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The context here is super-important - the commenter is the author of Redis. So, a super-experienced and productive low-level programmer. It’s not surprising tha

The context here is super-important - the commenter is the author of Redis. So, a super-experienced and productive low-level programmer. It’s not surprising that Staff-plus experts find LLMs much less useful. Though I’d be interested if this was an opinion on “help me write this gnarly C algorithm” or “help me to be productive in <new language>” as I find a big productivity increase from the latter.

JambalayaJimbo 2y ago
Why would the author of Redis describe himself as “not a programmer”? That’s a little odd.
- harrisi 2y ago
  They didn't. EDIT: antirez is the creator of redis, not mvkel.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
duggan 2y ago
antirez is clearly going to be “Staff-plus” for almost any definition. Can you clarify what you mean?
- cj 2y ago
  (Not original commenter) “Staff” engineer is typically one of the most senior and highest paid engineer titles in very large tech company. “Staff plus” is implying they are the best of the best.
  - sarchertech 2y ago
    Staff plus just means staff or higher. Staff, senior staff, principal, mega ultra principal etc…
    - cj 2y ago
      Outside of big tech, those titles aren’t common. Level X SWE vs staff vs principal doesn’t mean anything to a lot of people who aren’t in that orbit.
      - SoftTalker 2y ago
        Yes when I started working, "staff" meant entry-level. My first job out of school was a "staff consultant." So I'm always tripped up when I see "staff" used to mean "very senior/experienced"
        lynguist 2y ago
        Senior also somehow changed from meaning 10 years of experience to only 3 years of experience.
      - sarchertech 2y ago
        Sure, but my point is when someone says staff plus they mean staff or higher. They don’t mean higher than staff, or the best of the best staff engineers. It just means anyone higher than a senior engineer.
  - manmal 2y ago
    I’ve seen your comment below, but you did specify big tech as context in this parent comment, no? Or is „very large tech company“ not FAANG? Google has Staff at L6, and their ladder goes up to L11. Apple‘s Staff pendant is ICT5, which is below ICT6 and Distinguished. Amazon has E7-E9 above Staff, if you count E6 as Staff. Netflix very recently departed from their flat hierarchy and even they have Principal above Staff.
    - lr1970 2y ago
      > Amazon has E7-E9 above Staff Few clarifications: Amazon labels levels with "L" rather than "E". Engineering levels are L4 -- L10. Weirdly enough, level L9 does not exist at Amazon. L8 (Director / Senior Principal Engineer) is promoted directly to L10 (VP / Distinguished Engineer)
antirez 2y ago
Quick example. I was implementing dot product between two quantized vectors that have two different min/max quantization ranges (later I changed the implementation to just centered range quantization, thanks to Claude and what I'm writing in this comment). I wanted to still have the math with the integers and adjust for the ranges at the end. Claude was able to mathematically scompose the operations as multiplication and accumulation of a sum of integers and later adjust the result, using a math trick that I didn't know but was understandable after having seen it. This way I was able to benchmark this implementation understanding that my old centered quantization was not less precise in practice and faster (I can multiply integers without taking the sum, and later fix for the square of the range factor). I'd do it without LLMs but probably I would not try at all because of the time needed. Other examples: Claude was able multiple times to spot bugs in my C code, when I asked for a code review. All bugs I would eventually find but that it's better to fix ASAP. Finally sometimes I put relevant papers and implementations and ask for variations of a given algoritm among the paper and the implementations around, to gain insights about what people do in the practice. Then engage in discussions about how to improve it. It is never able to come up with novel ideas but is able to recognize often times when my idea is flawed or if it seems sounding. All this and more helps me to deliver better code. I can venture in things I otherwise would not do for lack of time.
- YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago
  >> scompose the operations I wonder whether that is some specialised terminology I'm not familiar with - or it just means to decompose the operations (but with an Italian s- for negation)?
  - antirez 2y ago
    Decompose indeed :)
- beoberha 2y ago
  LLMs being able to detect bugs in my own code is absolutely mind blowing to me. These things are “just” predicting the next token, but somehow are able to take in code that has never been written before and somehow understand it and find what’s wrong with it. I think I’m more amazed by them because I know how they work. They shouldn’t be able to do this, but the fact that they can is absolutely jaw dropping science fiction shit.
tyre 2y ago
antirez has written publicly, only a few weeks ago[0], about their experience working with LLMs. Partial quote: > And now, at the end of 2024, I’m finally seeing incredible results in the field, things that looked like sci-fi a few years ago are now possible: Claude AI is my reasoning / editor / coding partner lately. I’m able to accomplish a lot more than I was able to do in the past. I often do more work because of AI, but I do better work. >… > Basically, AI didn’t replace me, AI accelerated me or improved me with feedback about my work [0]: https://antirez.com/news/144 https://antirez.com/news/144
chikere232 2y ago
You should worry though if a helpful tool only seems to do a good job in areas you don't know well yourself. It's quite possible that the tool always does a bad job, but you can only tell when you know what a good job looks like.
dicytea 2y ago
I don't understand, you're replying in a thread where that very - super-experienced and productive low-level programmer - is talking about how he finds LLMs useful.
Ferret7446 2y ago
I think that is more that a staff-plus engineer is going to be doing a lot more management than "actual work", and LLMs don't help much with management yet (until we get viable LLM managers shudder). LLMs are like a pretty smart but overly confident junior engineer, which is what a senior engineer usually has to work with anyway. An expert actually benefits more from LLMs because they know when they get an answer back that is wrong so they can edit the prompt to maybe get a better answer back. They also have a generally better idea of what to ask. A novice is likely to get back convincing but incorrect answers.
scarface_74 2y ago
I know of no “staff plus” engineer (currently staff) that is spending a lot of time coding. That wouldn’t be “working at your level” at the one BigTech company I’ve worked at and not even at the 600 person company I work at now

