Being a Chief Technology Officer is no longer the job. We now need an end-to-end AI orchestrator for the corporation in the Chief Agentic Officer role. Dana Lawson is now obsolete and must be let go.
The brutal reality being its probably most capable in that domain. They'll freely admit they're not "the never the smartest guy in the room" and their decision record proves it
Human C-suites will continue to keep their jobs as long as other humans in similar positions continue to buy into their airy-fairy "strategy" stuff. ;)
The enormous question here is if AI works the way these people say then surely competing companies will emerge that are enormously smaller and more agile, thus eating their lunch completely.
The fact this doesn't appear to be happening suggests something different is in play.
One difference is, when the business hits a tough patch, the bank starts asking questions, and whether or not the bank lets it all continue depends primarily on whether there’s a CEO/CFO who:
- Has history with the bank (trust)
- Is willing to put their neck on the line
AI in the current form has no ability to put its neck on the line.
If a CTO said something in the woods, and no one re-posted it, are they still a CTO or just a crazy person screaming in the woods? By amplifying his message you are justifying his job, position, and standing.
This got me thinking on a new way to improve the news: Instead of reporting on the empty words people say, only report on what they have done, example:
a) Elon Musks says SpaceX is the best thing ever worth the most money ever because he is greatest person ever.
as opposed to:
b) SpaceX, run by Elon Musk, is currently Making $X per quarter, they do this by ......
Wow, you got agitated. Writing code was never a job. Software engineer is a job where part of the responsibility is to create code. If all you do is “write code”, don’t complain.
Netlify CTO in 6-18 months: that vibe project that caused me to say writing code is no longer the job got so unmaintainable that I hired a team of 3 to take it over. They're rewriting it by hand because tokens are too expensive now. Nobody could have seen this coming
There are large areas of software where the quality of code is measured by the mental model of its human maintainers. For these areas, LLMs are a net negative because their use degrades the mental model of the human maintainers.
So we will have a billion new hello world, stock checker, Calendar, Todo apps, and ...? Just because you have a way to write code fast, doesn't mean you are going to come up with billions of new ideas of what to do with that code, and to be mean about it, most people don't think they are creative enough to come up with ideas and are just fine watching sports all day on tv.
but to be fair, with Cluade I've written at least 10 apps I use every day. If everyone in the world (8.3 billion people) would do this, then we might get close to that billion new apps.
A billion applications by 2029 sounds great to me. I consider MySpace to be part of the peak Web 1.0. MIDI sounds and pot leafs floating on the page. It really whipped the llamas ass. Let’s do that again.
A little terrified to speculate what a coding agent that stuck to this persona would produce (a $550/month multi-region AWS multi-region Webpack/Mongo/React stack ... for one user)
I'm not even sure if I disagree with the conclusion, but I feel pretty safe disregarding the words spoken in front of a slide profoundly declaring "UX + DX = AX"
Looking at Dana Lawson's career on linked in, it looks like they never spent time being an actual developer. Seems fitting that a completely out of touch elite in the US would make such statements.
I wonder how many people saying similar things have the same background, but having said that she was VP of Engineering at GitHub, and VP of Engineering at Heptio.
And started their career as a sysadmin. I don't know Dana at all, but some of the best kernel and networking people I've met got their start as sysadmins.
Dont use the word 'elite' when describing people like this, it implies they are the best at something, which in my experience has never been the case, unless you count bullshitting and gaslighting.
When I was younger I used to assume that CTO was like the ultimate experienced engineer, and most every CTO I've dealt with in 25 years has been a needle scratch for that assumption.
There are competent CTOs who are not above getting their hands dirty, and there are career politician type CTOs who have no discernible skills beyond projecting an illusion of technical brilliance.
I've seen plenty of both, and I'm sure everything in between exists too.
A CTO once asked me: Why do we have a test and staging environment? Could we propose removing them as cost savings initiative? During a time when cost savings where the number 1 priority.
I've known one semi-decent one in a circa 100 people business. Used to be the head of engineering. But he was fully transactional, sell stuff mode most of the time as CTO. CEO actually said one time that he wondered if he'd "ruined" the guy a little by making him CTO.
He tried to bail me out of some very deep trouble i got myself in. Didn't end up working out, but he was good folk for sticking his neck out for someone on the engineering team when customers were screaming at him over the phone because of my screw up.
Rest of the time, they've been a networking contact of the CEO who has "some tech stuff" on their resume. Last one screwed me over and fucked three years worth of work in one fell swoop (and he admitted he did this for his own gains over slack when challenged on one of my last days at that job). still not over that one.
Being a Chief Technology Officer is no longer the job. We now need an end-to-end AI orchestrator for the corporation in the Chief Agentic Officer role. Dana Lawson is now obsolete and must be let go.
It sure is convenient AI isn't capable of doing the c-suite's job
The brutal reality being its probably most capable in that domain. They'll freely admit they're not "the never the smartest guy in the room" and their decision record proves it
The higher up the ladder, the more incompetent they become IMO.
If you're in the seat, no one will force you out. They'll leave, but they can't make you leave.
> If you're in the seat
Like if you own 51% of the company?
Can you clarify the point you’re trying to make? C-level people are forced out all the time. Even the CEO reports to the board.
That just means the board is in the seat.
Human C-suites will continue to keep their jobs as long as other humans in similar positions continue to buy into their airy-fairy "strategy" stuff. ;)
The enormous question here is if AI works the way these people say then surely competing companies will emerge that are enormously smaller and more agile, thus eating their lunch completely.
The fact this doesn't appear to be happening suggests something different is in play.
