alt Hacker NewsIf you're a regular engineer like me, there's no real upside to using AI in a company setting. They're boiling us. Of course, the HN elite (investors, execs, celebrities, and top-tier engineers) will say otherwise because "how can you be against innovation man?"
AI/LLMs aren't innovation the way TCP/IP, linux, or postgres were. To be clear: claude/codex/gemini/grok/whatever exist for profit, to squeeze the last drop of productivity out of you until there's nothing left, and then you're disposable (laid off).
If you like AI, use open source models, use them in your side projects.
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Seems like the upside is that it makes the job way easier? What am I missing?
They're not innovations like TCP/IP, Linux or Postgres, they're innovations like compilers, syntax highlighting, and IDEs.
There’s an engineering story of being abused by capitalists, but from an Executive perspective the whole thing strikes me as insane except for ‘next quarters bonus’.
Anyone remember what SCO did to the industry as it went under?
The part I still don’t get is where Enterprises are dumping internal ‘secrets’ (code, processes, customer needs, internal politics, leadership dreams), into the hands of startups and untrustworthy conglomerates. MS used to be famous for NDA and deal abuse.
I don’t believe for a second the LLM giants would be shy about training on corporate materials and lying about it. And if they start going under? This gold rush might have a long, ugly, tail.
This is a really bad take, many on hackernews have a very skewed idea of what a CEO thinks about its employees it seems, or why firings happen in the first place.
Quite honestly the firings that are happening are the ones who are not adopting the technologies, if you're doing this you're quite literally just putting yourself in scope.
Just read coinbase today. They are culling those who are not adopting the future because they get in the way of progress. They don't help, they don't push things forward and they hold back those who do.
1) The game is not ending, it's changing. AI can sling a lot of code but we still need engineers that actually understand what the hell is going on. That's always been the bottleneck. It could eliminate junior positions, but seniors are fine for now.
2) It's been a hard lesson for me to learn because I'm naturally a contrarian, but you are hired to do what management wants you to do. If you resist, your best bet is to hope they don't notice or care, but it's not going to change much.