The Main Thing: AI Programmers

A new AI tool, Devin, was launched this week, which created a bit of fuss in the dev community. Devin is billed as an AI programmer, and while it is not (yet) a replacement for software developers, it goes far beyond the prompt-driven coding approach that other tools use. Devin creates a detailed step-by-step plan to tackle the high-level tasks that it has been provided which is a big step as planning is one of the core missing pieces of AI at the moment. This helps Devin to be able to solve 13.86% of GitHub issues unassisted, compared to ChatGPT's 1.74% success rate.

The feedback from beta testers has been overwhelmingly positive, but not everyone is happy about the release. For example, Gergely Orosz, author of The Pragmatic Engineer, summarises the sentiment nicely in a tweet;

"I apologize but won't be amplifying startups whose mission is to fully replace software engineers with 'AI devs.' I understand why VCs & investors are excited; the financial implications are significant. However, the prospect of a future dominated by AI in software engineering is concerning to me."

While some people are justifiably concerned about the risk to jobs, a 13% success rate is still not enough for companies to replace people. So the future looks like more of an augmentation of people rather than replacement. Nobody can predict the distant future, but if you’re looking to future-proof yourself as best you can, the best advice I’ve heard is to stay curious and continue to ask "How can this tool help me to do my job better?”.

This Weeks Updates

Enabling the Team

The Scare Them Away Letter: A Recruitment Tool for Self-Managed Companies by Lisa Gill
Bossless orgs sound ideal but pose challenges. Working without hierarchy demands clear expectations to streamline processes and save time for all.

Embrace That A Career Isn't Always Measured By Climbing The Technology Ladder by Benjamen Pyle
Climbing the technology ladder isn't the only way to measure one's career success. Benjamin suggests finding out your real goals and following them.

Product Direction

Bowling Alley Strategy: How New Players Dominate Big Markets by Frontera
How Salesforce conquered the CRM market, why Tesla’s first car was the Roadster, and how to use the Bowling Alley Strategy to drive growth

How Miro Creates Their Platform Strategies by Product Direction
Platforms are everywhere, and their challenges are hard to understand and will impact even non-platform products. Miro shares how they approach the problem.

Continuous Discovery

Set The Research Aflame by Matthew Ovington
Matthew outlines strategies for the Paddy Power Product Design team to align and integrate customer insight into their process for cohesive product development.

The Research “Impact” Problem by Josh LaMar
Josh shares his journey from focusing purely on the customer to recognising that our companies need to make money (and that improves job security)

Continuous Design

AI and Design Systems by Brad Frost
Brad evaluates AI tools for coding, testing, and documentation, ensuring accessibility and cross-framework compatibility for comprehensive assessment.

Navigating the DesignOps Wilderness by Jake Geller
Jake shares his tips for getting started with DesignOps: form a lay of the land, chart your course, create your roadmap and charge your trust battery.

Continuous Delivery

The Open Source Sustainability Crisis by Chad Whitacre
Open Source is a great way for developers to learn and improve their skills. But when a package becomes popular it becomes a full time job, without pay.

Cognition Emerges From Stealth To Launch AI Software Engineer Devin by Shubham Sharma
In the SWE-bench test, the new AI programmer was able to correctly resolve 13.86% of GitHub issues without any assistance. In comparison, GPT-4 only managed 1%.

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New Video Released This Week

Mariné Palamutyan and Morgan Davis advocate for a customer-centric culture at DocuSign, emphasizing collaboration, UX research, and effective communication as key to overcoming enterprise silos and driving business success. 👇👇

The job of the Week

Director of UX Design
🏬 Oracle
📌 On-Site, Seattle, WA, USA

About Oracle
A leader in cloud solutions fosters innovation through a diverse and inclusive workforce. With over 40 years in the industry, the company offers global career opportunities, work-life balance, and competitive benefits, emphasizing a people-first approach and community engagement.

See role details here

The Results of Last Week’s Poll

The question was: Do managers in your team also operate as individual contributors?

Half of the managers are direct contributors. However, there were some qualifying statements that add some context to the result.

Small teams tend to have an all-hands-on-deck approach. But also by the nature of being smaller, there is less managerial work to do.

Teams are overworked. Managers are jumping in to help out with teams because they are short and need to get work done.

What would be great to know is whether managers wish they could spend more time on IC work or managerial work.