One difference is, when the business hits a tough patch, the bank starts asking questions, and whether or not the bank lets it all continue depends primarily on whether there’s a CEO/CFO who:
- Has history with the bank (trust)
- Is willing to put their neck on the line
AI in the current form has no ability to put its neck on the line.
Token generation speed is too slow for that to happen. One can’t easily replicate an enterprise.
If a CTO said something in the woods, and no one re-posted it, are they still a CTO or just a crazy person screaming in the woods? By amplifying his message you are justifying his job, position, and standing.
This got me thinking on a new way to improve the news: Instead of reporting on the empty words people say, only report on what they have done, example:
a) Elon Musks says SpaceX is the best thing ever worth the most money ever because he is greatest person ever.
as opposed to:
b) SpaceX, run by Elon Musk, is currently Making $X per quarter, they do this by ......
the first engineer that creates a public company all by themselves will prove / get it all
But what do you think about her opinion? Is writing code still a job of developers going forward? and why?
They're only called CTO if they're from CTO region of France.
Otherwise it's just sparkling AI-Cheerleader.
Wow, you got agitated. Writing code was never a job. Software engineer is a job where part of the responsibility is to create code. If all you do is “write code”, don’t complain.
Netlify CTO in 6-18 months: that vibe project that caused me to say writing code is no longer the job got so unmaintainable that I hired a team of 3 to take it over. They're rewriting it by hand because tokens are too expensive now. Nobody could have seen this coming
> I hired a team of 3 to take it over
There are large areas of software where the quality of code is measured by the mental model of its human maintainers. For these areas, LLMs are a net negative because their use degrades the mental model of the human maintainers.
Dana should’ve repeated the lie before companies started blowing past their annual AI budget and began to panic.
[dead]
It was never the job as long as the profession was called "software engineer" and not "coder".
> a billion new applications written by 2029
So we will have a billion new hello world, stock checker, Calendar, Todo apps, and ...? Just because you have a way to write code fast, doesn't mean you are going to come up with billions of new ideas of what to do with that code, and to be mean about it, most people don't think they are creative enough to come up with ideas and are just fine watching sports all day on tv.
The apple app store currently has 2,362,917 (https://42matters.com/ios-apple-app-store-statistics-and-tre...) apps in the app store, and a lot of those are the same thing, so 0.236% of a billion.
but to be fair, with Cluade I've written at least 10 apps I use every day. If everyone in the world (8.3 billion people) would do this, then we might get close to that billion new apps.
A billion applications by 2029 sounds great to me. I consider MySpace to be part of the peak Web 1.0. MIDI sounds and pot leafs floating on the page. It really whipped the llamas ass. Let’s do that again.
A CTO who doesn't understand what "the job" was. Classic.
I wonder if code quality goes up if you include “as a rockstar ninja” in your prompt
A little terrified to speculate what a coding agent that stuck to this persona would produce (a $550/month multi-region AWS multi-region Webpack/Mongo/React stack ... for one user)
Writing code was never the job. Writing code was always a means to the job. This is why people hire "software engineers", not merely "programmers".
just last week we moved away from netlify to our own solution on AWS. Services like netlify who are a layer on top of AWS are no longer needed.
I'm not even sure if I disagree with the conclusion, but I feel pretty safe disregarding the words spoken in front of a slide profoundly declaring "UX + DX = AX"
Little late to the thought leadership circus. What's next, limp LinkedIn posts only her sycophants like?
Looking at Dana Lawson's career on linked in, it looks like they never spent time being an actual developer. Seems fitting that a completely out of touch elite in the US would make such statements.
Petty personal attack. A technical manager who manages developers should know very well the job of their reports.
"Out of touch elite"? a MAGA-like populism view in a place where MAGA is (rightly) looked down on.
I wonder how many people saying similar things have the same background, but having said that she was VP of Engineering at GitHub, and VP of Engineering at Heptio.
And started their career as a sysadmin. I don't know Dana at all, but some of the best kernel and networking people I've met got their start as sysadmins.
Dont use the word 'elite' when describing people like this, it implies they are the best at something, which in my experience has never been the case, unless you count bullshitting and gaslighting.
When I was younger I used to assume that CTO was like the ultimate experienced engineer, and most every CTO I've dealt with in 25 years has been a needle scratch for that assumption.
There are competent CTOs who are not above getting their hands dirty, and there are career politician type CTOs who have no discernible skills beyond projecting an illusion of technical brilliance.
I've seen plenty of both, and I'm sure everything in between exists too.
> career politician type CTOs
Good description; that's been the my majority of companies unfortunately.
How about product only CTOs who quietly hate engineers because they don't know what they do, and they constantly feel threatened
A CTO once asked me: Why do we have a test and staging environment? Could we propose removing them as cost savings initiative? During a time when cost savings where the number 1 priority.
What a tiring world.
I've known one semi-decent one in a circa 100 people business. Used to be the head of engineering. But he was fully transactional, sell stuff mode most of the time as CTO. CEO actually said one time that he wondered if he'd "ruined" the guy a little by making him CTO.
He tried to bail me out of some very deep trouble i got myself in. Didn't end up working out, but he was good folk for sticking his neck out for someone on the engineering team when customers were screaming at him over the phone because of my screw up.
Rest of the time, they've been a networking contact of the CEO who has "some tech stuff" on their resume. Last one screwed me over and fucked three years worth of work in one fell swoop (and he admitted he did this for his own gains over slack when challenged on one of my last days at that job). still not over that one.
Was it ever "the job" at a place like Netlify? Who cares?