I honestly think the rise of LLMs will be the death of open source in the long run. Already, apparently, quality of OSS has dropped significantly since 2025 (so most models stop training on github after this).
I don't think a lot of OSS authors quite understand the extent to which models like claude/codex rely on their work. I'd bet money there are extensive curated tasks using your tooling for post-training. With 0 attribution or anything, these models are using your work wholesale to build sophisticated agents that can do your job.
Yeah it's depressing as hell. I guess it's the same thing for artists and musicians and writers.
P.S. I can symphathise with the old house issues! I bought a 1901 terraced property, it's an absolute money pit.
Don't agree - the dev is productive because they have a good mental model of the problem space and can cajole the agent into producing code that agrees with the spec. The trend is for devs to become more like product managers (which is why you see some whip-smart product managers able to build products _without_ human devs)
I believe these tools change the value of different skill sets in a very profound ways. Being good with rules of a programming language and syntax is no longer as valuable as it used to be.
Understanding the problem space is becoming more valuable. Strength in architecture of a solution is another skill that is becoming very valuable.
We are close to getting to a point where someone with overall general (and perhaps not very detailed) understanding of arch and design and a good understanding of the problem space and having a good taste in usability will be able to create awesome solutinos.
I can't wait to see these solutions being created by one or two person teams.
Imagine an entire world of interactive, colourful ascii art.
I mostly started on my local BBS on Long Island playing tradewars in my teens, around 14 (where I memorably won as top player for a few months and got tons of credits).
I actually have no memory of how I discovered BBSs, I think I found some directory at the library then found my local one.
I expanded from there to some bigger ones (requiring a special telephone plan so it didn’t cost a fortune!). I played some rpg (maybe lotrd?) with like a hundred players and it was an absolute blast.
Other highlights:
I found a credit card generator and used it try getting free credits which got denied. The owner called my parents house and they had no clue what they were talking about.
Another time I was trying some exploits to get ops access and the admin caught me (BBS servers would echo the remote session). Admin interrupted my session and we started chatting. He recognised I was a naive script kiddie and we chatted about love of BBSs and computers. Pretty cool.
Sean, I wonder why people are so negative here. I think they’ve never worked in big tech.
As a staff swe in big tech your blog posts resonate strongly and reflect my own experience. But I can see if I didn’t have that experience I’d be unable to relate or even understand.
Maybe it is nihilism - but I think that’s also a natural result of working for big corps.
"Their experience is different from mine; therefore, they haven't worked in big tech" is a bit reductionist.
While it's true that in large companies you typically have much less agency than you think and sometimes have to work on things that don’t resonate with you, large companies also have many different teams you can switch to.
So saying this should be the norm is what people have a problem with. Plus, moving to a different workplace is always an option.
If you decide to collect the paycheck and do the work, that’s okay too. But touting it as the norm and saying everyone should do it is gaslighting.
Yeah it was a bit reductionist. I guess it was my reaction to the negativity.
I think his experience is
quite common in big tech, and even swapping teams doesn’t seem to help in my own experience. It’s the rare teams that have any agency, or even clear ownership over the code. It seems by design but as a craftsman it is very frustrating.
I haven’t read anyone put it in words quite as well as Sean’s posts. This really is the nihilistic side of big tech that is rarely written about.
So I think it’s a unique insight - hence why I’m kind of baffled at the reaction. I think if you can relate to what he’s saying (it hits really close to home for me), it’s easy to sympathise with.
Everyone's circumstances are different right? It's not always so simple.
Big tech was a bit of an experiment for me in my 40s, I always worked at small/med size companies before. I think it was worth it (for the learnings and comp). I get a lot more choices in the future when I'm financially secure.
I think there needs to be a new kind of 'razor': 'Never attribute mistakes to stupidity that benefit the ones making them'
The dressing up of purely malicious or greedy actions as merely resonable ones, that were executed poorly has become incredibly prevalent in the modern world.
I honestly think the rise of LLMs will be the death of open source in the long run. Already, apparently, quality of OSS has dropped significantly since 2025 (so most models stop training on github after this).
I don't think a lot of OSS authors quite understand the extent to which models like claude/codex rely on their work. I'd bet money there are extensive curated tasks using your tooling for post-training. With 0 attribution or anything, these models are using your work wholesale to build sophisticated agents that can do your job.
Yeah it's depressing as hell. I guess it's the same thing for artists and musicians and writers.
P.S. I can symphathise with the old house issues! I bought a 1901 terraced property, it's an absolute money pit.
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