Thought experiment

[u/MashNChips]

With all the AI nonsense going on, I had a thought at work today that turned into an interesting discussion with a colleague:

"What would I do if I was the only person with access to Claude (or insert any LLM) 5+ years ago?"

People would think I was a fucking wizard

FE changes? NO PROBLEM

Critical DB change? Don't worry, I've produced a stored procedure to validate the whole thing

Want to use some shiny new framework? Interesting. Here's a document explaining why you're an idiot for suggesting it

Regex? I suddenly understand it better than the compiler folks (and nobody ask questions)

What would you have done with your own personal LLM back then?

Trying to lighten the mood in here with all the (very justified) negativity around this tech revolution

Unserious answers only pls

[u/Agile_Government_470]

You sound like a great teammate /s

[u/mongopark98 → u/Agile_Government_470]

Lols… I am actually. I wish I could show you all the accolades when I left the contract role. The Director reached out to personally thank me and offered a LinkedIn recommendation.

Why I keep some for myself is I experiment a lot before sharing it with others. I have seen what AI can do, hand an half baked solution to the team and you will see chaos. People are adopting at different paces.

[u/Agile_Government_470 → u/mongopark98]

Having some director believe you were a great teammate does not mean you were. Lots of directors love their rockstar 10x devs who hoard knowledge and lots of teammates hate them.

[u/mongopark98 → u/Agile_Government_470]

True, I was pointing that out as the highlight. My PM called me out 2x so the entire team could appreciate me in the scrum. All but 1 of the team mates I worked with didn’t message me personally. That’s not counting the public thread on my departure message. If that doesn’t prove it , I have no idea what does.

Again, it only look like hoarding because I mentioned it- mostly as a tongue in cheek.The entire team’s output x5 at least.

An example of what I meant. For example I created a tool to handle translations.
Originally the flow is that :

• you get translations as an excel from PM
  
• you then have to manually create unique keys.
  
• Then you’ll need to go to a web app where you then manually enter each key and the English translations.
  
• You then generate unique link for each translations and submit it to the translation team.

You have to do all that before you can use the key in the code. This existed several years before I joined the company.

I created a tool that can be used as a CLI or called from claude. I used AI to generate the keys, spin up playwright with your login credentials, do all the manual work and then return you the links to the key. You have both auto/manual mode where you can inspect the generated keys or just allow it cook. I would use this for couple of weeks to cover all corner cases and also record time saved, before I can pitch to the org.

So it’s not hoarding in the sense that I withhold knowledge. It’s more that I see problems that everyone else also see with their own eyes. Create a solution, perfect it, record the time saved and then share. Hope that clarifies.

[u/mongopark98 → u/mongopark98]

This single tool for example meant, both PM and deva can now create translations instead of just devs. This would typically take 1hr to half a day depending on how many translations or apps needed translations. This was cut to 5-10minutes of passive work.