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Again I don't get what people on HN are doing? Our client wants something: I mumble in my phone what they want, with some spec docs we had / made by mumbling in our phones: a working system comes out, we test it with our client, we fix. We sign a SLA, get paid 100k, a few weeks have passed. I mean, we should not measure everything in money, but for lack of a better measure for productivity, I cannot see how anyone finds it counterproductive. This was strictly impossible for our small team before recent AI and hiring more people didn't work for the pricing. Our profits jumped, revenue jumped, client count jumped. What are people here doing exactly that they are not riding the gravy train and even reporting all these negative AI experiences?

We do spend all our time either code reviewing or talking with clients but the latter was already the case and the former was just better spaced out over time as this would before take many months.

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If it works for you, great! Just keep going. I only have the nagging question that if it’s so easy, why would the clients not do it by themselves? Certainly they understand their problems better than you and they can adapt to rising issues faster if their in-house team does it themselves. And certainly what kind of AI you can access, they can too and perhaps even more. So what will remain your value propositions?

I’m a critical user, not a categorical denier. But there are certain categories where I see the current AI face a wall: fitting new ideas, or existing code into an existing architecture particularly. Or work on the backend when constraints are not strictly enforced (for various historical reasons). Schematic understanding is still an issue.

Sometimes additional chunkings and detailed planning/instructions suffice. But other time, humans are still the best vehicles to code.

> I only have the nagging question that if it’s so easy, why would the clients not do it by themselves?

Plenty of reasons, including:

1. They don't (yet) know how to use AI to accomplish what they need.

2. The ROI is still meaningfully positive and they don't want to have to do it themselves.

3. Having a third-party do the work provides protection for decision-makers. If the project fails, the third-party takes the blame and "nobody gets fired for buying IBM".

4. The vendor does bring valuable insight to the table and pairs it with the use of AI to deliver a result that wouldn't have been possible in-house.

This doesn't mean that everyone will be able to get work and maintain their rates in AI world but some people will.

I mean they've boasted[1] about their generated code being so good that they add basically zero value and that they're riding out the rentseeking for as long as possible.

Meanwhile they've apparently played with LLM porting of Postgres (or Postgres features?) and "would not put it in production"[2], so we can also guess the kind and scope of features being discussed here.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49594498

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48855951

The second was just for fun; it is fun. This is very far from the code we roll out at customers though. We build LoB apps which are basically crud apps (they are not but most here would call it that).

We can have fun and make money right? Possibly at the same time but not in that case.

> The second was just for fun; it is fun. This is very far from the code we roll out at customers though.

Which is fine, great even (I do the same thing!), but in trying different things outside your day job, it seems like you do understand why people working on different things than you might be "reporting all these negative AI experiences"?

They're not "adding no value", the SLA is the value. I have a business problem, and I pay you to solve it and support your solution for me, is a completely different proposition than standing up your own solution as a non-technical org and maintaining it.

> They're not "adding no value", the SLA is the value

The code their Astra+Fable setup, automatically generated from requests customers leave in voicemails, is apparently so good they never correct it. If the stories being woven are true, the SLA is literally just a middleman's 100k cut.

At the very least there might be some particulars here that aren't universally applicable.

>"the SLA is literally just a middleman's 100k cut"

Indeed, welcome to enterprise software.

It's a pretty bad sign when you need to resort to this kind of comment stalking to try to find ammunition for a general argument. This user could be a complete con man, and it still wouldn't invalidate the core thesis of LLMs providing business value.

> you need to resort to this kind of comment stalking to try to find ammunition for a general argument

It's not a general argument, they made specific claims, but vague posted (and implying everyone else must be crazy) to the point that the conversation is derailed by a bunch of people trying to figure out what they meant.

> it still wouldn't invalidate the core thesis of LLMs providing business value.

lol, no, "providing business value" is not what was claimed:

>> What are people here doing exactly that they are not riding the gravy train and even reporting all these negative AI experiences?

Hard disagree. It adds context to what they said.

