I'd be worried instead of happy in your case, it means your lunch is getting eaten as a company.

Personally I'm in a software company where this new LLM wave didn't do much of a difference.

Not at all. We dont care whether the software is written by a machine or by a human. If the machine does it cheaper, to a better, more consistent standard, then its win for us.

You don't care but that's what the market is paying you for. You aren't just replacing developers, you are replacing yourself.

Cheaper organisations will be able to compete with you which couldn't before and will drive your revenue down.

That might be the case if we were an organisation that resisted change and were not actively pursuing reducing our staff count via AI, but it isnt. In the AI era our company will thrive because we are no longer constrained by needing to find a specific type of human talent that can build the complicated systems we develop.

You are no longer constrained by that but so are your competitors.

Your developers weren't just a cost but also a barrier to entry.

So what will happen once most/all your staff is replaced with AI? Your clients will ask the fundamental question: what are we paying you for? You are missing the point that the parent comment raises: LLMs are not only replacing the need for your employees, they are replacing the need for you.

We don't produce software for clients. We provide solutions. That is what they pay us for. Until there is AGI (which could be 4 years away or 400) there is no LLM which can do that.

Sounds like a great, outcome-focused, work environment!

We're in the business of making money. Not being a social club for software developers.

Oh, just like every other business then! That's a nice strategic differentiator.

Look, I'm sure focusing on inputs instead of outcomes (not even outputs) will work out great for you. Good luck!

Weve done this since 1995 and it works perfectly well.

Maybe you'd get better outcomes and more profit and less toxic culture and more charismatic trustworthy leadership if you replaced your costly and deadwood management and executives with LLMs, instead of the software developers.

We make plenty of profit.

I have no interest in whether a staff member thinks we have a 'toxic culture' or not. They either do the job, or we get someone else to do it. We dont force them to be here as slaves. We are paying them. They either do what they are paid to do, to the standard we expect, or they can go elsewhere. If thats toxic so be it.

Your highly predictable reply and previous posts just go to prove my point that deadwood toxic managers and executives like you are at much higher risk of LLMs replacing your skillsets and jobs than software developers are.

>If thats toxic so be it.

Toxic human narcissists are a dime a dozen, and LLMs can emulate them quite well thank you, since they have so much training data to work from, thanks to so many posts from people like you and other lazy wannabe tinpot dictators who aspire to emulate Trump and Musk.

And at least LLMs know how to spell "that's" and "don't" and "we've" and "stolen" and "hamburger" correctly.

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/donald-trump-just-committed-one-19...

Since you're so braggadociously proud of your company and management techniques and toxic culture, what is the name of your successful 30-year-old company? Why not post a link here to your hiring page? Or are you embarrassed to?

It's our company, we own it. We are not 'some executives'. If someone develops an AI that can replace what we do and perform at the same level or higher, then I would gladly welcome it.

So what is your company's name?

Why are you so embarrassed and shameful to say, and keep deflecting?

It's obvious and well known to everyone that narcissists have a deep sense of personal shame, humiliating self-hatred, and narcissistic mortification, and yours is showing through quite clearly.

Your swagger collapses the instant concrete identity is requested -- a textbook case of "narcissistic mortification." Your boastful façade (grandiosity) shields a brittle self‑esteem; naming the company would tether your online bluster and naked racism to real‑world scrutiny, triggering the intense shame you work so hard to outrun.

If someone develops an AI that can replace what you do and perform at the same level or higher, then all of your competitors and every hustling scammer will have it too.

So far you've said nothing to prove you're any better than an LLM, so I'd like some proof, please.

If you refuse to say the name of your company after being directly asked several times, then why shouldn't we conclude that you're just another dime-a-dozen hustling scammer?

Is it because you don't want all the racist shit you've posted to Hacker News in the past to be associated with your company? At least LLMs have more discretion and guardrails and better spelling and grammar than you do.

