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th3byrdm4n commented on Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?    · Posted by u/throwaway_43793
th3byrdm4n · 9 months ago
It's lowering the bar for developers to enter the marketplace, in a space that is wildly under saturated. We'll all be fine. There's tons of software to be built.

More small businesses will be able to punch-up with LLMs tearing down walled gardens that were reserved for those with capital to spend on lawyers, consultants and software engineering excellence.

It's doing the same thing as StackOverflow -- hard problems aren't going away, they're becoming more esoteric.

If you're at the edge, you're not going anywhere.

If you're in the middle, you're going to have a lot more opportunities because your throughput should jump significantly so your ROI for mom and pop shops finally pencils.

Just be sure you actually ship and you'll be fine.

th3byrdm4n commented on I Am Tired of AI   ontestautomation.com/i-am... · Posted by u/Liriel
low_tech_love · a year ago
The most depressing thing for me is the feeling that I simply cannot trust anything that has been written in the past 2 years or so and up until the day that I die. It's not so much that I think people have used AI, but that I know they have with a high degree of certainty, and this certainty is converging to 100%, simply because there is no way it will not. If you write regularly and you're not using AI, you simply cannot keep up with the competition. You're out. And the growing consensus is "why shouldn't you?", there is no escape from that.

Now, I'm not going to criticize anyone that does it, like I said, you have to, that's it. But what I had never noticed until now is that knowing that a human being was behind the written words (however flawed they can be, and hopefully are) is crucial for me. This has completely destroyed my interest in reading any new things. I guess I'm lucky that we have produced so much writing in the past century or so and I'll never run out of stuff to read, but it's still depressing, to be honest.

th3byrdm4n · a year ago
Honestly, I've developers saying the same thing about IDEs and high level languages.

This new generation of tools add efficiency the same way IntelliJ added efficiency on top of Eclipse which added efficiency on top of Emacs/VI/Notepad/etc.

The more time that someone can focus on the systemsit takes certain types of high-time, [not domain problem specific] skill processes and obfuscated it away so the developer can focus on the most critical aspects of the software.

Yes, sometimes generators do the wrong thing, but it's usually obvious/quick to correct.

Cost of occasional correction is much less than the time to scaffold every punchcard.

th3byrdm4n commented on Ask HN: Should we bring software dev in-house?    · Posted by u/45HCPW
t-writescode · a year ago
What does on-call look like for you?
th3byrdm4n · a year ago
It was brutal, but the mentality was - it's brutal now but you have the power to fix it, so engineering hours went into fixing broken windows.

That adopted mentality pays off tech debt fast.

th3byrdm4n commented on Ask HN: Should we bring software dev in-house?    · Posted by u/45HCPW
uticus · a year ago
> We're using a third-party product that functions, but barely.

> Our business operates in a specific niche and there are no other providers who cater specifically to our industry.

If you decide to do in-house, I’d recommend thinking about competing against existing as a new revenue stream, and spinning it off as a separate business unit as much as possible. I imagine this is implied in your question but it wasn’t specifically mentioned.

> Besides, can we even attract experienced developers to a non-glamorous industry like logistics?

Yes. Are you kidding? Non-glamorous reads as safe in uncertain times. It’s a positive point that will be a marketing multiplier for attracting talent, if coupled with other indications that your business has clear goals and good ideas.

th3byrdm4n · a year ago
Don’t build it to sell - explicitly. Build it to solve your business problem and tell the guy building it “after we’ve separated ourselves from our competitors and we’ll either declare our company a software company that does logistics, or we’ll set an environment for you to pitch the sale of the software to competitors”

A startup mindset is importantly for the first hires, but selling software is an aspiration not a requirement.

That aspiration can be distracting from simpler business problem solving solutions too, so be clear “new codebase” when we are ready to sell…

Shortcuts for us, no shortcuts on the software resell company.

th3byrdm4n commented on Ask HN: Should we bring software dev in-house?    · Posted by u/45HCPW
neilv · a year ago
One idea is to start it as a skunkworks project, with a very experienced and skilled person starting solo.

With the express understanding that, if this is successful, you'd expect them to ultimately lead it (head of engineering, R&D, CTO, or whatever fits).

Greenfield development is appealing, and the big growth potential adds incentive to do that greenfield in a way that's aligned with the goals of the company.

Don't make it super-lucrative initially, to help weed out the serial job-hoppers and the transactional hours-billers who aren't as invested in the long-term success.

On your end, you only need buy-in that, if this succeeds, then company will want to follow through.

With that understanding, it's only a single hire to justify.

If, when you review every 3 months, it's not looking like it will work out, start over with a new champion. Your only lead time is to find one candidate who you're willing to give a shot at it.

It's their responsibility to make the skunkworks so successful that the company is confident in taking the next steps of greater investment.

A complementary possibility to keep in mind is that, if you really execute well on this system, maybe you could spin it off into a subsidiary that provides IT solutions to other companies in your field. (Especially since your own purchasing experience sounds like there's market opportunity.)

th3byrdm4n · a year ago
This summarizes my career nicely.

Great advice IMO.

th3byrdm4n commented on Ask HN: Should we bring software dev in-house?    · Posted by u/45HCPW
neilv · a year ago
One idea is to start it as a skunkworks project, with a very experienced and skilled person starting solo.

