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> Software is still heavily rate-limited by how much of it developers can write Hmm. We have very different experiences here. IME, the vast majority of industr

> Software is still heavily rate-limited by how much of it developers can write Hmm. We have very different experiences here. IME, the vast majority of industry work is understanding, tweaking, and integrating existing software. There is very little "software writing" as a percentage of the total time developers spend doing their jobs across industry. That is the collective myth the industry uses to make the job seem more appealing and creative than it is. At least, this is my experience in the large FAANG type companies. We already have so much code. Just figuring out what that code does and what else to do with it constitutes the majority of the work. There is a huge legibility issue where relatively simple things are obstructed by the morass of complexity many layers deep. A huge additional fraction of time is spent on deployments and monitoring. A very small fraction of the work is creatively developing new software. For example, one person will creatively develop the interface and overall design for a new cloud service. The vast majority of work after that point is spent on integration, monitoring, testing, releases, and so on. The largest task of AI here would be understanding what is going on at both the technical layer and the fuzzy human layer on top. If it can only do #1, then knowledge workers will still spend a lot of effort doing #2 and figuring out how to turn insights from #1 into cashflow.

Clubber 3y ago
>At least, this is my experience in the large FAANG type companies. We already have so much code. Just figuring out what that code does and what else to do with it constitutes the majority of the work. That sounds horrible. I've always sought out smaller companies that need stuff built. It certainly doesn't pay as much as SV companies but it's pretty stimulating. Sometimes being a big fish in a small pond is pretty nice. IMO, maintaining someone else's code is probably the worst type of programming job there is, especially if it's bad /disjointed code. A lot of people can make a good living doing it though. It would be nice if AI could alleviate the pain of learning and figuring out a gnarly codebase.
- aibot923 3y ago
  Yep. It's not very satisfying, but that's the state of things. I think we should be more honest as an industry about that. Most of the content that prospective SWEs look at has a self-marketing slant that makes things look more interesting than they typically are. The reality is far more mundane. Or worse: micromanaging, pressure-driven, and abusive in many places.

Clubber 3y ago

>At least, this is my experience in the large FAANG type companies. We already have so much code. Just figuring out what that code does and what else to do with it constitutes the majority of the work. That sounds horrible. I've always sought out smaller companies that need stuff built. It certainly doesn't pay as much as SV companies but it's pretty stimulating. Sometimes being a big fish in a small pond is pretty nice. IMO, maintaining someone else's code is probably the worst type of programming job there is, especially if it's bad /disjointed code. A lot of people can make a good living doing it though. It would be nice if AI could alleviate the pain of learning and figuring out a gnarly codebase.

aibot923 3y ago
Yep. It's not very satisfying, but that's the state of things. I think we should be more honest as an industry about that. Most of the content that prospective SWEs look at has a self-marketing slant that makes things look more interesting than they typically are. The reality is far more mundane. Or worse: micromanaging, pressure-driven, and abusive in many places.