I recently tried to encourage my smart, technical, but not-programmer friend to build an app using LLMs and he was just like, "I still have no idea where to even start."

People talk a lot about how "real programmers" used to have to clean up or actually deploy everyone's half-baked MS Access app, and that sort of thing will probably still be the case for a while.

> to clean up or actually deploy everyone's half-baked MS Access app

So we are switching to LLMs to be fucking miserable in our jobs?

The whole point of the MS Access reference is that similar situations have been tropes since at least the 1990s. Bad code generated by someone who doesn't know how to program well -- whether that person is supposed to be a professional programmer but is incompetent, or has a different job -- is nothing new, and neither is having competent programmers clean it up. LLMs probably generate more of it, but can also fix a lot of it, or at least patch it up.

A year ago, LLMs were not useful for me as a programmer. Now they are: the models are better, they can use long contexts more effectively, and the harnesses are better at helping the models. Nowadays my job is mostly not programming, but LLMs let me organize and prepare tools in spare time rather than needing days or weeks of attention. I would not trust them on a 200k+ line project -- and Claude Opus 5 has issues even on 50k LOC projects -- but they absolutely can help given good direction and a narrow enough scope.

> The whole point of the MS Access reference is that similar situations have been tropes since at least the 1990s.

I do actually understand that.

I have done this very put the Access database on the web job myself. (FWIW I was well-paid for it and the firm I worked for earned a fortune, but this was in 1997)

Then I don't understand at all what point you were trying to make about being miserable in our jobs. Cleaning up after bad code has always been part of the job for decades; so has balancing the creation of new technical debt against resource availability.

Yes but it's cheaper?

Of course they will do it by themselves.

Because it's cheaper.

I mean it's weird that we all imagine reasons why we're still relevant when we have set fire to the thing that made us indispensable.

It's cheaper.

> I mean it's weird that we all imagine reasons why we're still relevant when we have set fire to the thing that made us indispensable.

Very few things in this world are all-or-nothing, and not every purchasing decision is based on price alone.

Do you always buy the cheapest meal? Car? When you renovate your house, do you always choose the cheapest contractor?

Tons of developers will lose their jobs, and many more will find it hard to maintain the salaries/rates the industry has been accustomed to. This is already happening. The days where an average graduate from a run-of-the-mill CompSci program or even a coding bootcamp could sleepwalk into a $150,000+/year entry-level job are largely gone. The days where you have job security simply because you're a competent developer with 10 years of experience are in the process of going away.

This does not mean that there is no subset of developers who cannot be successful in this market. There are people who are doing just fine because they know how to articulate their value and sell themselves to employers or clients.

> I only have the nagging question that if it’s so easy, why would the clients not do it by themselves?

I mean, that's exactly what's starting to happen, we have more and more clients to whom we propose a quote and their answer is "guess i'll just vibe code it" or come to use with an app that they vibe-coded and does the job, and they're content with it. So far it seems to work out just fine for them.

> I only have the nagging question that if it’s so easy, why would the clients not do it by themselves?

They can do it. What's the issue?

Clients are starting to, that’s exactly why I am not sure why AI doom deniers here think this will think it will go well for them. But it will still take awhile and we are enjoying that time. If we see new markets, we will move into them.

> nagging question that if it’s so easy, why would the clients not do it by themselves?

It's easy if you're already an expert at software engineering and know how to leverage AI. For people like that, it's a phenomenal upgrade (this is true for me and several co-workers I chat with, all of whom are chasing cool ideas on side projects). But if you're non-technical, or not use to thinking about requirements, or think that using AI is "give me the prompt", it's a pretty big moat to cross.

> If it works for you, great! Just keep going. I only have the nagging question that if it’s so easy, why would the clients not do it by themselves?

Because it's not (yet) that easy, especially if we're talking a complex and genuinely useful app. Agentic coding is fast, but it's not magic.

> I’m a critical user, not a categorical denier. But there are certain categories where I see the current AI face a wall: fitting new ideas, or existing code into an existing architecture particularly.