Edit: you've already proven beyond any doubt that your company's culture is toxic and racist, by your own posting history, which ChatGPT o3 was so kind to objectively analyze and summarize, so that is not in dispute, and only proves my point -- but thanks for literally admitting it again just now:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43913944

Narcissistic mortification is the sudden, crushing shame that erupts when a narcissist’s grandiose self‑image is pierced by exposure, criticism, or loss of control; the façade collapses, triggering rage, denial, or withdrawal to fend off the unbearable humiliation. It is clinically distinct from an ordinary ego bruise -- mortification is an identity‑level threat that can provoke extreme, sometimes violent, defensive reactions.

Wikipedia: Narcissistic mortification:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_mortification

Psychology Today: Understanding Narcissistic Injury:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-legacy-distorted...

APA Dictionary of Psychology: Narcissistic Personality Disorder:

https://dictionary.apa.org/narcissistic-personality-disorder

LLMs cannot replace what we do. Only AGI could do that, at which point you could say the same about anything.

'Racist' in your culture, not in mine.

The reason you feel safe now is because of the marketing tactics of AI companies in pushing their phished goods on the world. LLMs have done anything yet other then reduced the barrier of entry into the software field. Like what google search and stackoverflow did 10yrs ago. The same principles apply, if your only skill is using an LLMs (or google searching) then you will be the first replaced when the markets turn. The ability to reason about options of a company in making money over the short term, vs long term, should be fairly easy to reason about based on the availibility of news. AI companies already know this. The stratergy has been played out. They make more money this way. They get to suck up all the info from your corperation, because they will get that data. Once they build these models, they will replace you too. Sure your saving time and money today, but thats just the cost of building the model for them.

Oh no, he doesn't feel safe at all -- just the opposite! But I agree that AI will definitely replace him, just that he already knows it.

Arthur Stacks has proven himself to be a textbook case of toxic malignant narcissism, which means all his bluster and self-aggrandizement masks his actual deep insecurity and self loathing, and you can't trust a word he says, because he can't prove any of his outlandish claims.

Notice how easy it was, after all his trolling and bluffing and lying about his so-called successful company, to make him run away with his tail between his legs in shame and narcissistic mortification, by simply asking him what the name of his company is. We haven't heard a peep out of him since then.

All I had to do was to feed his virulently racist posting history into ChatGPT to make a summary quoting his own words, and he was afraid to continue the conversation, because he could not even defend or acknowledge his own self-contradictory posting history and ignorant racist delusional beliefs. ChatGPT correctly concluded:

>Overall: Repeated racism, xenophobia and class disdain; many claims are factually incorrect or ignorant.

>Bottom line: the new comments reinforce the same patterns—overt racism/xenophobia, deep class disdain, bragging about a toxic workplace, and repeated factual ignorance.

Nobody wants to work for a boss like that, which shows that he was just flat out lying about how successful his 30-year-old company actually is, and why he was so terrified to admit the name of his company, because he doesn't want his own toxic words and unrepentant racism being associated with it.

LLMs are perfectly capable of replacing narcissistic deadwood dime-a-dozen Dilbertesque pointy haired lazy toxic managers and executives with low-value skill sets, who are merely self-aggrandizing parasites who disrespectfully exploit and leach value from hard working software developers, whose jobs are much more secure than his, because actually developing high quality software takes so much more skill and effort than he is capable of, even assisted by the best LLMs currently available.

He knows very well that he could easily be replaced by an LLM, and his employees would be much happier work for an AI than him. So he's simply projecting his own fears and inadequacies onto his employees and the rest of us, when he's the one who actually has the most to fear from AI replacing him.

The point I made in my previous post about how LLMs are nowhere near being able to replace software developers, but completely capable of replacing people like him, flies in the face of his false beliefs that he can maintain his lazy do-nothing job running his un-nameable company into the ground by replacing his software developers with LLMs.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43913683

You are making plenty of profit for 30 years and have not retired yet? Sounds like you are far less successful than what you are trying to project.

Ah yes, the old classic thought of someone who has never made any money. By that logic nobody would ever make over 20M USD and the world would not have thousands of billionaires who still work.

And the name of your company? Hmmmm?

Edit:

If you're to embarrassed to say what the name of your company is because of all the racist shit you've posted to Hacker News in the short time you've been here, then that says a lot about how wrong you are, and how horrible you are to work for, and how trivially easy you are to replace with AI.

