Tech's Dumbest Mistake: Why Firing Programmers for AI Will Destroy Everything
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I'm just a dabbler at coding and even i can see getting rid of programmers and relying to ai for it will lead to disaster. Ai is useful, but only for smallest scraps of code because anything bigger will get too muddled. For me, it liked to come up with its own stupid ideas and then insist on getting stuck on those so i had to constantly reset the conversation. But i managed to have it make useful little function that i couldnt have thought up myself as it used some complex mathematical things.
Also relying on it is quick way to kind of get things done but without understanding at all how things work. Eventually this will lead to such horrible and unsecure code that no one can fix or maintain. Though maybe its good thing eventually since it will bring those shitty companies to ruin.
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those executives act like parasites. They bring no value and just leech the life from the companies.
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I think they were suckered in also by the supposed lower cost of running services, which, as it happens, isn't lower at all and in fact is more expensive. But you laid off the Datacenter staff so. Pay up, suckers.
Neat toolsets though.
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The core takeaway is that except for a few instances the executives still don't understand jack shit and when a smooth talking huckster dazzles them with ridiculous magic to make them super rich they all follow them to the poke.
Judges and Executives understand nothing about computers in 2025. that's the fucked up part. AI is just how we're doing it this time.
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AI will never not-require a human to hand hold it. Because AI can never know what's true.
Because it doesn't "know" anything. It only has ratios of usage maps between connected entities we call "words".
Sure, you can run it and hope for the best. But that will fail sooner or later.
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Like relying on automated systems for aircraft so much. You get things like planes going into landing mode because they think they are close to the runway.
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Executives think they are the most important part of the company. They are high level managers, that is all.
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Even if I ask AI for how to do a process it will frequently respond with answers for the wrong version, even though I gave the version, parameters that don't work, hand waving answers that are useless, etc.
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It’s utterly bizarre. The customers lose out by receiving an inferior product at the same cost. The workers lose out by having their employment terminated. And even the company loses out by having its reputation squandered. The only people who gain are the executives and the ownership.
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Well, yeah, but those costs are for tomorrow's executive to figure out, we need those profits NOW
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While true, that is a weak analogy. Software rots and needs constant attention of competent people or shit stacks.
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In my experience, you actually need more people to maintain and extend existing software compared to the initial build out.
Usually because of scalability concerns, increasing complexity of the system and technical debt coming due.
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The irony of using an AI generated image for this post...
AI imagery makes any article look cheaper in my view, I am more inclined to "judge the book by its cover".
Why would you slap something so lazy on top of a piece of writing you (assuming it isn't also written by AI) put time and effort into?
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I work for a fortune 500 company.
just recently lost a principal engineer that built an entire platform over the last four years.
just before they left I noticed they were using AI an awful lot. like...a lot a lot. like, "I don't know the answer on a screen share so I'll ask ChatGPT how to solve the problem and copy/paste it directly into the environment until it works" a lot.
they got fired for doing non-related shit.
it's taken us three months, hundreds of hours from at least 5 other principal engineers to try to unravel this bullshit and we're still not close.
the contributions and architecture scream AI all over it.
Point is. I'll happily let idiots destroy the world of software because I'll make fat bank later as a consultant fixing their bullshit.
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The cloud provides incredible flexibility, scale, and reliability. It is expensive to have 3+ data centers with a datacenter staff. If the data center was such a great deal for the many 9s of reliability provided by the cloud, company’s would be shifting back in mass at this point
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yeah, there are many things its easier to just give up having the ai do it. even if you somehow succeed it will likely be such mess it gives you its not worth it
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Oh no way. It was a year(s)-long process to get to the cloud, then the devs got hooked on all the toys AWS was giving them and got strapped in even further. They couldn't get out now if they wanted to. Not without huge expense and re-writing a bunch of stuff. No CTO is going die on that hill.
They jumped in the cloud for the same reason they jumped into AI - massive hype. Only the cloud worked. And now % of the profits are all Amazon's. No app store needed. MuwAHhahahAhahahaa
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I thought it was intentional AI slop
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Most extension today is enshitification. We've also seen major platforms scale to the size of Earth.
If you're only going to maintain and don't have a plan on adding features outside of duct taping AI to the software, what use is it maintaining a dev team at the size you needed it to be when creating new code?
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I'm not saying you can fire everyone, but the maintenance team doesn't need to be the size of the development team if the goal is to only maintain features.
