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> Now you don’t need to hire junior devs and can just build the product of your dreams with very limited capital. You are overestimating the vast amount of "so

> Now you don’t need to hire junior devs and can just build the product of your dreams with very limited capital. You are overestimating the vast amount of "software engineers" in the world. The overwhelming majority of us are just programmers, we are just gluing together CRUD spaghetti in the random language we grew up with. We don't care too much about work or a career. And most of us don't want to do more, we want to get a decent salary for our boring work. And we certainly do not want to be "solo founders", build products of our dreams or increase our productivity. This way of living feels threatened now.

dopeboy 4y ago
I mean this in the least snarky, most sympathetic way possible: it's time to level up. Countless roles have had to do this, it's now our turn.
- thrown123098 4y ago
  [dead]
- falcor84 4y ago
  This is easy to say, but I would argue that it's impossible to know what to level up in; the field is just moving too quickly now. At this stage, the best advice I could formulate would be to learn LangChain and prompt engineering, but these too are fast moving targets, and who knows what's going to be relevant in 2024?
  - dopeboy 4y ago
    I agree, it is disorienting. I think the best thing one can do is learn how LLMs work, acquaint themselves with real implementations of it (ChatGPT, copilot), and then find ways to integrate these techniques into their companies.
    - asdff 4y ago
      Or that could be a way to end up in the woods. What if you made a bet like this on metaverse being the future? You'd be wishing you hadn't now. Instead, look at the job postings for titles you want. Note the skills in demand at more than one job. Focus on those skills. There's your set of skills the market currently is in demand of.
      - dopeboy 4y ago
        Some of those skills that you see in those job postings today are devaluing due to tools like ChatGPT. Not all those skills and certainly not fundamental ones like communication and leadership. But if you see something like "writing CRUD endpoints for a Rails stack" everywhere, having that skill is no longer a differentiatior. Don't pivot your career. Don't burn the boat and jump into AI. Just be aware of these tools and get good at what they're poor at.
      - namaria 4y ago
        >Instead, look at the job postings for titles you want. Note the skills in demand at more than one job. Focus on those skills While I agree with the sentiment, there is way too much noise in that channel. Job listings written by non-technical people just throwing key words together, recruiters detached from specific roles and companies trying signalling growth to mention just a few sources of confusion...
- godtoldmetodoit 4y ago
  I've been leveling up since I started as a helpdesk rep at 18, becoming a Windows sysadmin, then a junior dev, and now a senior dev. College was not an option for me for reasons totally outside of my control, as my parents decided to not do their taxes for a number of years and I was unable to get any financial aid (grants or loans) whatsoever. I scratched and clawed, read tons of books, blogs, spent extra time polishing features beyond what was needed so I could learn new skills... but now I am a father of two young kids, with a wife. How long am I supposed to put in all this extra work? I'm likely slightly above average intelligence, but I'm far from being at the level where I could be an AI researcher... if I am even capable of doing the kind of math required there, it would require many years of learning. GPT4 isn't going to replace me, but watching this space unfold really has me worrying about the versions that come out over the next 2-5 years. A human is only so moldable, and while I am more than happy to learn new skills, I have no idea where to even start. What profession is safe? Where will the growth be in a field that will have equivalent or even near equivalent earning potential? If GPT ends up getting to the point where it can replace me at my job, I really have a hard time thinking of a career path I could get into at this stage in life. It would need to be able to architect systems at a high level, write code to implement various features, communicate with stakeholders, document design decisions... if it can do that, it can do a whole hell of a lot of other jobs too. Once it gets to that point, I don't think physical jobs will be that far behind on being automated either. We already have robots of all shapes and sizes (including bipedal), the main thing slowing down their deployment is that they aren't adaptable enough. With AGI, that changes. It will take a bit longer due to the capital requirements and factory build outs that would be needed.
  - ilaksh 4y ago
    No jobs will be safe. In the very, very near future. GPT-4 is a very capable systems architect and can also implement the code. There are a few tools available to put it in a debug loop. Writing documents is a walk in the park for GPT-4. Emails or Discord chats or even perfectly realistic voice conversations are completely doable (I have that on my website). At this point it's about connecting things together and looping them properly to automate a very high portion of jobs. I think the answer is not employment but rather production. Think of something you can leverage these AIs that would be interesting or useful to someone else or some business. Beyond that things like UBI and generally better integration of technology into government is going to be critical for our survival. Especially decentralized technologies and real-world resource data.