So is it just because of your many racist comments on Hacker News, or for some other reasons, or all of the above, that you refuse to say the name of your company?

The overwhelming objective consistent evidence is your own words you've posted to Hacker News today and in the past (of course you have to be logged in with showdead=true to see the most vile downvoted flagged examples), and your most recent predictably self-owning replies just prove my point.

Even ChatGPT o3 agrees with my assessment of your posting history, quoting your own vile, violent, and flat-out racist words -- it's no wonder you are afraid and embarrassed to name your company:

Arthur Stacks – Key themes and why they’re objectionable:

Contempt for artists: Calls them “whiney creatives” and tells them to “suck it up.” Bigoted tone, ignores economic reality, factually wrong that “nothing can be done.”

“Foreign riff‑raff” remark: Claims outsiders would “corrupt our culture.” Open xenophobia; ignores Switzerland’s reliance on foreign labour.

Hiring comments (“all white, no blacks to hire”): Says he won’t “go out and find” Black developers. Flat‑out racist, dismisses structural barriers, contradicted by UK census data.

Denies systemic inequality: Insists Black Britons have the same education and status as whites. Racist minimisation, disproved by official poverty and attainment statistics.

Elitist, violent rhetoric: Refers to “peasants” and says elites will “mow them down with drones.” Class‑contempt, normalises violence, wildly speculative.

Country insults (“your country is a shithole”): Blanket derision of entire nations. Xenophobic and evidence‑free.

Overall: Repeated racism, xenophobia and class disdain; many claims are factually incorrect or ignorant.

Arthur Stacks – fresh batch of quotes and what they show:

• Still contemptuous of whole groups

– “whiney creatives,” “cheap Indian” coders, Kerala is “a dump,” 87 % of people are “useless, lazy,” posters are “grifters.”

– Racist/xenophobic and class‑contempt continues.

• Boasts of authoritarian management

– Forces staff back to the office; must use LLMs “or be surplus.”

– “Our way or the highway… not a social club… if they don’t like it they can go.”

– Calls remote staff lazy; says only outcome that matters is profit.

– Freely insults developers (“wouldn’t be working at my company”).

• Wants AI to undercut employees

– Celebrates Gemini letting a junior build a distributed system so he can “reduce the dependency and power of the senior devs.”

– Predicts coding is “gone in a few years,” plans to cut staff sharply.

• Denies responsibility while demanding results

– “We don’t care if an AI builds it or a cheap Indian… they’re still responsible.”

– Claims you can “fully test” distributed systems; belittles anyone who disagrees.

• Repeats racist hiring stance

– “All white… no blacks to hire… not going out to find them.”

– Says US concern with Black inequality is “irrelevant” and a mere “obsession.”

– Again uses “foreign riff‑raff” line.

• Mockery and personal abuse

– Replies with taunts like “You should have spent more time in school” and “Written by someone utterly clueless.”

– Refuses to name his company: “None‑of‑your‑business LLC.”

• Fact‑free proclamations

– Kerala, UK demographics, distributed‑testing claims, AI timelines—all asserted without evidence and often contradicted by publicly available data.

Bottom line: the new comments reinforce the same patterns—overt racism/xenophobia, deep class disdain, bragging about a toxic workplace, and repeated factual ignorance.

I am pretty sure ArthurStacks account is either a troll or an LLM gone rogue troll. There are so many contradictions among his own comments that it is embarrassing to list them all. But given the reaction and number of replies he gets, the trolling is rather successful.

Looks a bit like your comment was being downvoted, which is also interesting to see. If Arthur Stacks is a bot, then it potentially follows that there is vote-manipulation going on as well, to quell dissenting opinions.

None-of-your-business LLC

IMO this is completely "based". Delivering customer values and making money off of it is own thing, and software companies collectively being a social club and an place for R&D is another - technically a complete tangent to it. It doesn't always matter how sausages came to be on the served plate. It might be the Costco special that CEO got last week and dumped into the pot. It's none of your business to make sure that doesn't happen. The customer knows. It's consensual. Well maybe not. But none of your business. Literally.

The field of software engineering might be doomed if everyone worked like this user and replaced programmers with machines, or not, but those are sort of above his paygrade. AI destroying the symbiotic relationship between IT companies and its internal social clubs is a societal issue, more macro-scale issues than internal regulation mechanisms of free market economies are expected to solve.

