Billions of completely unrelated developments of niche topics in languages most people don’t understand and then also hundreds of competing solutions to the same problems.

Very good points, thank you. I don’t even want to disagree with you too much. The system is the root cause of the problem. If I understood you correctly, we’re in agreement on that.

However, while the system exists, having the right people in these leadership positions is important.

I recognize that many people in leadership positions receive compensation that seems insane compared to the value they contribute to society - or often even to their shareholders!

I just honestly still believe that it’s incredibly hard to pick one person to lead a billion dollar enterprise. That’s not a common task, I would assume. And being a sociopathic egomaniac is kind of the barrier of entry for these positions anyway. Could you pick the right candidate from a pool of people with those disorders?

Still, I hope we agree that this is systemic.

I actually personally fully agree with you.

I just see a different picture in the industry. Decision makers also use AI to evaluate your work. If the AI judges that your solution is not good, you face more resistance than if you submitted a solution close to the AI expectations. You are inherently incentived to not introduce original thought beyond what your executives can have explained to them by AI anyway.

I fully understand that this is short-sighted behavior, but it’s real bottom-line-thinking of today.

There are few reports of this directly from the industry, because nobody wants to admit talent shortage. It’s a much better sell to claim that you pivot towards AI.

I’m an enterprise consultant for technology executives, and work mostly as a platform architect for a global enterprise. The scale of this issue is invisible to most people.

I know this is basically “trust me, bro”, and I wish I had more to show, but this evolution is in plain sight. And it’s not like AI introduced this problem either. I’m old. Still, take my Internet connection away from me, and watch me struggle to figure out if I want .includes() or .contains() on a JS array. There is a scale.

The problem is that we’ve reached a point where it’s easier to generate a convenient result that communicates well, instead of the “correct” solution that your executives don’t understand. Decision makers today will literally take your technical concept from your presentation to have it explained to them by an LLM afterwards. They will then challenge you and your concept, based on their interactions with the LLM.

LLMs are continuously moved towards a customer-pleasing behavior, they are commercial products. If you ask them for something, they are likely to produce a response that is as widely understood as possible. If you, as a supposed expert, can’t match those “communication skills”, AI-based work will defeat you. Nobody likes a solution that points out unaddressed security issues. A concept that doesn’t mention them, goes down a lot easier. This is accelerated by people also using AI to automate their review work. The AI prefers work that is similar to its own. Your exceptional work does not align with the most common denominator.

You can’t “just Google it” anymore, all results are LLM garbage (and Google was always biased to begin with as well). All source information pools are poisoned by LLM garbage at this point. If you read a stack of books and create something original, it’s not generally understood, or seen as unnecessarily complicated. If you can ask an AI for a solution, and it will actually provide that, and everyone can ask their LLM if it’s good stuff, and everyone is instantly happy, what are the incentives for developers to resist that? Even if you just let an LLM rewrite your original concept, it will still reach higher acceptance.

You also must step outside of your own perspective to fully evaluate this. Ignore what you believe about LLMs helping you personally for a moment. There are millions of people out there using this technology. I attended seminars with 100+ people where they were instructed on “prompting” to generate technical documentation and compliance correspondence. You have no chance to win a popularity contest against an LLM.

So why would I need you, if the LLM already makes me happier than your explanations I don’t understand, and you yourself are also inherently motivated to just use LLM results to meet expectations?

Yes, I know, because my entire enterprise will crumble long-term if I buy into the AI bullshit and can’t attract actual talent. But who will admit it first, while there is so much money to be made with snake oil?

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The sad truth is, we hardly have any software engineers anymore. Trying to find one that is not a prompt monkey has become a serious challenge. Especially new “talent” is a waste of money. You wish it wasn’t so, but AI is on par with engineers. Especially when those engineers just end up using LLMs. Even people who want to learn now have a poisoned well where facts are impossible to find