11 ms·

Career Advice in 2025

307 points by herbertl 2y ago

rakejake 2y ago
"decision-makers can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent" - Very correct. Whether or not AI actually comes for your job, the fact that enough people at the top think so is enough to cause trouble.
- from-nibly 2y ago
  This is the problem. Right now we're not in the, I need AI to work or get out stage. We're in the AI might completely upend reality stage. It's just people telling stories to find bigger fools. Like the ads claiming they sell an AI employee that never needs sleep and never talks back. Those ads are the same thing as those ads shoved in the lawn near the mcdonnalds drive through that look like they were drawn with sharpie, but are really mass printed. "Real estate investor looking for pupil, trade my money" kind of stuff. They are purposefully looking for suckers that would overlook the sketchyness. They don't want normal people applying, that reduces the pitches effectiveness. Only desperate people who will fall for anything.
- faizshah 2y ago
  Same is true for remote work. All the engineers know the return to work policies are dumb but all the decision makers have decided we’re all wrong.
  - __loam 2y ago
    Based on their own gut.
  - jes5199 2y ago
    then why don’t they co-locate teams when they get RTO’d? I keep hearing about people who have to go sit in a mandatory hot desk but are still stuck on Zoom all day. Seems like the worst of both worlds
    - klodolph 2y ago
      It’s ordinary corporate dysfunction. The mandates come top-down. People in management don’t think too hard about exceptions. The people making decisions are far-removed from the consequences of their decisions.
      - mulmen 2y ago
        It’s not really an exception though. These are the same people who spent the last 20 years singing the praises of offshoring and follow-the-sun. It’s just trend chasing. Honestly I think the mistake we made was calling it “work from home” instead of “telecommuting”.
        hosteur 2y ago
        > Honestly I think the mistake we made was calling it “work from home” instead of “telecommuting”. I am curious. Why do you think calling it telecommuting would have made any significant difference? And what difference would it have made? Where do you imagine we would be today if more people referred to it with that word?
        0hijinks 2y ago
        My drive-by opinion: "telecommuting" has an advantage in optics/marketing and flexibility over "work from home" for both business leaders and employees. If I tell a board of directors or shareholders that "80% of our workforce performs some fraction of their weekly tasks ______", I imagine the following: - "from home" elicits images of relaxation and lost productivity, while "via telecommuting" sounds like a commute still takes place and work is just as productive - "from home" sounds like retreating to a comfort zone, while "via telecommuting" sounds like embracing a new technology or skill - "from home" sounds like remote workers ought to be performing their tasks from their domicile only, while "via telecommuting" sounds like remote workers can do their work wherever they are If businesses had adopted "telecommuting" terminology, I believe business leaders would not feel obligated to push back in order to regain productivity. I think it's easier to attack the trend of WFH given the points above. I actually agree with the proposal that WFH is a weak terminology, but had never sat down and thought about it before. From the perspective of initial adoption, I think it would have happened just as fast. Workers were thrust into remote work arrangements during COVID, and everyone would have quickly gotten the gist of what "telecommuting" means, so it would have been the new buzzword to attract talent in job listings just as "remote" or "work from home" have been. Just without the downsides in CEO perception.
  - from-nibly 2y ago
    RTOs generally have nothing to do with any of the things they say. They are just layoffs. You can't argue with them about the effectiveness of remote work. They aren't trying to optimize work. They are trying to fire people. Working from home doesn't fire people, being more productive and happy doesn't fire people. Your mental well being doesn't have any bearing on how many people they need to fire.
- nextts 2y ago
  We are still doing scrum-like stuff after all. And they are dragging people back to the office. Decision makers have billions at their disposal to be inefficient with.
- SwtCyber 2y ago
  Exactly. It’s less about whether AI can replace certain jobs and more about the fact that companies are making decisions as if it will. That alone reshapes hiring, budgets, and job security
- pjmorris 2y ago
  A non-technical friend was asking about the prospects of AI 'taking over' jobs. I told him that I'm less worried about 'Skynet' than I am about 'Slopnet', where bad takes on the applications of 'AI' just make life harder for all of us. That'll come more from decision-maker irrationality than from the tech itself.
adamtaylor_13 2y ago
I started my own business last year that has happened to go quite well. As I’ve watched the software industry over the last year, all I can think is… “damn, what lucky timing.”