Exactly. Which is why Joe Average still will have little to no luck vibe coding anything serious or novel. You still (IME) need a lot of active guidance, still need to push away from dead ends and propose alternative algorithms, and it takes hundreds of prompts to go from concept to what I would consider beta. (But, this is just my own experience, and it's possible I'm doing it wrong?)

I don't think that really matters. I have already seen companies generating their own code and just QA testing it, with no software engineers in sight. Or they ask us to "review" their 10k loc PR in 2 hours.

The spirit of the parent comment is true. People feel like it's productive and even if they make something worse, they are going to use it.

Ya, AI is very good at generating number, be that code for software, images for ads, or banal prose for company blogs. AI not so good at growing corn, cooking eggs, biulding houses, running fiber, treating disease, changing brake pads, loading a truck... or any of the other millions of physical-world jobs on which the economy is biult.

If you company is all about creating things that go on the internet, sure, AI is your thing. But for most companies the internet is a communications tool rather than a product. Those companies are not seeing the claimed productivity gains.

They sure are though; they have many processes to automate as well: big corn farmers/factories also have admin, erp, crm, departments with processes etc. There are companies doing billions in revenue with departments of people just copy/pasting PDFs who do real life things like you state who have immediate gains. But they won't do it alone yet and luckily need us. They still benefit though vs the large consultant businesses or even their own IT deps though.

They do and there are certainly some mid-level management jobs at risk, but ask any farmer/electrician/millright about the claimed impact of AI and they will laugh. They have yet to see an AI capable of reliably replacing a fuse let alone doing a solid day's work.

Yes, agree with that, but that's usually not the sort of work we talk about here. But sure, robots are close there. All those admin jobs on the other hands...

Literally everyone I know in a large enough company who talks about AI talks about increasingly panicky mandates to use more Copilot coming from above, like you'll lose your job if you don't use it more. I heard exactly this story from my neighbour just three days ago. Literally a call from head office demanding they use Copilot more — to do a task Copilot can't do.

Everyone in smaller companies describes various efforts to get AI to do more that ultimately end up involving lots of corrections or nurse-maiding ChatGPT to get it to do exactly what they need, when what they need is often so formulaic they should already have a process.

Nobody I talk to describes it in terms of massive productivity gains. Everyone describes it as a puzzle they feel variously compelled to solve.

I can add a data point for you: At my job they have made "amount of AI usage" a criteria for performance reviews, advancement and promotions. Mandate from the top: Use as much AI as you can. They even have a leaderboard (accessible to managers) showing who is using the most and least AI. It feels as though nobody even cares how good or bad a job I do, as long as I do it using AI.

That sounds completely miserable and Kafkaesque.

> Our client wants something: I mumble in my phone what they want, with some spec docs we had / made by mumbling in our phones: a working system comes out, we test it with our client, we fix. We sign a SLA, get paid 100k, a few weeks have passed.

OK so, it sounds empty and miserable to me, but we can stipulate that this is how it is working out for you.

Given that stipulation: how long do you think this can possibly last, when you are in a race to the bottom with everybody else who is doing this?

Have you made plans about how you will get out of your office lease, downsize, subcontract this button-pushing to even cheaper people overseas, etc.? Are you ready to lay off everyone who works for you, downsize your house to a smaller mortgage? Because you're on a burning platform. If you can do this, so can everyone else.

I mean, I think we all are, possibly, on the same burning platform; I don't think I can fully avoid AI so I am trying to make sense of it.

But I intend to fully avoid being in a race with other phone whisperers if I can.

You're not just in a race to the bottom with everybody else who is doing this. I don't think his anecdote is particularly surprising at all. You can do the same with basically any typical CRUD app, which is already going to be some very large percentage of all business software. But this kind of also leads to the conclusion that so can the people paying you.

I think the years of software development/employment for problem solving, in and of itself, are numbered at this point. When people start to understand how relatively easy this stuff is, they're going to be in-housing everything. Not only for price but also because of increased flexibility/confidentiality/control, and even lower concept-to-live timelines.