edgyquant 4y ago
If your goal was to spend the rest of your life doing something you learn once and getting paid well for it you seriously picked the wrong industry. Engineers have been told to constantly learn new things, know multiple languages etc since the dawn of programming. I’ve worked with tons of programmers like you describe. I’ve continued to tell them that simple UIs and CRUd interfaces to dbs are solved problems we should not be fighting with.
- michaelmior 4y ago
  > I’ve continued to tell them that simple UIs and CRUd interfaces to dbs are solved problems we should not be fighting with. Maybe we shouldn't be, but it's still a problem that regularly needs to be solved.
  - Traubenfuchs 4y ago
    ...because of the limitless customization that sneaks into every growing software project. This limitless customization is also my last hope, maybe GPT-n won't be able to solve it as good as I do.
- Traubenfuchs 4y ago
  Which industry would you recommend? I hate studying and I especially hate everything software development related with a passion. In any case, I need to refute your argument, in my work as software engineer spanning more than a decade, I have noticed zero deprecation of my skills (Java, SQL, HTML/JS/CSS) (while keeping them up to date!) until now and only had to learn a few new complementing skills (cloud, docker, SPA, Kubernetes). The only skill that got replaced might have been "Java application server management" since that got replaced by whatever docker runtime is en vogue at the moment. I have worked for the government and met PL1/Cobol mainframe programmers that refused to learn Java and still got paid generously for their long term expertise.
  - edgyquant 4y ago
    I seriously doubt you’re writing the same kind of webapps you were a decade ago, if so you’re a minority. Regardless a decade doesn’t “refute” that the web itself is a total disruption of the way people wrote code prior. This industry is always changing paradigms and were constantly exposing more high level ways to instruct the processor.
muffles 4y ago
> We don't care too much about work or a career. And most of us don't want to do more, we want to get a decent salary for our boring work. Yikes. Productive work is not just a way to earn a living but also a way to achieve personal fulfillment and happiness. It's a means of creating value and contributing to society. A person who works just for the salary and does not find any meaning in his work is not living up to his full potential.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  Maybe not, but they do get to eat, see a doctor, and enjoy some vacation time every now and then. If I could make money doing something I found a lot of meaning in I'd be doing that instead. Thing is, we usually don't have that option.
- agentultra 4y ago
  Yikes. Your full potential isn't your work. We are all creative beings with deep emotional lives and connections to everything around us. And there are a ton of jobs in programming that pay well enough that you can live relatively well in a capitalist society. Some people find fulfillment in their families, neighbours, art, and dreams. How many jobs in modern society are complete bullshit? A good deal of them, I would say. Why should people measure their happiness and self worth from these?
  - muffles 4y ago
    I'm not suggesting your work is the only source of fulfillment or that one's career should be the sole measure of their self-worth. Rather, the importance of finding value and meaning in one's work is a complementary means of achieving personal fulfillment and happiness. It is still possible to find value and meaning in jobs that do not align with a person's interests or passions. The key is to find a balance between work and other aspects of life.
    - Traubenfuchs 4y ago
      > Rather, the importance of finding value and meaning in one's work is a complementary means of achieving personal fulfillment and happiness. I wholeheartedly agree! I do know a few people that love their jobs and I envy them to no end, they are inspiring, shining suns. But I remain firm on my opinion that this is far out of reach for most people.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
Personally I'm excited whenever an opportunity to wholesale replace a part of my job comes up. I got in to technology because I wanted to make people's lives better, and in theory removing demands on their time does that. The only problem is that we live in a system that directs the gains upward and any costs downwards, and in so doing creates perverse incentives against people welcoming their redundancy.
Arubis 4y ago
Hard agree. Like sibling commenters, I love the idea of building something new with greater leverage. On an individual level, I'm looking forward to leveling up and finding new ways to be effective in my work. Unlike sibling commenters, I don't think that should be our only option in life. It saddens me greatly that, given a new option to increase the effective output of a unit of time, we repeatedly choose as a society to profit monetarily (and with vast disparity in who benefits) rather than to give people more options in life than drilling on their jobs. The industrial revolution promised people lives of relative leisure by replacing the need for much physical labor, but instead we concentrated the benefit to the few—and we keep making that same choice over and over.
programmarchy 4y ago
As a "software engineer", it's frustrating to work with the people you describe: people who "don't care too much". I'm looking forward to the purge.

