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> I believe most current improvement in speed is just moving from idea to demo in a few days This is an outdated view. Current timelines I'm facing are to be

> I believe most current improvement in speed is just moving from idea to demo in a few days This is an outdated view. Current timelines I'm facing are to be going from "thought", through customer trials and being fully live in the product and ready for sales in ~3 weeks (from kick off to live in app is a bit more than a week). This is for a full product feature that could easily be standalone. In 2023 I would say the timeline for a similarly shaped feature at another startup was around ~3 months (and the team at the time agreed that was an aggressive timeline). Bug rates are not noticeably different than other teams I've been on in the past 20 years. Nobody I know working in startups is still building demos with AI like they were a year or more ago (for work), that's seen as largely a waste of time since you can just ship the feature and be experimenting with customers much faster. On top of that everyone working in startup land knows that SaaS's days are numbered, so you need to be shipping working software fast enough you can get ahead of the curve to navigate where things are going next.

skydhash 1mo ago
> Current timelines I'm facing are to be going from "thought", through customer trials and being fully live in the product and ready for sales in ~3 weeks (from kick off to live in app is a bit more than a week). This is for a full product feature that could easily be standalone. In 2023 I would say the timeline for a similarly shaped feature at another startup was around ~3 months (and the team at the time agreed that was an aggressive timeline). Bug rates are not noticeably different than other teams I've been on in the past 20 years. My issue with these kind of numbers is that they never contrasted them with a NO_LLM practice while keeping everything the same. It's always perfectly fine to YOLO generated code straight into prod, but if you handwrite it, you need to fill several forms in triplicate to even make it to the review phase. Then someone claims they are 10X-ing their productivity with AI. > you can just ship the feature and be experimenting with customers much faster. That's basically what I said. Instead of shipping something that have some value to the customer/user from the get go, which may takes one or two months, you spend one or two weeks on it, ship it, then frustrate your customers/users when things aren't working or keep shifting around. For all of AI being touted as the best thing since sliced bread, there's been little to no value for humanity as a whole.
- crystal_revenge 1mo ago
  > YOLO generated code straight into prod Most of my team's time is spend carefully reviewing PRs and iterating on improving new ways we can ensure the product works well, the product is hardly "YOLO'd" > then frustrate your customers/users when things aren't working or keep shifting around. All of these products come at the request of customers and they are generally quite delighted with the results and equally delighted with how fast we can deliver. > For all of AI being touted as the best thing since sliced bread I don't think it's the best thing since sliced bread, but I am telling you that your understanding is weirdly out of touch. I know HN doesn't have people working startups anymore but what I'm experiencing at work is a lot of serious engineering work and discussion around delivering quality products rapidly (as well as improving process so we can get ahead of transformations in what a 'product' is). It sounds like you have a view of the world and want to stick to it, in which case there's not much point in arguing. If you search my comment history you can easily find around 8 months ago I would have largely agreed with you, which is why I opened mentioned that your view is "outdated". This space has changed dramatically in the last year, and continues to change in ways that surprise me.

skydhash 1mo ago

> Current timelines I'm facing are to be going from "thought", through customer trials and being fully live in the product and ready for sales in ~3 weeks (from kick off to live in app is a bit more than a week). This is for a full product feature that could easily be standalone. In 2023 I would say the timeline for a similarly shaped feature at another startup was around ~3 months (and the team at the time agreed that was an aggressive timeline). Bug rates are not noticeably different than other teams I've been on in the past 20 years. My issue with these kind of numbers is that they never contrasted them with a NO_LLM practice while keeping everything the same. It's always perfectly fine to YOLO generated code straight into prod, but if you handwrite it, you need to fill several forms in triplicate to even make it to the review phase. Then someone claims they are 10X-ing their productivity with AI. > you can just ship the feature and be experimenting with customers much faster. That's basically what I said. Instead of shipping something that have some value to the customer/user from the get go, which may takes one or two months, you spend one or two weeks on it, ship it, then frustrate your customers/users when things aren't working or keep shifting around. For all of AI being touted as the best thing since sliced bread, there's been little to no value for humanity as a whole.

crystal_revenge 1mo ago
> YOLO generated code straight into prod Most of my team's time is spend carefully reviewing PRs and iterating on improving new ways we can ensure the product works well, the product is hardly "YOLO'd" > then frustrate your customers/users when things aren't working or keep shifting around. All of these products come at the request of customers and they are generally quite delighted with the results and equally delighted with how fast we can deliver. > For all of AI being touted as the best thing since sliced bread I don't think it's the best thing since sliced bread, but I am telling you that your understanding is weirdly out of touch. I know HN doesn't have people working startups anymore but what I'm experiencing at work is a lot of serious engineering work and discussion around delivering quality products rapidly (as well as improving process so we can get ahead of transformations in what a 'product' is). It sounds like you have a view of the world and want to stick to it, in which case there's not much point in arguing. If you search my comment history you can easily find around 8 months ago I would have largely agreed with you, which is why I opened mentioned that your view is "outdated". This space has changed dramatically in the last year, and continues to change in ways that surprise me.