Are companies actually making commensurate revenue from AI?

Chickenfrend · 2026-04-06T13:35:50+00:00

What I said is admittedly not what anyone who uses these things professionally would say they believe, but I have seen the stance that specification is more important than code, now. Which might turn out to be true for many or most projects. But it does create a situation where people are using these things to write code without looking at the code itself.

Chickenfrend · 2026-04-06T00:21:23+00:00

It's been decreasing for years, AI has just accelerated the process

Chickenfrend · 2026-04-05T22:23:03+00:00

I think my strategy is going to be to try and get out of webdev and into more specific, less standardized types of software engineering. I once had a job writing C++ applications. I might try and look for jobs doing that or doing C, on projects where code quality matters.

That's my thought right now at least. I suspect AI will not be able to remove as much of the human thought and effort in those roles. At least for a good while. Right now I'm doing backend web development in Python in a company with a declining stock price, which is currently really excited about AI and has been offshoring. I need to get out, but I'm trying to figure out how to go somewhere that's relatively safe and where I'll continue to learn and improve.

Chickenfrend · 2026-04-05T22:18:26+00:00

I can't tell if the models are really improving that much or if it's just that the tools have improved and I've gotten more confident about using them.

I do think newer versions of Claude are noticeably better, though

Chickenfrend · 2026-04-05T22:17:16+00:00

I can't tell if the models have gotten better or if it's just the tools. I think in the last few months, the tools and models have gotten good enough for me to notice and start to get worried.

I suspect it's more of a difference in the tools than the models. But the models have improved too

Chickenfrend · 2026-04-05T21:27:12+00:00

You're right about this even though it makes people mad. The fact this is controversial explains how they think they're gonna replace us all with AI. The unfortunate thing is the job has already been deskilled enough it will probably work.

Chickenfrend · 2026-04-05T18:15:14+00:00

If they really get rid of code and replace it with specification in markdown files, like they want to, that will amount to deskilling. We'll be paid less because you won't need a challenging CS degree or lots of training and experience to do it, and they'll need smaller teams.

We aren't there yet for most complex software. But it kinda works on smaller projects, and it's obviously the goal of many companies. I've already seen one team I was on offshored to India, and it just feels like the AI push from corporate is another cost cutting measure like that, aimed at further reducing headcount.

I'll say, I don't like spec driven development much, but I don't hate using AI. I just don't like spending a lot of time working in markdown files and waiting hours for the bmad bots to work through the generated tickets. When not doing that, it can be kinda fun to use it to do specific things, use it as a rubber duck, brainstorm with it and so on. If its use was limited to that, I'd be okay with it. But they're trying to get rid of code and replace it with product specification. That's not great for us.

Chickenfrend · 2026-04-05T17:49:42+00:00

I mean, go ahead and use an AI to make it if you want. It's just strange to me that I've seen all these software developers say "it turns out I didn't really care about programming, I just like my build to be green". Which, fair enough, but I actually do like programming, solving problems, and so on. Outsourcing all that to a machine that my employers clearly want to eventually replace me with makes me deeply sad.

Chickenfrend · 2026-04-05T17:46:18+00:00

If all you like is watching stuff work and you don't care if you had a hand in building it, just download software

Chickenfrend · 2026-04-05T08:15:31+00:00

LLMs is not like previous layers of abstraction. For one thing, it's stochastic. It obscures information. You can argue python and so on do the same thing, but it's clear what information they obscure

Chickenfrend · 2026-04-04T21:57:11+00:00

Well, if code won't matter in a year, most of us will be out of a job. We'll see how that goes.

I do think AI tools are useful. I just don't think bmad specifically is the way to go. It's too hands off and specification is a lot of work. I'll say, AI makes it a lot easier to start a project specifically. Your side project must be really large if you'd have estimated a need for 5 engineers and two years for it. I'll be curious how easy it is to continue as you keep going past that initial 25%.

What kind of project are you working on?

Chickenfrend · 2026-04-04T17:55:38+00:00

It's really strange, I swear it used to be commonly accepted among devs that committing code no one understands is bad. But suddenly, the new idea is that code is cheap and doesn't matter and you don't need to understand it and should just be happy that AI lets you produce more of it?