What third party stuff continues to exist will see its comp plummet. I imagine now you can already get some really nice quality software contracted out on places like fiverr for nothing simply because the skill involved to produce quality solutions has plummeted.

I think it's a mistake to assume that quality doesn't plummet when cost does, even if the AI is capable of quality work. The quality issue will always resurface.

But yeah — I mean, I am a freelancer who burned out for reasons that are rather more influenced by the SaaS wave. That was hard to compete with. People choose between the solution that meets their needs and changing their processes to meet the ten-times-cheaper solution that doesn't, and that decision is often not at all irrational; by and large you want as many of your problems to be shared problems as possible.

I am trying to return to work so I am looking at what AI can really do for me, but the conclusion I draw is that since I cannot simply burn token money to solve people's problems, and because bugs cost me money, I need a strategy where I remain in full control of actual code, but LLMs help me do things faster. If I can't solve that, I am out.

Perhaps AI will upend the SaaS market before it fucks the freelancer market and the balance may temporarily shift. But it probably won't.

And at that point, as a fiftysomething, even with a bit of financial security, I start thinking about living a rather shorter, happier life, instead of a longer one. Because as much as I might have ideas, I don't think there is much I can switch to where I have appropriately deep skills to survive AI there, and all those alternative jobs will be oversubscribed and less likely to hire me.

I wonder if people in this industry have understood what we are doing to ourselves, to our friends.

A bit of a tangent here, but I'd look into lower cost of living areas if you have the ability to move/remote, even moreso if you'll be drawing social security or have a pension. Money just goes so much further, and with an overall much better quality of life. And there's always stuff like teaching, moreso because it's enjoyable than for the paycheck.

But in these parts of the world, making a few bucks doing whatever in the software world goes so much further. Because of that I think LLMs are bringing in something like a temporary golden age. And these parts of the world will be the last to have the lights go out on software simply because the low cost of living means there's a whole lot more slack to give before things get bad.

I am moving to somewhere cheaper, yes. Though since my passport is no longer strong (British), my choice/range of cheaper is a lot more limited.

Quality of life will not improve, because I will be lonelier (plus I have a great quality of life here in other ways, that many places cannot match) but I am mostly reconciled to that loss. I will have a fair bit more flexibility in use of space, which means I can be a bit more of a portfolio-earner; I do have some fringe skills that could make some money still, and I can have a little workshop or studio.

> But in these parts of the world, making a few bucks doing whatever in the software world goes so much further.

I am (undiagnosed but very obviously) ADHD and I don't tend to find it easy to make a sustainable income off "a few bucks" here and there; the effort expenditure in managing it always ends up subsidising the work. It's part of why I am burned out. I need thicker strands of work and those are fewer and further between.

I have little certainty when things will get bad, but I do think it likely it happens in the next five or six years, and I do know that when things do get bad they favour the young. Which I am not. It is clear to me that I am never getting an ordinary dayjob in the tech industry again.

I don't mean to sound particularly gloomy but I think mine is the generation whose lifespans will dramatically shorten. I think a lot of single middle aged people (men mostly) in the tech industry will choose the time and manner of their departure. Because we are deliberately creating both misery and job insecurity.

I don't think you're being gloomy so much as realistic. It's clear a lot of people either don't realize what's already happened, or are in some sort of denial about it. What you're saying is entirely true and was almost certainly also true during past eras of revolutionary leaps in technology. Fortunately in current times we have far more options than we did in the past, but realizing those options takes a bit of adventurism.

Since you already have that in you, I think you'll be surprised what you'll find - entire communities of interesting English speaking tech-oriented folks, many with more than a few grey hairs, would be just the start. And don't forget the teaching aspect. If you have a degree, smarts, some basic charisma, and can roll with a bit of chaos - you'll find plentiful opportunities to teach any topic imaginable. It's not just English, like many think. It's really quite fun!

I have taught/lectured the odd thing in my past and I can do it; I come from a family of teachers and it is in the blood.

I do not have the psychological constitution to teach kids so I am not going to do that.

