Imagine you had a direct report. They were doing just fine, slightly better than a typical report. Then you found out they were writing all their code in notepad - no linting, no automated tests or live updates, no refactoring tools, no highlighting or any code search. They didn’t have any cross code searches and didn’t have any documentation. When they hit a problem, they’d churn away at it and never reach for docs, google or so.
Still, their performance is in line with what you’d expect from someone in their position.
Would getting them to try emacs, vi, linters, etc be micromanaging them? Do you think they’d perform better with them? They are performing in line with expectations for the role, so why bother with something you think would make them more efficient?
I’ve made this obviously over the top, and can hear already replies from other bemoaning my comparison while missing the point — tools do matter and if you genuinely believe that a developer could be more efficient working in a different way it makes sense to not only want them to try it but to actively fund that change. Hell, this is literally what we argue for in training! Spend money to make someone better at their job!
If you think AI tools make you worse or don’t and can’t help, then that’s one thing. But it makes sense for management if they think it might to spend money on it and to get you to try.
Not only this, but wasn’t everyone here shouting about how tokens were subsidised and it couldn’t last? If so, wasn’t the first half of this year a really excellent cheap time to do the maxxing?
It's funny, because editor choice is also an analogy I use, to argue for the exact opposite conclusion.
Your hypothetical developer wouldn't be using notepad because they're unaware of other editors, they'd be using it because they evaluated other editors and concluded that, for whatever reason, they would be worse for them. I'd be fascinated to hear why they came to that conclusion, but I'm not going to tell them they're wrong if they're performing acceptably, aren't constantly breaking CI because the linter rejects their code, etc. Everyone is different, and I'm not narcissistic enough to think the fact that I would be way less productive without my modal editor, LSP, linter, terminal multiplexer, etc. justifies forcing everyone else has to adopt my exact setup.
Imagine you had a direct report. They were doing just fine, slightly better than a typical report. Then you found out they were writing all their code in notepad - no linting, no automated tests or live updates, no refactoring tools, no highlighting or any code search. They didn’t have any cross code searches and didn’t have any documentation. When they hit a problem, they’d churn away at it and never reach for docs, google or so.
Still, their performance is in line with what you’d expect from someone in their position.
Would getting them to try emacs, vi, linters, etc be micromanaging them? Do you think they’d perform better with them? They are performing in line with expectations for the role, so why bother with something you think would make them more efficient?
I’ve made this obviously over the top, and can hear already replies from other bemoaning my comparison while missing the point — tools do matter and if you genuinely believe that a developer could be more efficient working in a different way it makes sense to not only want them to try it but to actively fund that change. Hell, this is literally what we argue for in training! Spend money to make someone better at their job!
If you think AI tools make you worse or don’t and can’t help, then that’s one thing. But it makes sense for management if they think it might to spend money on it and to get you to try.
Not only this, but wasn’t everyone here shouting about how tokens were subsidised and it couldn’t last? If so, wasn’t the first half of this year a really excellent cheap time to do the maxxing?