Devs will โcash inโ AI gains as time. Dax Raad(
@thdxr), creator of OpenCode, on the incentive problem most companies are ignoring:
โWe forget how big the software engineering industry is. Every company in the world employs software engineers to some degree.
The majority of these environments aren't like the most motivating, exciting environments. Most people there are trying to do their job, go home to their kids, have a reasonable life.
You give them a button that lets them do their work faster. The natural place for them to go is to hit that button as much as possible, do the same amount of work and just cash in that extra time, right? Which makes total sense.
If you have no reason to be above and beyond motivated, you're not going to really use that to push your organization harder. Yeah, these tools may make you more productive, but be really realistic about your employees. Where are they going to cash in those gains?
Obviously some companies are not like that. Employees are motivated. They have good reason to be. They're compensated in a way that makes sense, but most places aren't like that.
The problem with that is usually in those environments there will be a couple people that are irrationally motivated because they love the work they do, et cetera, even though the rest of the company isn't as motivated.
They're usually the ones that are trying to make sure everything is good quality, trying to push everyone to try harder. They're all now overwhelmed by slop PRs. And we've had a few people on our team that have joined and their previous company was like this. They were the person that still cared. The rest of the organization just hits the button and gets their tasks done and they're drowning in just garbage and they're getting burnt out and they're leaving.โ