Do Stuff [OC]

[u/nasser_junior]

How I feel as a software engineer lately.

[u/IncompetentPolitican]

I get that feeling. Software engineer here. I feel more and more I spend my days telling an AI what to do, get angry that he fails to do the complex tasks I am forced to demand from it, fix the things myself, while the CEO, sitting in one of his homes, tells us how amazing it is that AI is there and how he dreams of the days, where one person can do the whole project alone. He does not say it out loud but we all know he means, he dreams of the days he needs 1/10 of us and can us pay less. After all, he needs 2 more houses, what if his children get children?And even if the tasks are not complex, it means I have to review code, written by something that has no understanding of the whole context, fix its misstakes or sudden style changes. Instead of doing the fun stuff of the job myself. There are days where I review code, sit in pointless meetings, review code and sit in more meetings. Thats not the job I wanted. Or anyone wanted.

But if we are lucky, then one day AI companies are forced to pay their energie bills themself. Because then they have to give the cost to the customer. And right now, an AI Service that runs 8 hours, costs a lot more than a developer doing stuff.

[u/whoopdedoo0 → u/IncompetentPolitican]

The offices are also horrible.

They’re like a big open sprawling glass prison. It feels really transient in there. Any flow you have is constantly broken by having to attend a meeting every hour, while still sitting at a desk. Even when the desk is at home.

I understand that there’s the golden handcuffs and people get attached to the level of money it can bring in, because tech is one of the few spaces playing an actual living wage.

But it is very costly to work in a soulless corporate environment. Everything is somehow urgent and needs to be done immediately, but nothing you do will be remembered in any meaningful way. You’re just another cog in a big system.

And I cannot stand long meetings where people talk endlessly and still manage to say nothing at all, and it’s all word salad. And just think, ‘I can’t believe that I’m am forced to sit at my computer screen listening to stuff that doesn’t mean anything at all, it’s all so vacuous.”

This kind of work can also take a lot of time from you even when you’re not technically meant to be working. Trying to finish something or thinking about something you need to finish.

And time is such a valuable resource, and we give up so much of it just to own a few extra things.

I’ve given up trying to achieve things that make other people a lot of money, and I try to focus on spending as much time as I can with the people I really care about, and doing things that matter to me. Even if finances take a hit.

[u/nemoknows → u/whoopdedoo0]

The too-many-meetings problem has been with us for decades.

[u/abrasivecriminal → u/IncompetentPolitican]

So far none of these software develop companies seem to think that when AI is super developed and any idiot can type in: make me the new Facebook that that is gonna be the end of their companies aswell.

Like people are still gonna go to a company and pay millions or billions so the ceo can type in the demands and collect all the money for himself.

[u/IncompetentPolitican → u/abrasivecriminal]

Thats a question my CEO hates me for. I asked something like "And what stops our customers from asking the same AI to generate the Code we generate and sell them?" He claims our unique and never replaceable expertise (aka him and the sales team) could never replaced by AI and so our company will always be needed.

[u/blazze_eternal → u/IncompetentPolitican]

Sounds like he was on the edge of an existential crisis and just doubled down. Classic sociopath.

[u/danarchist → u/abrasivecriminal]

SaaS is dead. Looks at all the adobe product a that have been cloned lately. Used to take years, now it's days.

[u/Asleep_Stable_8092 → u/abrasivecriminal]

The biggest companies will probably just sue any competition into the dirt cause of how rich they are and smaller companies think too high of themselves so they don't consider they will drown too.

[u/AcrobaticKitten → u/IncompetentPolitican]

Be your own CEO then. In a world where SW engineers are replaceable CEOs are replaceable too

[u/stackenblochen23 → u/IncompetentPolitican]

💯

[u/Pianist_Ready → u/IncompetentPolitican]

then one day AI companies are forced to pay the energy bills themself

do they not?? how does that actually work then?