[uludag]

> I am having more fun programming than I ever have, because so many more of the programs I wish I could find the time to write actually exist. I wish I could share this joy with the people who are fearful about the changes agents are bringing.

It might be just me but this reads as very tone deaf. From my perspective, CEOs are seething at the mouth to make as many developers redundant as possible, not being shy about this desire. (I don't see this at all as inevitable, but tech leaders have made their position clear)

Like, imagine the smugness of some 18th century "CEO" telling an artisan, despite the fact that he'l be resigned to working in horrific conditions at a factory, to not worry and think of all the mass produced consumer goods he may enjoy one day.

It's not at all a stretch of the imagination that current tech workers may be in a very precarious situation. All the slopware in the world wouldn't console them.

[overgard]

I bought Steve Yegge's "Vibe Coding" book. I think I'm about 1/4th of the way through it or so. One thing that surprised me is there's this naivete on display that workers are going to be the ones to reap the benefits of this. Like, Steve was using an example of being able to direct the agent while doing leisure activities (never mind that Steve is more of an executive/thought leader in this company, and, prior to LLMs, seemed to be out of the business of writing code). That's a nice snapshot of a reality that isn't going to persist..

While the idea of programmers working two hours a day and spending the rest of it with their family seems sunny, that's absolutely not how business is going to treat it.

Thought experiment... CEO has a team of 8 engineers. They do some experiments with AI, and they discover that their engineers are 2x more effective on average . What does the CEO do?

a) Change the workweek to 4 hours a day so that all the engineers have better work/life balance since the same amount of work is being done.

b) Fire half the engineers, make the 4 remaining guys pick up the slack, rinse and repeat until there's one guy left?

Like, come on. There's pushback on this stuff not because the technology is bad, (although it's overhyped), but because the no sane person trusts our current economic system to provide anything resembling humane treatment of workers. The super rich are perfectly fine seeing half the population become unemployed, as far as I can tell, as long as their stock numbers go up.

[georgemcbay]

Haven't read that book, but agree that if anyone thinks the workers are likely to capture the value of this productivity shift, they haven't been paying attention to reality.

Though at the same time I also think a lot of the CEO-types (at least in the pure software world) who believe they are going to capture the value of this productivity shift are also in for a rude awakening because if AI doesn't stall out, its only a matter of time from when their engineers are replaceable to when their company doesn't need to exist at all anymore.

[ares623]

in addition to B, the best part is the 4 fired engineers can go around and say "we'll do the same work as those 4 for 10% less" and so on.

"AI won't replace you. The guy who's about to get fired but has more to lose is going to replace you."

[yojat661]

You missed option c. C) keep all 8 engineers so the team can pump out features faster, all still working 8 hour days. The ceo will probably be forced to do it to keep up with their competition.