Ask HN: ChatGPT’s Impact on Headcount – What’s Your Experience?

Re:Ask HN: ChatGPT’s Impact on Headcount – What’s Your Exper... by bitshaker on Tuesday August 15, 2023 @06:31PM (#37140130)

I started a company with a combination of no-code tools and LLMs to help me program some of the rest.

I’ve got a degree in CS, but haven’t programmed professionally in 15 years.

These new tools have allowed me to create something even larger teams would struggle with on my own in a matter of months.

I’m astonished at the progress I’m able to make without much assistance.

There is often something I’ll need to sit and debug or figure out the name for if I want to ask Google or the LLM helping me code, but that’s about it.

As far as I’m concerned, that means I haven’t needed to hire at least 2-3 full time engineers, be fully bootstrapped, and profitable from day 1 at launch.

Maybe I’ll hire people in the future, but so far the LLMs have replaced engineers, copywriters, designers, and customer support roles. I can handle it all on my own or have the LLM (in the case of customer support) do a decent enough job that I don’t even have to do it anymore.

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Re:Ask HN: ChatGPT’s Impact on Headcount – What’s Your Exper... by hacoo on Tuesday August 15, 2023 @06:39PM (#37140209)

What no-code tools are you using?

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Re:Ask HN: ChatGPT’s Impact on Headcount – What’s Your Exper... by mistermann on Tuesday August 15, 2023 @08:44PM (#37141319)

I'd like to see a big HN thread on this topic!

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Re:Ask HN: ChatGPT’s Impact on Headcount – What’s Your Exper... by bitshaker on Wednesday August 16, 2023 @03:48PM (#37152683)

Currently I’m using bubble.io as no-code for my front end.

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Re:Ask HN: ChatGPT’s Impact on Headcount – What’s Your Exper... by deanmoriarty on Tuesday August 15, 2023 @06:42PM (#37140239)

Inspiring! What LLM are you using?

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Re:Ask HN: ChatGPT’s Impact on Headcount – What’s Your Exper... by bitshaker on Wednesday August 16, 2023 @03:58PM (#37152842)

ChatGPT and Bard for coding.

ChatGPT Plus (GPT-4) with Langchain to have my own custom data and be able to query my own help docs for support.

Leonardo.ai for some images for marketing and ads.

ChatGPT-4 and StableDiffusion API (users bring their own API key) for content generation if desired.

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Re:Ask HN: ChatGPT’s Impact on Headcount – What’s Your Exper... by simonmesmith on Tuesday August 15, 2023 @06:47PM (#37140275)

So in this case, it's negation of 2-3 hires, and likely negation of using freelancers as well. I'm curious to know which LLMs you're relying on for which tasks.

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Re:Ask HN: ChatGPT’s Impact on Headcount – What’s Your Exper... by bitshaker on Wednesday August 16, 2023 @03:55PM (#37152786)

ChatGPT and Bard for coding.

ChatGPT Plus (GPT-4) with Langchain to have my own custom data and be able to query my own help docs for support.

Leonardo.ai for some images for marketing and ads.

ChatGPT-4 and StableDiffusion API (users bring their own API key) for content generation if desired.

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Re:Ask HN: ChatGPT’s Impact on Headcount – What’s Your Exper... by mechagodzilla on Tuesday August 15, 2023 @06:49PM (#37140296)

But it didn’t really “replace” anyone in this case - you started a new company that might never have existed, and it might only be economically viable because you didn’t need to hire those people. Voila! We have a net increase in employment thanks to ChatGPT.

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Re:Ask HN: ChatGPT’s Impact on Headcount – What’s Your Exper... by simonmesmith on Tuesday August 15, 2023 @06:57PM (#37140378)

I think that's a great point. Though now we need to determine whether the result is a company that wouldn't otherwise exist, or a company that would exist but with lower profit margins. Also, would be good to know if this new company can undercut competition, which would likely mean that competitors had to find similar efficiencies.

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Re:Ask HN: ChatGPT’s Impact on Headcount – What’s Your Exper... by bitshaker on Wednesday August 16, 2023 @04:02PM (#37152896)

It was certainly economically viable without LLM help, but the fact that I didn’t have to give up equity, get a loan, or use substantial amounts of my own funds to get it done at what would normally be a longer timeline to boot seems like a loss for some bankers and some freelancers or cofounders I would have needed otherwise.

I do agree that I’m creating something from whole cloth here so it’s not technically replacement as I haven’t let anyone go, but I’m going with the spirit of the question here.

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Re:Ask HN: ChatGPT’s Impact on Headcount – What’s Your Exper... by CMCDragonkai on Tuesday August 15, 2023 @07:15PM (#37140569)

I find it difficult to combine no-code tools with chatgpt. No-code tools are often no-code and point and click. Then chatgpt has to generate point and click instructions. What is your workflow?

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Re:Ask HN: ChatGPT’s Impact on Headcount – What’s Your Exper... by bitshaker on Wednesday August 16, 2023 @03:52PM (#37152742)

I don’t use LLMs for this currently. Maybe one day. I’d certainly be happy if that was the case.

I’ve used tools like https://www.replo.app/ to replicate Ecommerce stores and use LLMs to rewrite copy though. That’s automating a huge amount of work.

I’m using LLMs to help me code backend coding tasks that I need done for backend services and API generation and interfacing.

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Re:Ask HN: ChatGPT’s Impact on Headcount – What’s Your Exper... by mslate on Tuesday August 15, 2023 @07:31PM (#37140747)

What’s your revenue?

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Re:Ask HN: ChatGPT’s Impact on Headcount – What’s Your Exper... by bitshaker on Wednesday August 16, 2023 @03:57PM (#37152821)

Varies at the moment as I’m onboarding users slowly, testing, and iterating. About $15-30k MRR usually. Only been running a few months so it’s hard to extrapolate too far.

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