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Comment by sublinear | Hacker News Reader

This doesn't make any sense. If the business can get rid of their engineers, then why can't the user get rid of the business providing the software? Why can't the user use AI to write it themselves?

I think instead the value is in getting a computer to execute domain-specific knowledge organized in a way that makes sense for the business, and in the context of those private computing resources.

It's not about the ability to write code. There are already many businesses running low-code and no-code solutions, yet they still have software engineers writing integration code, debugging and making tweaks, in touch with vendor support, etc. This has been true for at least a decade!

That integration work and domain-specific knowledge is already distilled out at a lot of places, but it's still not trivial. It's actually the opposite. AI doesn't help when you've finally shaved the yak smooth.

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If the business can get rid of their engineers, then why can't the user get rid of the business providing the software?

A lot of businesses are the only users of their own software. They write and use software in-house in order to accomplish business tasks. If they could get rid of their engineers, they would, since then they'd only have to pay the other employees who use the software.

They're much less likely to get rid of the user employees because those folks don't command engineer salaries.

So instead of paying a human that "commands an engineer salary" then they'll be forced to pay whatever Anthropic or OpenAI commands to use their LLMs? I don't see how that's a better proposition: the LLM generates a huge volume of code that the product team (or whoever) cannot maintain themselves. Therefore, they're locked-in and need to hope the LLM can solve whatever issues they have, and if it can't, hope that whatever mess it generated can be fixed by an actual engineer without costing too much money.

Also, code is only a small piece and you still need to handle your hosting environment, permissions, deployment pipelines, etc. which LLMs / agentic workflows will never be able to handle IMO. Security would be a nightmare with teams putting all their faith into the LLM and not being able to audit anything themselves.

I don't doubt that some businesses will try this, but on paper it sounds like a money pit and you'd be better off just hiring a person.

It’s the same business model as consulting firms. Rather than hiring a few people for 65k each, a VP will bring in a consulting firm for 10M and get a bloated, half-working solution that costs even more to get working. The VP doesn’t care though because he ends up looking like a big shot in front of the other execs.

There are lots of developer agencies that hire developers as contractors that companies can use to outsource development to in a cheaper way without needing to pay for benefits or HR. They don't necessarily make bad quality software, but it doesn't feel humane.

Unless we're talking about some sketchy gig work nonsense, the "agency" is a consultancy like any other. They are a legitimate employer with benefits, w2, etc. It's not like they're pimps or something!

Those devs aren't code monkeys and they get paid the same as anyone else working in this industry. In fact, I think a lot of the more ADHD type people on here would strongly prefer working on a new project every 6 months without needing to find a new employer every time. The contracts between the consultancy and client usually also include longer term support than the limited time the original dev spent on it.

Agencies commonly use 1099 workers, there's been fierce legal battles on qualifications of agencies. (ABC test)

I believe 1099 worker growth has been outpacing hiring for several years.

The VP doesn't care because the short term result is worth more to the business. The business is not going to trip over dollars to pick up pennies.

Would you prefer that they hire, string those people along, and then fire them? That's a pain in the ass for everyone.

> If the business can get rid of their engineers, then why can't the user get rid of the business providing the software?

I have't checked the stats lately, but at one point most software written was in non-tech companies for the single business. The first 1/2 of my career was spent writing in-house software for a company that did everything from custom reporting and performance tracking to scraping data of automated phone dialers. There's so much software out there that effectively has a user base of a single company.

In some cases that could happen; in particular there may be a lot of UI and cross-app-integration style stuff that starts to get offloaded to users, so users can have AI code up their own UI for using some services together in the way that they want.

But in most cases businesses still need to own their own logic and data, so businesses will still be owning plenty of their own software. Otherwise customers could just write software to buy all your business's products for 99% off!

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