> There was probably a reason it was on the backlog (because it didn't really have value).
There are definitely things in the backlog with low value. We don't work those items, even if we could now. The additional bandwidth we have now goes to valuable features that drive revenue and retention metrics. The reason they were on the backlog were because we just didn't have the bandwidth to execute on them well and they were just somewhat less valuable than the critical path items on the roadmap.
~70 FTE Engineering team. We are shipping more features, especially features that previously would not have survived the cut to make it on the roadmap. Even though we are shipping more, our total amount of escaped bugs has not increased, so our escape rate has actually lowered. On top of that we are able to triage and fix escaped bugs more quickly now. And then of course there has been an uptick in internal tooling that makes the rest of the company more efficient, and we have been able to address tech debt at a higher rate than before.
I don't think this would have been possible without having solid engineering culture and processes in place before bringing in ai coding tools.
And I don't want to sugarcoat it, this hasn't been easy, requires continued discipline, and took well over a year to get good at. And we still have to continuously learn, experiment and adapt our training, tooling, and processes.
I prefer Dan Shapiro's 5 level analogy (based on car autonomy levels) because it makes for a cleaner maturity model when discussing with people who are not as deeply immersed in the current state of the art. But there are some good overall insights in this piece, and there are enough breadcrumbs to lead to further exploration, which I appreciate. I think levels 3 and 4 should be collapsed, and the real magic starts to happen after combining 5 and 6; maybe they should be merged as well.
In response maybe we should design TCPAclaw. It is specialized in honeypotting all of the random cold call spam, tracks down the source of unsolicited contacts; including registration state, legal contacts, and registered agent(s). It then drafts and sends a TCPA letter and waits for one of two things to happen: Either a $500-$1500 check arriving in your mailbox, or the demand deadline elapses. In case of demand deadline elapse, TCPAclaw files a small claims suit in the appropriate court of jurisdiction.
Didn't make it past the first paragraph of AI slop in the README. Have some respect for your readers and put actual information in it, ideally human generated. At least the first paragraph! Otherwise you may as well name it IGNOREME.
Beavers were hunted so intensely that they completely disappeared decades ago in the area. Without the beavers building dams and thus slowing down the flow of creeks, more and more erosion took place and area that used to be wetlands dried out. With the gradual drying the willow tree disappeared, which is one of the major food sources for beavers. So while beavers are starting to repopulate, they don't move in where there is no food available.
So Philmont is building BDAs in order to slow down the creeks, providing suitable habitat for willows - and once this food source is once again established, the beavers should return and take over maintenance of the BDAs.
This summer I helped for a few hours to build Beaver Dam Analogues (BDAs) at Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico. I am really looking forward seeing the positive ecological impact when my future grand children trek Philmont. Building BDAs is good fun. You should try it.
Bad data on graphs, demos that would have been impressive a year ago, vibe coding the easiest requests (financial dashboard), running out of talking points while cursor is looping on a bug, marginal benchmark improvements. At least the models are kind of cheaper to run.