3 ms·

I had a corporate gig as a coder reporting to at most three economists at any one time. I spent at least two hours of every day getting them to explain what the

I had a corporate gig as a coder reporting to at most three economists at any one time. I spent at least two hours of every day getting them to explain what they wanted, explaining the implications of what they were asking for, explaining the results of the code to them, etc. So even if I didn't need to code at all my efficiency would have expanded by at most a factor of 4.

ALittleLight 5y ago
The future as I see it is that coding will become a relatively trivial skill. The economists would each know how to code and that would remove you from the equation. They would implement whatever thing they were trying to do themselves. This would scale to support any number of economists. This would also be a simpler model and that simplicity might lead to a better product. In your model, the economists must explain to you, then you must write the code. That adds a layer where errors could happen - you misunderstand the economists or they explain poorly or you forget or whatever. If the economists could implement things themselves - less room for "telephone" type errors. This would also allow the economists to prototype, experiment, and iterate faster.
- Jeff_Brown 5y ago
  That game of telephone is certainly an enormous pain point, and I can imagine a future where I'm out of a job -- but it's extremely hard for me to see them learning to code.
  - zerd 5y ago
    And if what the economists needed to do could be programmed trivially with the help of AI then their job is probably also replaceable by AI.
    - Jeff_Brown 5y ago
      That would be harder. I shuffled data into a new form; they wrote papers. All I had to understand was what they wanted, and how to get there; they had to understand enough of the world to argue that a given natural experiment showed drug X was an effective treatment for condition Y.

3 ms·

I had a corporate gig as a coder reporting to at most three economists at any one time. I spent at least two hours of every day getting them to explain what the

by Jeff_Brown 5y ago

ALittleLight 5y ago
The future as I see it is that coding will become a relatively trivial skill. The economists would each know how to code and that would remove you from the equation. They would implement whatever thing they were trying to do themselves. This would scale to support any number of economists. This would also be a simpler model and that simplicity might lead to a better product. In your model, the economists must explain to you, then you must write the code. That adds a layer where errors could happen - you misunderstand the economists or they explain poorly or you forget or whatever. If the economists could implement things themselves - less room for "telephone" type errors. This would also allow the economists to prototype, experiment, and iterate faster.
- Jeff_Brown 5y ago
  That game of telephone is certainly an enormous pain point, and I can imagine a future where I'm out of a job -- but it's extremely hard for me to see them learning to code.
  - zerd 5y ago
    And if what the economists needed to do could be programmed trivially with the help of AI then their job is probably also replaceable by AI.
    - Jeff_Brown 5y ago
      That would be harder. I shuffled data into a new form; they wrote papers. All I had to understand was what they wanted, and how to get there; they had to understand enough of the world to argue that a given natural experiment showed drug X was an effective treatment for condition Y.