- leetrout 2y ago
  I keep looking for what you claim to be doing. I feel like reality continues to smack me in the face with “no one cares about quality”. I have tried big enterprises. I have tried 8 startups in 18 years. I watch the leaders / founders make the same mistakes over and over. Anyway - your profile resonates with me. Would love to grab a virtual coffee if you are up for it.
  - stogot 2y ago
    Could you share the mistakes they are making repeatedly?
    - leetrout 2y ago
      In no particular order: Quality seems completely lost as a goal in any shop. See Demming and Peopleware. In very general terms: "founder mode" is more often than not toxic because it is taken out of context and used to scapegoat being an asshole. Much like the Steve Jobs worshipping of yesteryear. Lack of financial oversight by board/investors including founders putting up company money for personal investments including moving money into personal accounts to try and inflate their credit ratings. Non-VC startup: lack of preparing for a future where income is reduced for a period of time and keeping some amount of business savings around VC startup: lack of appropriate fund handling given the assumption that the money machine will always be there Hurting all option holders by removing the ability to exercise early or ruining their exit with poor financial stewardship including down rounds or bridge rounds Always time to fix it later vs taking the time to plan and execute correctly in the first place. This is a relative scale of time to market and risk to opportunity cost but with the exception of large events like tradeshows or such a few more weeks to get it right is better than hobbling along with literally millions of dollars of technical debt if success is found. And re:tradeshows - demoware is the name of the game and sales needs to be onboard with eng that demoware is demoware and what to sell ahead of the product Lack of clear execution plan as product market fit is found and everyone has been acting in "throw shit on the wall to see what sticks" mode General lack of discipline to keep things orderly as work is done which is a failure to understand systems and second / third order effects. Speed is a lagging indicator not a leading one. Everyone wants more, faster but then fails to slow down to put process in place to facilitate moving faster. Not growing teams appropriately. Lots of lack of empathy, poor hiring practices, abysmal firing practices. Lots of tolerance of "smart assholes" in small teams when leadership only cares about P/L and so the toxicity grows.
Zee2 2y ago
The statement >The current market doesn’t value those skills particularly highly, but instead prioritizes a different set of skills: working in the details, pushing pace, and navigating the technology transition to foundational models / LLMs. depends on the assumption that technology must "transition" to "foundational models / LLMs". The author doesn't seem to interrogate this assumption. In fact, most of the career malaise I've seen in my work is based on the assumption that, for one reason or another, technologists "must transition" to this new world of LLMs. I wish people would start by interrogating this bizarre backwards assumption (ie., - damn the end product! Damn the users! It must contain AI!) before framing career discussions around it. However, >decision-makers can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent is unfortunately painfully true.
- __loam 2y ago
  Think about what you're asking when you tell these people to interrogate the assumption that LLM based AIs are going to be the dominant technology going forward. Hundreds of billions, the growth of the technology industry, the entire US stock market, and the global economy has been wagered on this technology. Imagine the turmoil when those in power realize the reality of what they're betting the farm on.
  - bayarearefugee 2y ago
    The next time I am angrily typing to claude 3.7 in all caps because he overengineered a bunch of code I didn't even ask him to write in the first place, I'll be sure to let him know his continued failures are risking the entire world economy.
    - __loam 2y ago
      You can be as snarky as you want but the reality is we're years deep into a market cycle that has seen a tremendous amount of capex with very little visible return. How much more productive do you think claude makes you as compared to Google or Stack Overflow? 15%? 50%? 200? Do you think that's enough to satisfy the market or are we all trading on unrealistic expectations? Do you think shareholders are going to like it that they're losing billions a quarter so Anthropic can run a service that helps you write web dev projects marginally faster? Do you even understand the amount of value that's tied up in these questions having a good answer right now?
tibbar 2y ago
Some more free advice, in no particular order: * Try to get at least one job offer every year, even if you don't accept it. * Look at the requirements for your dream job and figure out what you need to learn to qualify. * Pick one skill and get very good at it. Spend an hour a day on it for a year. * Steer away from skills like web development that are clearly getting eaten by LLMs. * Look for work in major U.S. tech hubs like the Bay Area. Pay is better and network effects are strong, so your next job will be easier to get.
