I like AI tools. I'm bullish on AI tools. I'm productive with AI tools.
But...
At my job the prevailing sentiment is everything should be easy and fast with AI now so why bother doing anything that can't be done with AI.
Talking with customers can't be done with AI so we'll just ask Claude what our customers think.
Collaborating on a new product design together can't be done with AI so we'll just ask Claude to design it.
Strategy is hard so we'll just chat with Claude about what we should do and accept the output.
And so people generate a bland ticket with Claude and I'm asked to implement completely "souless" feature that is generic and boring and not important to anybody.
Oh and it should only take a few days because code is free now.
We ship it, nobody cares about it because the only thing that's put in any effort is an LLM, and move onto the next thing.
Before LLMs features had humans attached to them and working together to get them out the door meant something. Plus, a lot more effort went into to making sure it was the right feature and a good product because all the people involved wanted their name to be associated with success.
With LLMs nobody cares if the LLM was wrong, its the LLM that was wrong not Jacob or Jamie.
It's like we are producing empty shells of technology. The code is there and the feature is there, but nobody cares. Even the customers don't care because we ship a thing nobody wants and we tell people about it with bland generated marketing and announcement documentation.
And yeah. I'm super productive and shipping more and more and more and more features but I feel like I've done is ship skeletons of web apps when before I used to ship living breathing applications.
But we aren't cooking with gas. We are cooking with a more controlled burner than ever that can download a clean code claude skill and be committing better code than you or I could write.
What would normally be considered overengineered gold plating is "free" now.
I have a physical goods side hustle already and I'm brainstorming ideas about a trade I can do that will benefit from my programming experience.
I'm thinking HVAC or painting lines in parking lots. HVAC because I can program smart systems and parking lot lines because I can use google maps and algos to propose more efficient parking lot designs to existing business owners.
There is that paradox when if something becomes cheaper there is more demand so we'll see what happens.
Finally, I'm a mediocre dev that can only handle 2-3 agents at a time so I probably won't be good enough.
This is a really bad take (and bad faith) because all the failed tech initiatives you mentioned barely had any adoption whereas LLM based AI tools are used by a billion people a week.
But...
At my job the prevailing sentiment is everything should be easy and fast with AI now so why bother doing anything that can't be done with AI.
Talking with customers can't be done with AI so we'll just ask Claude what our customers think.
Collaborating on a new product design together can't be done with AI so we'll just ask Claude to design it.
Strategy is hard so we'll just chat with Claude about what we should do and accept the output.
And so people generate a bland ticket with Claude and I'm asked to implement completely "souless" feature that is generic and boring and not important to anybody.
Oh and it should only take a few days because code is free now.
We ship it, nobody cares about it because the only thing that's put in any effort is an LLM, and move onto the next thing.
Before LLMs features had humans attached to them and working together to get them out the door meant something. Plus, a lot more effort went into to making sure it was the right feature and a good product because all the people involved wanted their name to be associated with success.
With LLMs nobody cares if the LLM was wrong, its the LLM that was wrong not Jacob or Jamie.
It's like we are producing empty shells of technology. The code is there and the feature is there, but nobody cares. Even the customers don't care because we ship a thing nobody wants and we tell people about it with bland generated marketing and announcement documentation.
And yeah. I'm super productive and shipping more and more and more and more features but I feel like I've done is ship skeletons of web apps when before I used to ship living breathing applications.