dopeboy 4y ago

I mean this in the least snarky, most sympathetic way possible: it's time to level up. Countless roles have had to do this, it's now our turn.

thrown123098 4y ago
[dead]
falcor84 4y ago
This is easy to say, but I would argue that it's impossible to know what to level up in; the field is just moving too quickly now. At this stage, the best advice I could formulate would be to learn LangChain and prompt engineering, but these too are fast moving targets, and who knows what's going to be relevant in 2024?
- dopeboy 4y ago
  I agree, it is disorienting. I think the best thing one can do is learn how LLMs work, acquaint themselves with real implementations of it (ChatGPT, copilot), and then find ways to integrate these techniques into their companies.
  - asdff 4y ago
    Or that could be a way to end up in the woods. What if you made a bet like this on metaverse being the future? You'd be wishing you hadn't now. Instead, look at the job postings for titles you want. Note the skills in demand at more than one job. Focus on those skills. There's your set of skills the market currently is in demand of.
    - dopeboy 4y ago
      Some of those skills that you see in those job postings today are devaluing due to tools like ChatGPT. Not all those skills and certainly not fundamental ones like communication and leadership. But if you see something like "writing CRUD endpoints for a Rails stack" everywhere, having that skill is no longer a differentiatior. Don't pivot your career. Don't burn the boat and jump into AI. Just be aware of these tools and get good at what they're poor at.
    - namaria 4y ago
      >Instead, look at the job postings for titles you want. Note the skills in demand at more than one job. Focus on those skills While I agree with the sentiment, there is way too much noise in that channel. Job listings written by non-technical people just throwing key words together, recruiters detached from specific roles and companies trying signalling growth to mention just a few sources of confusion...
godtoldmetodoit 4y ago
I've been leveling up since I started as a helpdesk rep at 18, becoming a Windows sysadmin, then a junior dev, and now a senior dev. College was not an option for me for reasons totally outside of my control, as my parents decided to not do their taxes for a number of years and I was unable to get any financial aid (grants or loans) whatsoever. I scratched and clawed, read tons of books, blogs, spent extra time polishing features beyond what was needed so I could learn new skills... but now I am a father of two young kids, with a wife. How long am I supposed to put in all this extra work? I'm likely slightly above average intelligence, but I'm far from being at the level where I could be an AI researcher... if I am even capable of doing the kind of math required there, it would require many years of learning. GPT4 isn't going to replace me, but watching this space unfold really has me worrying about the versions that come out over the next 2-5 years. A human is only so moldable, and while I am more than happy to learn new skills, I have no idea where to even start. What profession is safe? Where will the growth be in a field that will have equivalent or even near equivalent earning potential? If GPT ends up getting to the point where it can replace me at my job, I really have a hard time thinking of a career path I could get into at this stage in life. It would need to be able to architect systems at a high level, write code to implement various features, communicate with stakeholders, document design decisions... if it can do that, it can do a whole hell of a lot of other jobs too. Once it gets to that point, I don't think physical jobs will be that far behind on being automated either. We already have robots of all shapes and sizes (including bipedal), the main thing slowing down their deployment is that they aren't adaptable enough. With AGI, that changes. It will take a bit longer due to the capital requirements and factory build outs that would be needed.
- ilaksh 4y ago
  No jobs will be safe. In the very, very near future. GPT-4 is a very capable systems architect and can also implement the code. There are a few tools available to put it in a debug loop. Writing documents is a walk in the park for GPT-4. Emails or Discord chats or even perfectly realistic voice conversations are completely doable (I have that on my website). At this point it's about connecting things together and looping them properly to automate a very high portion of jobs. I think the answer is not employment but rather production. Think of something you can leverage these AIs that would be interesting or useful to someone else or some business. Beyond that things like UBI and generally better integration of technology into government is going to be critical for our survival. Especially decentralized technologies and real-world resource data.

