
I can’t help but picture the business card scene from American Psycho, but they’re comparing the “AI” assistants they use instead of their cards.
jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 7 hours ago
I just wrote elsewhere in this thread but to repeat myself: I think the real job of a CEO is to schmooze with other CEOs and rich idiots. They get funding. Everything else is pretty much a liability, and would be better handled by someone with relevant expertise.
pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 7 hours ago
So the board members could replace the CEOs with AI if they desired. I guess their saving grace is it would be hard to extort, blackmail and coerce AI.
JTskulk@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
I got out when Microsoft bought it, glad I did. I don’t want you training your shitty AI on my shitty code.
TIL Github has a CEO.
chunes@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
I already got out in March when github decided to close my account because I didn’t want to involve my phone with my github account.
Codeberg has been a much more pleasant experience.
panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 8 hours ago
Guy who runs wanting AI service (Copilot, currently being eaten by Claude Code and Qwen Coder) says use his AI service or you’ll be out of a job.
peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 6 hours ago
I hate to say it, but this is going to be so much worse than cloud everything when it all comes crashing down.
zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
This part really stuck out for me:
If hype doesn’t work, try threats!
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 34 minutes ago
“The Sky Is Falling! Buy My Magic Umbrella!” is a classic hypeman’s trick.
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Which is how you know they have a good product that they have full faith in.
when they have to blackmail, threaten, coerce, and force people to accept their product.