I guess my point is, I don't know this guy or his company is real or not, but it passes my BS detector and I know for the fact that a real medium sized company CEOs are like this. This is technically what everyone should aspire to be. If you think that's morally wrong and completely utterly wrong, congratulations for your first job.

Turning this into a moral discussion is besides the point, a point that both of you missed in your efforts to be based, although the moral discussion is also interesting—but I'll leave that be for now. It appears as if I stepped on ArthurStack's toes, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and reply.

My point actually has everything to do with making money. Making money is not a viable differentiator in and of itself. You need to put in work on your desired outcomes (or get lucky, or both) and the money might follow. My problem is that directives such as "software developers need to use tool x" is an _input_ with, at best, a questionable causal relationship to outcome y.

It's not about "social clubs for software developers", but about clueless execs. Now, it's quite possible that he's put in that work and that the outcomes are attributable to that specific input, but judging by his replies here I wouldn't wager on it. Also, as others have said, if that's the case, replicating their business model just got a whole lot easier.

> This is technically what everyone should aspire to be

No, there are other values besides maximizing utility.

No, I think you're mistaking the host for the parasite - he's running a software and solutions company, which means, in a reductive sense, he is making money/scamming cash out of customers through means of software. The software is ultimately smoke and mirrors that can be anything so long it justify customer payments. Oh boy those software be additive to the world.

Everything between landing a contract and transferring deliverables, for someone like him, is already questionably related to revenues. There's everything in software engineering to tie developer paychecks to values created, and it's still as reliable as medical advice from LLM at best. Adding LLMs into it probably won't look so risky to him.

> No, there are other values besides maximizing utility.

True, but again, above his paygrade as a player in a free market capitalist economy which is mere part of a modern society, albeit not a tiny part.

----

OT and might be weird to say: I think a lot of businesses would appreciate vibe-coding going forward, relative to a team of competent engineers, solely because LLMs are more consistent(ly bad). Code quality doesn't matter but consistency do; McDonald's basically dominates Hamburger market with the worst burger ever that is also by far the most consistent. Nobody loves it, but it's what sells.

> My problem is that directives such as "software developers need to use tool x" is an _input_ with, at best, a questionable causal relationship to outcome y.

Total drivel. It is beyond question that the use of the tools increases the capabilities and output of every single developer in the company in whatever task they are working on, once they understand how to use them. That is why there is the directive.

What if I told you that a dev group with a sensibly-limited social-club flavor is where I arguably did my best and also had my happiest memories from? In the midst of SOME of the "socializing" (which, by the way, almost always STILL sticks to technical topics, even if they are merely adjacent to the task at hand) are brilliant ideas often born which sometimes end up contributing directly to bottom lines. Would you like evidence of social work cohesion leading to more productivity and happier employees? Because I can produce that. (I'd argue that remote work has negatively impacted this.)

But yes, I also once worked at a company (Factset) where the CTO had to put a stop to something that got out of hand- A very popular game at the time basically took over the mindshare of most of the devs for a time, and he caught them whiteboarding game strategies during work hours. (It was Starcraft 1 or 2, I forget. But both date me at this point.) So he put out a stern memo. Which did halt it. And yeah, he was right to do that.

Just do me this favor- If a dev comes to you with a wild idea that you think is too risky to spend a normal workday on, tell them they can use their weekend time to try it out. And if it ends up working, give them the equivalent days off (and maybe an extra, because it sucks to burn a weekend on work stuff, even if you care about the product or service). That way, the bet is hedged on both sides. And then maybe clap them on the back. And consider a little raise next review round. (If it doesn't work out, no extra days off, no harm no foul.)

I think your attitude is in line with your position (and likely your success). I get it. Slightly more warmth wouldn't hurt, though.

> What if I told you that a dev group with a sensibly-limited social-club flavor is where I arguably did my best and also had my happiest memories from?

Maybe you did, and as a developer I am sure it is more fun, easier, and enjoyable to work in those places. That isnt what we offer though. We offer something very simple. The opportunity for a developer to come in, work hard, probably not enjoy themselves, produce what we ask, to the standard we ask, and in return they get paid.

