3 ms·

and i’ve worked with 1000s of sysadmins, java|python|php|go|javascript developers, network admins, security admins who could be replaced by bash scripts, llms,

and i’ve worked with 1000s of sysadmins, java|python|php|go|javascript developers, network admins, security admins who could be replaced by bash scripts, llms, or even mid-level dbas.

jeltz 2y ago
I assume you exaggerate the numbers but to your point: yes, but these people in my experienced are best replaced with nothing at all since they do more harm than good. Sute, you could replace them with LLMs but what us the point of fucking up your codebase faster for less money? This is my main fear about AI: AI being used to do stupid things more efficiently.
- fragmede 2y ago
  2000/20/50 = 2, or meeting an average of 2 people a week over a 20 year career. Or 9 people a month. So yes, thousands seems too high.
  - olddustytrail 2y ago
    > meeting an average of 2 [incompetent] people a week You clearly have far fewer meetings than I do! :-)
  - anonzzzies 2y ago
    We usually work for 3-5 companies at the same time and we swap one out around every month: we do integrations for our own product and troubleshooting for clients. I meet far more people who should find another quickly per month than 9, including dba's, cto's, devs, secops, decops, managers etc. Currently AI already beats most of them on single one shot tasks but LLMs are not consistent across tasks for the same project; nor are a lot of humans but at the moment better than LLMs. And seeing the progress over the past 2 years; yes they get better at the one shot tasks, amazingly so, but consistency, even in the same conversation is a big issue. They just are not. So humans will win until that is fixed, if it can be. And hallucinating; people bluff about their knowledge too, but they can be corrected and might soak up that knowledge; for LLMs it's not proven it's even possible to fix this.
- swasheck 2y ago
  i was replying to a comment that said they’d worked with “thousands of dba’s (sic)” who were superfluous, so as a rhetorical device, I used their own phrase to make my own point - that being a dba requires a combination of generalized expertise, and specialized domain knowledge. it’s honestly frustrating how much negative publicity a DBA gets in general because they’re cautious and wary because they have to have an eye to the big picture in addition to delivering the specific objective. I have hundreds of examples where I’ve had to teach security admins how to use wireshark to demonstrate that their security policy settings are incorrect. or how many full stack traces I have to deliver to front and developers to demonstrate that the time out on their asynchronous quick search functions are problematic. or how many heat dumps I’ve had to interpret for java developers to demonstrate that they have a memory leak that’s blowing up the app server, which is making the user experience slow. the knee-jerk reaction to simply blame the data layer nearly forces the DBA to be a master of all layers of the stack. my experience is that quality issues from javascript and application code developers are proliferating at a much faster rate than the “dba’s”
  - anonzzzies 2y ago
    Sure, but the article was about dba's. I worked with DBAs first in the 80s; very competent grumpy old white men who would not let you near the systems. Until about 2005, we had to sit with a team of them, have the db changes printed out and discuss why we needed that, pros and cons and discuss the (then Java) application in detail. Often good remarks came back, we went back and forth and it got done. There was somewhere there a transition to cloud and dba's no longer really needed or 18 year old college students don't make bad dba's or we can outsource them etc. I remember close to 2010 sitting at a large european publisher who had a dba team that barely knew databases, let alone the rest of the stack. But yes I agree with your points generally, the rest of the tech staff is often even worse. This article was about dba's and I have and do meet many who shouldn't be ones and who are dangerous. Way too many.

and i’ve worked with 1000s of sysadmins, java|python|php|go|javascript developers, network admins, security admins who could be replaced by bash scripts, llms, or even mid-level dbas.

jeltz 2y ago

I assume you exaggerate the numbers but to your point: yes, but these people in my experienced are best replaced with nothing at all since they do more harm than good. Sute, you could replace them with LLMs but what us the point of fucking up your codebase faster for less money? This is my main fear about AI: AI being used to do stupid things more efficiently.

fragmede 2y ago
2000/20/50 = 2, or meeting an average of 2 people a week over a 20 year career. Or 9 people a month. So yes, thousands seems too high.
- olddustytrail 2y ago
  > meeting an average of 2 [incompetent] people a week You clearly have far fewer meetings than I do! :-)
- anonzzzies 2y ago
  We usually work for 3-5 companies at the same time and we swap one out around every month: we do integrations for our own product and troubleshooting for clients. I meet far more people who should find another quickly per month than 9, including dba's, cto's, devs, secops, decops, managers etc. Currently AI already beats most of them on single one shot tasks but LLMs are not consistent across tasks for the same project; nor are a lot of humans but at the moment better than LLMs. And seeing the progress over the past 2 years; yes they get better at the one shot tasks, amazingly so, but consistency, even in the same conversation is a big issue. They just are not. So humans will win until that is fixed, if it can be. And hallucinating; people bluff about their knowledge too, but they can be corrected and might soak up that knowledge; for LLMs it's not proven it's even possible to fix this.
swasheck 2y ago
i was replying to a comment that said they’d worked with “thousands of dba’s (sic)” who were superfluous, so as a rhetorical device, I used their own phrase to make my own point - that being a dba requires a combination of generalized expertise, and specialized domain knowledge. it’s honestly frustrating how much negative publicity a DBA gets in general because they’re cautious and wary because they have to have an eye to the big picture in addition to delivering the specific objective. I have hundreds of examples where I’ve had to teach security admins how to use wireshark to demonstrate that their security policy settings are incorrect. or how many full stack traces I have to deliver to front and developers to demonstrate that the time out on their asynchronous quick search functions are problematic. or how many heat dumps I’ve had to interpret for java developers to demonstrate that they have a memory leak that’s blowing up the app server, which is making the user experience slow. the knee-jerk reaction to simply blame the data layer nearly forces the DBA to be a master of all layers of the stack. my experience is that quality issues from javascript and application code developers are proliferating at a much faster rate than the “dba’s”
- anonzzzies 2y ago
  Sure, but the article was about dba's. I worked with DBAs first in the 80s; very competent grumpy old white men who would not let you near the systems. Until about 2005, we had to sit with a team of them, have the db changes printed out and discuss why we needed that, pros and cons and discuss the (then Java) application in detail. Often good remarks came back, we went back and forth and it got done. There was somewhere there a transition to cloud and dba's no longer really needed or 18 year old college students don't make bad dba's or we can outsource them etc. I remember close to 2010 sitting at a large european publisher who had a dba team that barely knew databases, let alone the rest of the stack. But yes I agree with your points generally, the rest of the tech staff is often even worse. This article was about dba's and I have and do meet many who shouldn't be ones and who are dangerous. Way too many.