With the express understanding that, if this is successful, you'd expect them to ultimately lead it (head of engineering, R&D, CTO, or whatever fits).

Greenfield development is appealing, and the big growth potential adds incentive to do that greenfield in a way that's aligned with the goals of the company.

Don't make it super-lucrative initially, to help weed out the serial job-hoppers and the transactional hours-billers who aren't as invested in the long-term success.

On your end, you only need buy-in that, if this succeeds, then company will want to follow through.

With that understanding, it's only a single hire to justify.

If, when you review every 3 months, it's not looking like it will work out, start over with a new champion. Your only lead time is to find one candidate who you're willing to give a shot at it.

It's their responsibility to make the skunkworks so successful that the company is confident in taking the next steps of greater investment.

A complementary possibility to keep in mind is that, if you really execute well on this system, maybe you could spin it off into a subsidiary that provides IT solutions to other companies in your field. (Especially since your own purchasing experience sounds like there's market opportunity.)

th3byrdm4n · a year ago
This summarizes my career nicely.

Great approach advice IMO.

th3byrdm4n commented on Ask HN: Should we bring software dev in-house?    · Posted by u/45HCPW
yyyfb · a year ago
> Your biggest pain point is most likely that you know your business very well, but you probably do not know enough about the business context of your partners.

I'm not in the market, but FYI, the tone of your post wouldn't make me want to buy your stuff. You sound too eager to lecture your customers instead of being eager to learn from them.

th3byrdm4n · a year ago
I think he’s toeing the line of “listen build it yourself but you’re missing a decade of expertise I can add to your stack tomorrow”

That said, my feeling is the guy doesn’t have a prebuilt fit for his company / he’s already shopped extensively.

th3byrdm4n commented on Ask HN: Should we bring software dev in-house?    · Posted by u/45HCPW
jmarbert · a year ago
I’m part of a 20-person company that was in a similar situation. We have since built our software in-house, replacing the software we previously struggled with, and it’s worked out even better than I originally hoped because it felt so audacious at the time.

One thing I think is key is making sure that whoever is leading this project (the lead developer, not just the person they’re reporting to) needs to know the business cold. They should spend serious time learning the roles of the people who will be using the software so they can design it well to solve the problems those roles face. I lead the development for us, and I attribute most of the software’s success to simply having spent so much time in so many roles in the company. It’s that cross-section of knowledge that makes all the difference.

th3byrdm4n · a year ago
Second this. Cross functional knowledge is the secret sauce of in-house designed software.

Nothing off the shelf does that.

Integration is where cross departmental solutions live and that’s an underrated nightmare

th3byrdm4n commented on Ask HN: Should we bring software dev in-house?    · Posted by u/45HCPW
carlcoryell · a year ago
I used to run the Singapore and Seattle offices for Pivotal Labs and helped a couple of companies build in-house teams to do exactly this.

My first question is to check the basic economics:

$2-300M in annual revenue, ~15% margins, you’re probably looking at earnings/profits around $30-45M. Building and running your own software team is probably around $5M/year, which feels like it could be a substantial hit to your margins. Is there a clear story for how this software will allow you grow to $300-500M in revenue or more? I like to have a credible story for 5-10x ROI on software development because the costs end up being so variable and uncertain.

Then the trick is figuring out how to hire, train, and establish a productive environment for the team. My customers approach was to hire a vendor [Pivotal Labs] to ship a first release and help hire in-house staff to replace vendor roles until the team was fully in-house. The customer got rapid feedback that the team and concept worked; we shipped working software. The new hire landed into a productive context, and could see that the company had an effective approach to software development (because it was already shipping working software).

th3byrdm4n · a year ago
I have a fully staffed team it’s not 5m a year. For a company twice his size.

These are very generous consultant pitch #s not reality. We doubled running 1-$200k/guy … 2x full stack devs (me) 2x data guys 1x MSP for IT.

That team was awesome and did serious buzz saw damage because we shipped solutions that made the company better every day.

Didn’t have to be huge. Just help someone do something better.

th3byrdm4n commented on Ask HN: Should we bring software dev in-house?    · Posted by u/45HCPW
davedx · a year ago
IME what works best getting new projects kick started is hiring a very small team of senior freelancers, making one of them lead, and letting them loose. I worked on such a team once and it was really excellent. The advantage of this strategy is if the experiment doesn't work out, terminating freelancers is much easier than permanent (I noted you're based in Europe).

Contrary to what other people said, I wouldn't try find a CTO straightaway. It's a hard role to hire for, especially at the start. I think you're better off unleashing a small, excellent team of builders then hire management later to help build out the team if the initial effort succeeds.

Happy to chat more about my experiences with this strategy, davedx@gmail.com (I'm in Europe too)

th3byrdm4n · a year ago
My caution is at the end of working with free lancers you have no technical retention.

My company worked with freelancers/consultants for years, it just delayed the inevitable. You need to start building your in house team.

Find the ONE. See if he can build anything on their own. If they can/thinking is good, then scaling with freelancers seems good because you retain knowledge and long-term vision/oversight.

u/th3byrdm4n

KarmaCake day105June 11, 2012View Original