What has been the end result of all the tokens companies are burning?

Where does it show up in quarterly results?

I can’t see how it’s sustainable just based on “this feels more productive”

▲ joenot443 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

A friend of mine added some pretty extensive iOS UI tests to a keystone feature hit by millions every month. They'd been kicking the can down the road for years, trying to fit it in their roadmap, and with Claude running overnight they were able to bang out the whole suite in a week.

I'm not sure how it would show up in quarterly results.

▲ smelendez 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I see these kinds of stories here a lot, and I'm curious whether they reflect a steady stream of need for AI coding, or whether a lot of companies have a burst of AI-appropriate coding work now that the technology is available and then will have a smaller need going forward.

Is it like the stereotypical dad who rents a power washer, powerwashes every exposed surface on his property, and then doesn't need to do any powerwashing for a few years; his neighbor who gets an Instant Pot and uses it for every meal for a month, then sees it gathering dust when the family gets tired of pressure-cooked stews; or like their neighbor who gets a microwave oven and uses it multiple times a day for decades?

I guess only time will tell.

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thewebguyd 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

So far where I work its the Instant Pot, at least for the non-devs. We rolled out Claude & Cowork to the masses after a brief pilot. It was about a solid month and a half of heavy usage and then suddenly usage fell off a cliff. Once it stopped being a cool new toy, people just didn't find a use for it.

A few mundane things got automated, but these were just back office admin type work. Nothing that's going to show on the P&L. Yeah those people now have a little more time for other things, but those other things are also not revenue generating. No FTE got replaced by it so in the end they just paid for a bunch of administrative positions to be a little less busy. Great for the workers who are now less stressed, but almost no impact on the business financials except there's now yet another subscription.

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palmotea an hour ago | parent [-]

> So far where I work its the Instant Pot, at least for the non-devs. We rolled out Claude & Cowork to the masses after a brief pilot. It was about a solid month and a half of heavy usage and then suddenly usage fell off a cliff. Once it stopped being a cool new toy, people just didn't find a use for it.

Your employer is doing it wrong. You need usage surveillance with sanctions for low/declining use, then people won't stop using it.

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LetsGetTechnicl an hour ago | parent [-]

Please tell me you're being sarcastic.

	▲	generalpf 16 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		He is, but he's also describing reality.
	▲	palmotea an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		It's industry best practice. All the market-leading companies are doing it. Do you think you know better than them? If there's anything I've learned as a software engineer, it's that agreeing with and defending the ideas of business leaders and Silicon Valley VC influencers proves I'm very intelligent.

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JSR_FDED 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That’s been my theory - there’s some low hanging fruit in every environment where AI knocks it out of the park. Then complex brownfield reality (coupled with non-technical factors) rears its head and the stunning productivity gains are nowhere near to be seen.

That’s the explanation how you can have both the anecdotes of amazing AI productivity and rigorous studies showing anything from actual loss of productivity to single-digit gains.

	▲	blensor 6 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I also think in addition to that the increased speed compounds the problems much quicker. And I don't mean bugs. I mean that duplicated code here, that additional state variable to keep everything going there. Not removing things that should be removed because we can work around that, etc. It's like building a super tall Jenga tower very quickly but laying the bricks much worse than a careful player.
	▲	joenot443 an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I think this is directionally right. The code AI produces is not created equally, not even close.

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joenot443 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> or whether a lot of companies have a burst of AI-appropriate coding work now that the technology is available and then will have a smaller need going forward

For the product my friend works on, it's definitely the latter. I definitely don't expect this party to last forever.

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keybored an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Some measures should have real, tangible, concrete numbers; others should have “my friends are saying”/“you are blind if you are not seeing it” vibing.

▲ dotancohen 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

  > I'm not sure how it would show up in quarterly results.

Technical debt is famously difficult to express in either layman's terms or financial terms.

▲ ElFitz an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Over here our CTO replaced Intercom with an internal equivalent that costs less than $20 / month to run, haiku and sonnet support agent costs included. In less than a few weeks, in his spare time.

▲ rtkwe 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In my limited experience with using agents to create tests it tends to code the tests to the existing code instead of ensuring the correctness from a spec. Great for regression testing but still limited in effectiveness for catching existing issues.

▲ levkk 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It wouldn't, at least not directly. That's why it wasn't done pre-AI.

▲ Legend2440 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Even if Uber really did double developer productivity, would it translate to quarterly results?

Ultimately they make money selling rides, not selling software. The Uber app is mature and adding new features is unlikely to significantly increase sales.

Writing 2x more code doesn't translate to 2x more revenue unless it results in 2x more rides.

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afavour an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> Even if Uber really did double developer productivity, would it translate to quarterly results?

It would if it meant they then fired half their software engineers, which is the ultimate goal.

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mattnelson 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Lowering costs to run the infra would show up as increased profits without any change in rides.

	▲	echoangle 29 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		How much is infra spending compared to revenue/other expenses? I honestly can’t imagine it’s that high, they’re not running something like Netflix or YouTube… But maybe I’m underestimating it.
	▲	nkrisc 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Do you really need AI for that? Seems like the thing any existing engineering team could do if it was prioritized.
	▲	dpark an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Would it? How much of Uber’s cost is software infrastructure vs paying humans?

▲ gizajob 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In the big red number shown after revenue where profits used to be.

▲ zitterbewegung 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Advancement in AI research seems to be the only thing at this point.

▲ jayd16 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Probably shows up in OpenAI and Anthropic quarterly reports. I have to wonder if that was the point.

▲ bitwize 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Where does it show up in quarterly results?

Standard answer is "companies that are not seeing significant gains from AI just aren't AI-ing hard enough, trust me bro".