alt Hacker NewsBottlenecks. Yes. Company structures these days are not compatible with efficient use of these new AI models.
Software engineers work on Jira tickets, created by product managers and several layers of middle managers.
But the power of recent models is not in working on cogs, their true power is in working on the entire mechanism.
When talking about a piece of software that a company produces, I'll use the analogy of a puzzle.
A human hierarchy (read: company) works on designing the big puzzle at the top and delegating the individual pieces to human engineers. This process goes back and forth between levels in the hierarchy until the whole puzzle slowly emerges. Until recently, AI could only help on improving the pieces of the puzzle.
Latest models got really good at working on the entire puzzle - big picture and pieces.
This makes human hierarchy obsolete and a bottleneck.
The future seems to be one operator working on the entire puzzle, minus the hierarchy of people.
Of course, it's not just about the software, but streams of information - customer support, bug tickets, testing, changing customer requirements.. but all of these can be handled by AI even today. And it will only get better.
This means different things depending on which angle you look at it - yes, it will mean companies will become obsolete, but also that each employee can become a company.
Replies
Yeah I’m very much seeing this right now.
I’m a pretty big generalist professionally. I’ve done software engineering in a broad category of fields (Game engines, SaaS, OSS, distributed systems, highly polished UX and consumer products), while also having the experience of growing and managing Product and Design teams. I’ve worn a lot of hats over the years.
My most recent role I’m working on a net new product for the company and have basically been given fully agency over this product: from technical, budget, team, process, marketing, branding and positioning.
Give someone experienced like me capital, AI and freedom and you absolutely can build high quality software and a pretty blinding pace.
I’m starting to get the feeling than many folks struggling with adopting or embracing AI well for their job has more to do with their job/company than AI
This gives me a lot of hope for a decentralized future for all kinds of service industries. Why would you go to a big-name accounting firm where the small number of humans can only give you a sliver of attention, when you can go to a one-man shop and get much more of the one human’s attention? Especially if you know that the “work” will be done by the same tools? So many of the barriers to entry in various services - law, accounting, financial advising, etc. - is that you need a team to run even the smallest operation that can generate enough revenue to put food on your table. Perhaps that won’t be the case for long - and the folks that used to be that “team” can branch out and be the captains of their own ships, too.