But teaching/training adults is an industry that AI will destroy because the baseline income — the stuff nobody else wanted to do but you could earn from — will be eliminated, increasingly by policy directives from above. I have some ideas in that regard but it is difficult to see how I won't end up competing with LLMs when even open weights models are pretty good at coming up with tech tutorials etc.

Broadly I think there is undue optimism about what will be left to move to when the programming jobs dry up.

(Thank you for the discussion, though! I may sound quite negative but actually I am doing better than I have been for years, and it is always useful to provoke one's own thoughts)

Well there's a world of difference between teaching a 7 year old and teaching a 17 year old. I would say in both regards a more engaging style may be necessary than what you're possibly alluding to, so there is that. Depending on your background, teaching in a university is also completely viable. There's also the private lessons possibility. There's many options and I definitely wouldn't just write it off.

I don't think AI will touch education. A good case study there is Khanmigo which was to be Khan Academy's revolutionary AI tutor. There's been a million articles written about the topic. It completely failed, in spite of receiving massive sponsorship and imposition in various educational settings. And I'm kind of surprised that Khan himself didn't understand or predict this. As you probably know, great intrinsically motivated students don't really need teachers. You could give them a book or a sort of LLM tutor, and they'd excel completely independently. But then there are the other 95% of students you have to consider.

And those other 95% tend to fall into camps of either being a bit less gifted in the cognitive domain, or lacking motivation. Depending on exactly where they stand on the balance of two, a good teacher can have a huge impact, whereas 'go learn with the LLM for a few hours' would have them tune out instantly. It's because teaching isn't just about literally teaching, but about forming a rapport and trying to gradually push those 95% into more of the habits and patterns of the 5%, but without them realizing they're being pushed in that direction. An LLM there is almost entirely nonsensical.

Try getting something good out of fiverr or upwork. Even now it’s terrible (we get to clean up some the experiments). I agree maybe with the in house after enough years but that will also have a big effect on employees of those companies; a future (5+ years for sure as enterprises don’t move so fast) AI would need few resources to create and optimize and improve. I am not resisting my company won’t exist soon-ish; I am resisting that people see a bright future for devs here on HN. I don’t know where that comes from outside handwaiving ‘loom’ and ‘train’.

I know fiverr will start delivering nice software in 5 years and that’s what I worry about. By that time fiverr is probably just a chatbox though without humans, as what is the point?

Software is easy until it isn’t - the moment you need serious infra you’re in deep trouble and looking for an experienced partner or a saas solution anyway.

The days of b2b saas subscriptions doing one simple thing well for 3 or so users are however numbered.

The point is that button pushers currently simply don’t seem to be able to do this work, so it’s a little more than pushing some buttons. But no, I don’t think it will last very long, but few years more I guess looking at the competition and lack thereof.

What you describe does not sound all that much more than button pushing, TBH.

And your competition is not non-skilled people using AI to take your jobs. It is _cheaper people_ using AI to take your jobs. All the things that outsourcing teams used to struggle to match are much less of a struggle to match when you are actively depersonalising your own effort by handing it to Claude.

Don't underestimate the power of motivated reasoning. Certain people don't like AI coding for various ideological reasons, and so they will, not coincidentally, consistently fail to find it productive or helpful.

As long as we don't underestimate the power of motivated reasoning for other certain people as well, who like AI coding for various ideological or financial reasons.

That's why I don't believe most AI hate I read on HN and I don't believe much AI hype I read on X.

I mean sure if long term maintenance and code quality don’t matter then I wholeheartedly agree with you.

It’s spectacular for small projects, limited-scope apps (eg marketing campaigns etc) and for market-testable prototypes.

But if you don’t review and edit the code, things become unmaintainable soup very fast, with subtle logic bugs all over the place. And if you do review and edit the code, when working in large nontrivial codebases, then in my experience AI doesn’t actually go faster even if it feels like that at the start of each task.

Obviously this only holds if you have any sort of code quality standard to begin with (and I agree that with small / short-lived products you don’t need one)

in that case aren't you a completely useless middleman now?

The technical term is ‘meat proxy’

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