This sounds like an awful place to work lol

This subthread turned into a flamewar and you helped to set it off here. We need commenters to read and follow the guidelines in order to avoid this. These guidelines are especially relevant:

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

Eschew flamebait

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I replied to the follow-up comment about following the guidelines in order to avoid hellish flamewars, but you played a role here too with a snarky, sarcastic comment. Please be more careful in future and be sure to keep comments kind and thoughtful.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

If you are forcing your staff to use shitty tooling or be fired, then I bet you have a high attrition rate and a failing company.

We have a very successful company that has been running 30 years, with developers across 6 countries. We just make sure we hire developers who know that theyre here to do a job, on our terms, for which they will get paid, and its our way or the highway. If they dont like it, they dont have to stay. However, through doing this we have maintained a standard that our competitors fail at, partly because they spend their time tiptoeing around staff and their comforts and preferences.

and you happened to have created an account in hackernews just 3 months ago after 30 years in business just to hunt AI-sceptics?

I dont hunt 'AI skeptics'. I just provide a viewpoint based on professional experience. Not one that is 'AI is bad at coding because everyone on Twitter says so"

and you happened to have created an account in hackernews just 3 months ago after 30 years in business just to provide a viewpoint based on professional experience?

Yes, you're right I should have made an account 30 years ago, before this website existed, and gotten involved in all the discussions taking place about the use of ChatGPT and LLMs in the software development workplace

Have you ever hired anyone for their expertise, so they tell you how to do things, and not the other way around? Or do you only hire people who aren't experts?

I don't doubt you have a functioning business, but I also wouldn't be surprised if you get overtaken some day.

Most of our engineers are hired because of their experience. They don't really tell us how to do things. We already know how to do it. We just want people who can do it. LLMs will hopefully remove this bottleneck.

Wow, you are really projecting the image a wonderful person to work for.

I don't doubt you are successful, but the mentality and value hierarchy you seem to express here is something I never want to have anything to do with.

I believe that at current rate your entire company will become irrelevant in 4 years. Your customers will simply use Gemini to build their own software.

Better start applying!

Wrong. Because we dont just write software. We make solutions. In 4 years we will still be making solutions for companies. The difference will be that the software we design for that solution will likely be created by AI tools, and we get to lower our staff costs, whilst increasing our output and revenue.

If they are created by AI tools which we all have access to that means everyone will now become your competitor, and with all the people you are planning on letting go they can just as easily as you use these AI tools to create solutions for companies. So in a way you will have more competition, and calculation that you will have more revenue might not be that easy.

> Because we dont just write software.

Lolok. Neither do many using “AI” so what’s your point exactly?

It’s an odd thing to brag about being a dime a dozen “solutions” provider.

It means what it says. We dont just write software. An LLM cannot do the service that the company provides because it isnt just software and digital services.

Thanks -- this is what I mean by evidence, someone with actual experience and skin in the game weighing in rather than blustering proclamations based on vibes.

I agree they improve productivity to where you need fewer developers for a similar quantity of output than before. But I dont think LLMs specifically will reduce the need for some engineer to do the higher level technical design and architecture work, just given what Ive seen and my understanding of the underlying tech.

Your response to lower marginal cost of production is to decrease capital investment?

That takeaway is why you dont run a business.

Our response to the decrease in the value of our human workers, whilst still costing us the same, is to decrease the number of them.

weird ad hominem, but you do you.

I'm trying to figure out this logical inconsistency: "AI has made my workers more productive, therefore my workers are worth less."

My general theory is that there is more than enough engineering work to go around

It isnt weird at all, it explains why you are having difficulty understanding it.

Firstly, If I have senior developers on a pay that is 3x a junior developer due to their knowledge and experience, and LLMs can make that junior developer 80% as capable as the senior developer. Then the senior developer is now worth less.

But more importantly, we are moving towards the point where the person who is operating the AI agents isnt a developer but is instead of project manager/product owner who has an understanding of software. Our company has already began doing this with certain types of work.

It is, AI makes my COMPANY more productive, with lower costs, and my human developers are worth less.