My company doesnt even let people use AI -- at least not agents (it's recently got blocked because someone learned about all the security team learned about all the vulnerabilities going around a few months ago [eyeroll]. I hired 3 developers in the last year and didn't mention AI in the job posting at all (it wasn't intentially left off... it's just that it has nothing to do with what you'll be doing, one of your goals, or related to driving business outcomes... its just a tool you can use if you want to [and it's unblocked by the corporate overlords]). So... there are companies out there. All the person is trying to say is making broad statements like that there's 0% of companies willing to prioritize quality/craftsmanship/maintainability (if that is the trade off... which is yet to be seen) over velocity. There obviously are places like that out there or there are entire companies or individual teams that prioritize that because the developer culture prioritizes that. Every team and situation is different.
They don’t even care about profit! It’s well documented that having long-tenured employees saves you money in a ton of ways (the tangibles are: recruiter fees, ramp-up time, higher pay for new hires… and the intangibles are all the hidden work or keep things running smoothly, building relationships between teams or departments, and innovation). But individuals have to quit to get a market-rate job, and the company ends up paying out the nose for someone new.
They in fact care about control more than they care about profit. I mean control over non-shareholders, including employees and customers, as part of an implied goal of any organisation, control over non-members.
I saw an article on HN a while back that showed the math for "senior" employees was affected by the amount of profit generated off them.
I think that it was pitched at sales, but maybe could be applied to ENG.
The thinking was - if you have X sized market, you price in Y for your staff and you take Z for the profit - as the price of your staff increase, if the size of the market, or your share of it, does not increase, your profit decreases.
So it makes sense (the article argued) to drop the senior staff, and bring in the lower paid, but almost as good, intermediates - the profit stays the same.
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