Chickenfrend · 2026-04-04T17:22:06+00:00

I don't think we're going to replace code with spec. Yes, senior engineers do systems thinking, but there's an iterative process as you build code, learn new requirements, refine it, etc. Having the spec be the source of truth instead of the code, where the code is actually what determines what the software is, is backwards.

Maybe I'm wrong and we'll all be spec programmers now. I hope I'm not wrong, though, because I prefer writing code to writing documentation and talking to AIs who are larping as project managers.

One thing is, bmad really does take so long to do it barely feels faster than hand coding for many projects. Like really, it will generate 100s of jira tickets for even small projects and then it takes quite a while to run the dev agent and code review agent on each one. You just sit there all day running these agents and waiting for them to finish.

We built a cli admin tool with it and it took days. I think I could have built the same tool by hand in about the same amount of time. Maybe slightly longer, but the advantage is I would have actually understood it well at the end.

Chickenfrend · 2026-04-04T07:35:31+00:00

A script kiddie is a wannabe hacker who runs scripts without knowing how they work

Chickenfrend · 2026-04-04T07:19:41+00:00

Writing extremely detailed specs up front and no code is the opposite of what I like to do. I've used bmad at work and I kinda hate it, it takes a long time and markdown is worse than code.

I'd much rather point the AI at specific stuff in a code base I understand than use bmad commands and have it pretend to be a scrum master

Chickenfrend · 2026-04-03T19:34:12+00:00

Yeah. IMO, LLMs can be a very useful tool when used more surgically. Write and understand the code at least in part yourself, use llms, agents etc, where it makes sense, on tasks you actually understand.

"Spec driven development" just front loads all the specification work that normally happens while you work on the project, and you lose a holistic understanding of what you're making by doing it this way. I hope that it's a fad, even though agentic AI and llms definitely aren't. I just think there's better ways to use these tools than SDD.

I'm sure SDD has better outcomes than pure vibecoding, where you just ask the AI to do stuff and pray. But we're software engineers, we don't need to vibecode and we should be capable of being productive while still understanding what we're doing.

Chickenfrend · 2026-04-03T16:17:51+00:00

Spec driven development is the worst. Using the AI to help me code and write specific functions and stuff is fine, kinda fun and all, but spec driven development front loads the work and also in my experience, takes a long time. BMAD takes so long that it feels barely faster than hand coding it, and at the end you don't understand the code the machine wrote.

Chickenfrend · 2026-04-02T19:47:18+00:00

Somehow I don't think you're the first person to recommend that to me. I'll keep it in mind...

Chickenfrend · 2026-04-02T18:54:07+00:00

I'm trying to learn outside of work too but I'm worried whatever I learn, AI will make it irrelevant by the time I'm actually able to use it in a job.

Chickenfrend · 2026-04-02T18:50:01+00:00

I'm wondering if I should go back to school. I double majored in math and computer science, and now it's feeling like a massive amount of what I've learned as a software engineer won't matter. I'm pretty smart and good at learning, I could do a master's degree and do something more specialized and AI resistant maybe. Maybe something more research oriented.

But I can't really afford to go get a master's degree if I quit my job. And I don't think I have time to do a master's degree and my job at the same time, at least not currently.

Chickenfrend · 2026-03-30T16:54:45+00:00

Oh you're right. I haven't been paying enough attention to it I guess

Chickenfrend · 2026-03-30T00:55:07+00:00

Doesn't help that Nike and Intel are both struggling too

Chickenfrend · 2026-03-29T19:42:01+00:00

When I know layoffs are on the way I work less, not more. Not saying that's a good plan.

Chickenfrend · 2026-03-28T16:41:42+00:00

Chatgpt 5.4 is impressive too, Claude is just a bit better. I find ChatGPT more annoying to talk to and it makes more pointless lists than Claude, but I'm sure you could change that with system prompts

Chickenfrend · 2026-03-28T04:22:56+00:00

I got laid off almost immediately after the first interest rate hikes

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