Comment by nbajka
3 hours ago
>Burning down the backlog to zero doesn't mean the development team will be subsequently laid off. Quite the contrary. It will create a vacuum that the business will fill with new work
Will it? Are you willing to test this?
>No one is laying off the development team that just chewed through 50 items per day for 3 straight weeks.
If there are no remaining items, or the amount of items processed per day has increased well above the amount of items that need processing every day, someone's certainly getting laid off.
>Who would support all the potential bugs they just created?
We have long criticised management for not caring about this. Now we are supposed to trust their good judgement?
> If there are no remaining items
In every software job I’ve ever had, every released new feature leads to maybe three new requests to modify the new feature, two unintentional bug tickets, plus some tech debt. Work leads to more work, not less. I don’t see how increasing the velocity of the work should change that.
Keeping the backlog funnel full has been nearly a full ltime job for me for about 5 years now. Both pre and post AI. Once you get a team together that knows how to execute keeping the backlog full of well defined and groomed tasks becomes the problem management rarely sees and subsequently doesn't know how to solve.
This.
I recently switched, but at my previous job, the PMs (who would typically do most of this work) got so overworked after AI took hold, that they’ve doubled the PM-to-dev ratios on all (the productive) teams.
I have read about this in other companies as well. Some teams in Google have a PM pr dev, I hear.
Where I work now, sh*t gets done MUCH quicker with AI, and to a higher quality as well.
IMO, if you work with software and can’t get a meaningful boost out of AI, I think you’re doing something wrong.
I mean, you're kind of in a self-fulfilling prophecy because any rational employer would prefer to terminate an employee who deliberately wants to slow things down for fear of being fired, regardless of whether they would cut employees or choose to just do more/cooler things.
Nobody wants to lay off an employee that is pleasant to be around, trustworthy, and good at what they do.
If you're worried about this, your manager is probably either just as worried as you, OR is worried about your paradoxically low performance in an environment where low performers might be on the path towards switching industries. I mean that sincerely. You are probably damaging your own career and the lives of those around you more than you know.
>Nobody wants to lay off an employee that is pleasant to be around, trustworthy, and good at what they do.
So if I hire a painter who is pleasant to be around, trustworthy, and good at what they do, I'm not going to "lay him off" the instant he's done painting my house?
I mean, if you're in a contract job, you're always to get laid off at the end of the job - that is the job. Very few of the software jobs in my world are like that
If someone is deliberately stretching out a job and making it an adversarial business relationship, when the business arrangment is that they complete the project then do another job somewhere else, then I would not expect that to be a very successful strategy, and also not really want to help them in any way beyond existing contractual obligations. You are basically guaranteeing a bad working relationship with every employer you ever have.
And it doesn't make sense because this is not a strategy that's rational for someone who enjoys their work or is good at their job anyway - if that describes you, then your existing employer is probably one of if not the best advocate you have, and your best strategy would be to either switch careers or progress to a point you don't feel precarious
That's why I say you are really hurting yourself more than you know. You are guaranteeing an at-best "every boss dislikes me and my career goal is not getting fired" outcome and (idk about your actual employer) damaging relationships you really probably need (if this is your mindset)
That's how you view your employment? The same as hiring a painter? That is astonishing.
Some people view their job as having infinite things to do, and AI means they can work on more and different things.
Other people see their specific job as a series of tasks, and if AI does those they don't know what do anymore.
Guess who is going to stay employed?
This is an absolutely unhinged personal attack on the op that has nothing to do with their comment. Why do you assume they are intentionally slowing things down? Because their analysis of the situation is that some people will be fired?
They're challenging someone to "test it" by burning down a backlog, because the other person thinks they will just do more work, with the implication that this person believes they'll just be laid off - and so they are better off not burning down the backlog of work.
I take an issue with that mindset because I know it is not true. And I'm not sure why you think I am attacking this person - if someone were to actually sandbag their own career, that is probably one of the most damaging mistakes they could make. Maybe I misunderstand something, if so I apologize for that
I don't think you know what "unhinged" means.
And I agree with the parent, because I read it every single day on HackerNews. If by this point you're still talking about LLMs not being able to write good code, you're not living in reality.
So, go ahead and keep talking about all the AI companies going bankrupt, or whatever other fantasies you're waiting for. But your teammates are getting tired of it.
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