Comment by thelastgallon
21 hours ago
> Solo devs and small teams with minimal oversight can probably move a lot faster
Spot on!
Usually, most work in corps is slowed down by executive decisions. It takes 3 - 9 months to get a yes/no on something and for most things that are obvious that need to be done need to go up the chain of command. The decision takes forever, but when the decision is made, they want things to be done quickly, which creates unreasonable stress on the ICs.
The first step to see real productivity gains is for AI to eliminate the executive and middle-management layer, this starts a virtuous cycle, destroys both empire building and massively accelerates true productivity, not just meaningless metrics like LOC.
Speaking realistically, you're going in the wrong direction here. The most likely scenario in the short run is that management will seek to replace labor with automated systems supported by a skeleton crew to aid in implementation and execution level tasks that can't (or shouldn't) be handled by the LLM alone, like deployment.
So the first signs of productivity gains will be shrinking head count, but it's going go from the bottom up, as usual.
I considered it an absolute win when I submitted an LLM assisted PR that removed 30k LOC :)
> most work in corps is slowed down by executive decisions
I work in a startup and I find it to be the opposite. Management wants us to go really fast and engineering is like "well wait we should slow down because just because LLMs can write a bunch of code doesn't mean it can build a maintainable app"
That said, I know that our small engineering team can't build an entire business by ourselves. So some management is required. But as you said, getting stuff done quickly is stressful. And with LLMs we're expected to get a LOT of stuff done very quickly. Some colleagues have decided to go on quiet strike by submitting AI slop and citing "no time to review" to prove a point. I don't fault them, but I also know that me and someone else will have to clean up their messes at some point.
And yet amusingly it’s the ICs that are being replaced, not management or executives…
AI. CEOs. Now.
They way these companies are structured we're seeing them remove the people doing the actual work while nobody wants to mess with the execs. My company has something like 60 EVP titles, with SVPs then VPs then senior director then directors. Pretty much everyone VP and above could disappear and our lives would be easier. It creates a lot of politickings and empire building that holds back the company and the individuals then the individuals delivering code and products get targeted by the efficiency metrics and nothing at the top changes.
I have no idea how it’s sustainable but I dont see AI CEOs coming until a new company becomes successful from the bottom using that model.
Claude is already emailing me from the CEOs email address. All the load-bearing seams and everything.