edgyquant 4y ago

If your goal was to spend the rest of your life doing something you learn once and getting paid well for it you seriously picked the wrong industry. Engineers have been told to constantly learn new things, know multiple languages etc since the dawn of programming. I’ve worked with tons of programmers like you describe. I’ve continued to tell them that simple UIs and CRUd interfaces to dbs are solved problems we should not be fighting with.

michaelmior 4y ago
> I’ve continued to tell them that simple UIs and CRUd interfaces to dbs are solved problems we should not be fighting with. Maybe we shouldn't be, but it's still a problem that regularly needs to be solved.
- Traubenfuchs 4y ago
  ...because of the limitless customization that sneaks into every growing software project. This limitless customization is also my last hope, maybe GPT-n won't be able to solve it as good as I do.
Traubenfuchs 4y ago
Which industry would you recommend? I hate studying and I especially hate everything software development related with a passion. In any case, I need to refute your argument, in my work as software engineer spanning more than a decade, I have noticed zero deprecation of my skills (Java, SQL, HTML/JS/CSS) (while keeping them up to date!) until now and only had to learn a few new complementing skills (cloud, docker, SPA, Kubernetes). The only skill that got replaced might have been "Java application server management" since that got replaced by whatever docker runtime is en vogue at the moment. I have worked for the government and met PL1/Cobol mainframe programmers that refused to learn Java and still got paid generously for their long term expertise.
- edgyquant 4y ago
  I seriously doubt you’re writing the same kind of webapps you were a decade ago, if so you’re a minority. Regardless a decade doesn’t “refute” that the web itself is a total disruption of the way people wrote code prior. This industry is always changing paradigms and were constantly exposing more high level ways to instruct the processor.

muffles 4y ago

> We don't care too much about work or a career. And most of us don't want to do more, we want to get a decent salary for our boring work. Yikes. Productive work is not just a way to earn a living but also a way to achieve personal fulfillment and happiness. It's a means of creating value and contributing to society. A person who works just for the salary and does not find any meaning in his work is not living up to his full potential.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
Maybe not, but they do get to eat, see a doctor, and enjoy some vacation time every now and then. If I could make money doing something I found a lot of meaning in I'd be doing that instead. Thing is, we usually don't have that option.
agentultra 4y ago
Yikes. Your full potential isn't your work. We are all creative beings with deep emotional lives and connections to everything around us. And there are a ton of jobs in programming that pay well enough that you can live relatively well in a capitalist society. Some people find fulfillment in their families, neighbours, art, and dreams. How many jobs in modern society are complete bullshit? A good deal of them, I would say. Why should people measure their happiness and self worth from these?
- muffles 4y ago
  I'm not suggesting your work is the only source of fulfillment or that one's career should be the sole measure of their self-worth. Rather, the importance of finding value and meaning in one's work is a complementary means of achieving personal fulfillment and happiness. It is still possible to find value and meaning in jobs that do not align with a person's interests or passions. The key is to find a balance between work and other aspects of life.
  - Traubenfuchs 4y ago
    > Rather, the importance of finding value and meaning in one's work is a complementary means of achieving personal fulfillment and happiness. I wholeheartedly agree! I do know a few people that love their jobs and I envy them to no end, they are inspiring, shining suns. But I remain firm on my opinion that this is far out of reach for most people.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago

Personally I'm excited whenever an opportunity to wholesale replace a part of my job comes up. I got in to technology because I wanted to make people's lives better, and in theory removing demands on their time does that. The only problem is that we live in a system that directs the gains upward and any costs downwards, and in so doing creates perverse incentives against people welcoming their redundancy.

Arubis 4y ago

Hard agree. Like sibling commenters, I love the idea of building something new with greater leverage. On an individual level, I'm looking forward to leveling up and finding new ways to be effective in my work. Unlike sibling commenters, I don't think that should be our only option in life. It saddens me greatly that, given a new option to increase the effective output of a unit of time, we repeatedly choose as a society to profit monetarily (and with vast disparity in who benefits) rather than to give people more options in life than drilling on their jobs. The industrial revolution promised people lives of relative leisure by replacing the need for much physical labor, but instead we concentrated the benefit to the few—and we keep making that same choice over and over.

programmarchy 4y ago

As a "software engineer", it's frustrating to work with the people you describe: people who "don't care too much". I'm looking forward to the purge.