Reasonable conclusion, if you think the entire software industry is rotten then accelerating rot won't do much

I personally disagree with that worldview. (I read the article and the guy's tone is lowkey salty)

The reality is it's insanely hard to convince people (/especially/ consumers. //especially// technical consumers) to pay up to use software. Anyone who has tried to sell software as a startup knows, customers are laser focused on outcomes and value and anything that raises an eyebrow means you're toast

Ofc there are perverse incentives and I think those are bad

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agumonkey 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I wonder if this is a sign of bad value. Long ago you'd be willing to pay. The relationship was clearer , simpler, stabler. No sudden change of price or rules, no constant false improvement. It was less flexible, and riskier on a way, but it cleaned the noise.

My 2cts

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SlinkyOnStairs 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> The reality is it's insanely hard to convince people (/especially/ consumers. //especially// technical consumers) to pay up to use software.

The industry is in an extremely bimodal situation, which drives most of that rot.

You have the startups and small businesses who can't get businesses or customers to pay up. And you have the SaaS giants, who already have their customers and can charge whatever they want.

And this is where the "rotten software industry" and doubts about AI feasibility intersect: Both of these business archetypes lack a clear use case for AI.

If you're small, congratulations you can now spend thousands a month on tokens and still have $0 of revenue. AI doesn't really help you "catch up" to customer expectations as now you're also having to compete with the myriad of slop-shops and in-house AI software development.

If you're a giant, well... why bother? Why give OpenAI or Anthropic a million dollars in tokens? They don't need to make the software better nor do need any "AI efficiency" to do layoffs.

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vanuatu 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm curious as to where your perspective comes from.

My view is they both have a clear use case for AI, because every business has a use case for more intelligence on tap. Enterprises big and small already shell out billions upon billions for AI so I'm not sure how your premise holds

In fact AI has resulted in more startups than ever starting to take market share from the incumbent software companies (and the market has started to price that in)

	▲	bigyabai 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Enterprises big and small already shell out billions upon billions for AI so I'm not sure how your premise holds By your logic, shouldn't these enterprise's cash flow be expanding due to AI instead of shrinking?
	▲	bigstrat2003 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Every business has a use case for more intelligence on tap, but it is abundantly clear that LLMs are not in any way intelligent. They still frequently make egregious errors in what they do, because they are just token predictors with no intelligence or understanding of what they are doing. Yes, even the state of the art frontier models. This in turn means you have to either baby sit them, or accept a much higher rate of failures than a human would produce. Either option kills any potential productivity gains.
	▲	pessimizer 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> My view is they both have a clear use case for AI, because every business has a use case for more intelligence on tap. They all do, but for small companies it won't be a benefit, it will be table stakes. It will also not increase revenue for them, it will reduce it because more competitors will be introduced, and customers won't be able to easily differentiate the true slop from the expert-guided and curated slop. The only alternative will be to become more of a slop shop, i.e. replace expensive programmers with cheaper AI, lowering your quality. Or to shut down. For big companies who have always had terrible quality that didn't matter at all to their bottom line, of course it's a good investment. They can fire programmers. Do buybacks.

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bluefirebrand 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Anyone who has tried to sell software as a startup knows, customers are laser focused on outcomes and value

So the solution is to reduce the cost to zero, instead of competing to provide the best outcome and highest value?

	▲	vanuatu 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If you've ever tried to start your own company in the US it's a grueling, insane warzone of competition That results in the winners providing insane value to both customers and equity holders