JambalayaJimbo 2y ago

Why would the author of Redis describe himself as “not a programmer”? That’s a little odd.

harrisi 2y ago
They didn't. EDIT: antirez is the creator of redis, not mvkel.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

duggan 2y ago

antirez is clearly going to be “Staff-plus” for almost any definition. Can you clarify what you mean?

cj 2y ago
(Not original commenter) “Staff” engineer is typically one of the most senior and highest paid engineer titles in very large tech company. “Staff plus” is implying they are the best of the best.
- sarchertech 2y ago
  Staff plus just means staff or higher. Staff, senior staff, principal, mega ultra principal etc…
  - cj 2y ago
    Outside of big tech, those titles aren’t common. Level X SWE vs staff vs principal doesn’t mean anything to a lot of people who aren’t in that orbit.
    - SoftTalker 2y ago
      Yes when I started working, "staff" meant entry-level. My first job out of school was a "staff consultant." So I'm always tripped up when I see "staff" used to mean "very senior/experienced"
      - lynguist 2y ago
        Senior also somehow changed from meaning 10 years of experience to only 3 years of experience.
    - sarchertech 2y ago
      Sure, but my point is when someone says staff plus they mean staff or higher. They don’t mean higher than staff, or the best of the best staff engineers. It just means anyone higher than a senior engineer.
- manmal 2y ago
  I’ve seen your comment below, but you did specify big tech as context in this parent comment, no? Or is „very large tech company“ not FAANG? Google has Staff at L6, and their ladder goes up to L11. Apple‘s Staff pendant is ICT5, which is below ICT6 and Distinguished. Amazon has E7-E9 above Staff, if you count E6 as Staff. Netflix very recently departed from their flat hierarchy and even they have Principal above Staff.
  - lr1970 2y ago
    > Amazon has E7-E9 above Staff Few clarifications: Amazon labels levels with "L" rather than "E". Engineering levels are L4 -- L10. Weirdly enough, level L9 does not exist at Amazon. L8 (Director / Senior Principal Engineer) is promoted directly to L10 (VP / Distinguished Engineer)

antirez 2y ago

Quick example. I was implementing dot product between two quantized vectors that have two different min/max quantization ranges (later I changed the implementation to just centered range quantization, thanks to Claude and what I'm writing in this comment). I wanted to still have the math with the integers and adjust for the ranges at the end. Claude was able to mathematically scompose the operations as multiplication and accumulation of a sum of integers and later adjust the result, using a math trick that I didn't know but was understandable after having seen it. This way I was able to benchmark this implementation understanding that my old centered quantization was not less precise in practice and faster (I can multiply integers without taking the sum, and later fix for the square of the range factor). I'd do it without LLMs but probably I would not try at all because of the time needed. Other examples: Claude was able multiple times to spot bugs in my C code, when I asked for a code review. All bugs I would eventually find but that it's better to fix ASAP. Finally sometimes I put relevant papers and implementations and ask for variations of a given algoritm among the paper and the implementations around, to gain insights about what people do in the practice. Then engage in discussions about how to improve it. It is never able to come up with novel ideas but is able to recognize often times when my idea is flawed or if it seems sounding. All this and more helps me to deliver better code. I can venture in things I otherwise would not do for lack of time.

YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago
>> scompose the operations I wonder whether that is some specialised terminology I'm not familiar with - or it just means to decompose the operations (but with an Italian s- for negation)?
- antirez 2y ago
  Decompose indeed :)
beoberha 2y ago
LLMs being able to detect bugs in my own code is absolutely mind blowing to me. These things are “just” predicting the next token, but somehow are able to take in code that has never been written before and somehow understand it and find what’s wrong with it. I think I’m more amazed by them because I know how they work. They shouldn’t be able to do this, but the fact that they can is absolutely jaw dropping science fiction shit.

tyre 2y ago

antirez has written publicly, only a few weeks ago[0], about their experience working with LLMs. Partial quote: > And now, at the end of 2024, I’m finally seeing incredible results in the field, things that looked like sci-fi a few years ago are now possible: Claude AI is my reasoning / editor / coding partner lately. I’m able to accomplish a lot more than I was able to do in the past. I often do more work because of AI, but I do better work. >… > Basically, AI didn’t replace me, AI accelerated me or improved me with feedback about my work [0]: https://antirez.com/news/144 https://antirez.com/news/144

chikere232 2y ago

You should worry though if a helpful tool only seems to do a good job in areas you don't know well yourself. It's quite possible that the tool always does a bad job, but you can only tell when you know what a good job looks like.

dicytea 2y ago

I don't understand, you're replying in a thread where that very - super-experienced and productive low-level programmer - is talking about how he finds LLMs useful.

Ferret7446 2y ago

I think that is more that a staff-plus engineer is going to be doing a lot more management than "actual work", and LLMs don't help much with management yet (until we get viable LLM managers shudder). LLMs are like a pretty smart but overly confident junior engineer, which is what a senior engineer usually has to work with anyway. An expert actually benefits more from LLMs because they know when they get an answer back that is wrong so they can edit the prompt to maybe get a better answer back. They also have a generally better idea of what to ask. A novice is likely to get back convincing but incorrect answers.

scarface_74 2y ago

I know of no “staff plus” engineer (currently staff) that is spending a lot of time coding. That wouldn’t be “working at your level” at the one BigTech company I’ve worked at and not even at the 600 person company I work at now