- breput 2y ago
  > Look for work in major U.S. tech hubs like the Bay Area. Pay is better and network effects are strong, so your next job will be easier to get. Jobs and the network effects happen all across the country. As you get older and maybe don't want the grind, or have a family, or just want a better work/life balance, this will become apparent. Basically, always have at least two people who will support you for your next job.
  - tibbar 2y ago
    There are plenty of tech hubs besides the Bay Area, that's for sure. But I can tell you that when I moved from a small company in a small economy to a moderately-well known startup in the Bay, the rate at which recruiters contacted me jumped from maybe a few times a year to multiple times per week. And after a few years, many of my coworkers started their own companies and invited me to join them. By contrast, I have very talented friends who did not make the jump to work at a tech hub, and they don't have the same kind of network or opportunities. With that said, I very much agree with you about wanting work life balance, making sure there are people who will support you in your next job, etc. However, I think that this is much easier to optimize for when you do have an established career and an extensive network already.
    - breput 2y ago
      I didn't mean to nullify your experience. You've undeniably right about how there have been spheres of influence where people and capital come together. Every area of the United States has some kind of forced name of "Silicon *" for a reason. I just don't think this will be true in the future. Move where you want to, maybe have to work harder to break through, but that was also true in the Valley.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
flamboyant_ride 2y ago
> decision-makers can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent Feels definitely true. I wish ICs had much more agency. Wish there was something actionable even as a small step (which I don't think is there on the article). Having been laid off due to unclear reasons, can't help but think the same could happen in my next prospective job (if I get one in this market that is) and there's nothing I could do about it.
advael 2y ago
I get why someone would want to tell people this, but I think it fails to be advice, as it describes the current state of affairs without much actual guidance for how to do better in it Which, to be fair, no one really seems to be able to answer that meaningfully
- n_ary 2y ago
  The real answer is, leaders chase trends, so to keep them satisfied you need to also chase trends. Some advises can be: * learn prompt engineering to impress your boss and next employer * adapt AI IDE at work, of course don’t go for cline or freemium ones, go for max expensive tier of Cursor/Windsurf/v0 etc * Take some expensive(more the better) courses and workshops on Agentic topics, build some small projects. Justify your expenditure by citing being more well prepared for AI transition and adapting to new paradigm to strategically beat the competition businesses who will be extinct without employees with such trainings * build some proof of concept projects to convert the smaller trivial projects to use agentic workflow. Then show these to your boss and put these up on github for future reference * learn to train smaller models on your own internal documents, build a chat interface on top and give access to your boss(trust me, they will be blown away and will sell this to their superior) * seed fear in your colleagues’ minds by using AI stuff where possible Think of this AI as a new trend we must adapt to, just like FE moved from jQuery to React. Life and work goes on, just this wave nudges the complacent bunch to finally get out of their comfort zone and learn something new or get left out.
  - tonyedgecombe 2y ago
    >seed fear in your colleagues’ minds by using AI stuff where possible You mean make them terrified of debugging your code after you have moved on?
  - stogot 2y ago
    Watch your boss file you for training a model on internal documents without permission
  - Havoc 2y ago
    > seed fear in your colleagues’ minds Jikes
SwtCyber 2y ago
The shift in what's valued (moving from team-building and hiring prowess to sheer execution speed and adaptability) has been stark. It's also unsettling to see so many senior folks feeling -left behind- not because they lack skills, but because the rules of the game have changed so quickly...
diordiderot 2y ago
> Steer away from skills like web development that are clearly getting eaten by LLMs. There's a slim chance that frontend work runs into Jevons paradox. Rather than churning out simpler interfaces faster, the complexity will grow. More 3D sites, MR, etc
apwell23 2y ago
> Many companies that were stable, durable market leaders are now in tenuous positions because foundational models threaten to erode their advantage. uh.. which companies are these ? Chegg?
axpy906 2y ago
The blog confused me. The author opens with senior leaders but does not distinguish between ic and managers. That is a very important difference and the way they are written is somewhat interchangeable at the start but I don’t think that’s necessarily correct. Managers and senior ics are both facing unique challenges now. However, they are very different and don’t have a lot in common. For me, as a senior ic, it’s having the right skills and staying afloat in this challenging environment. For the middle managers, from what I can see, it’s not being redundant as Mark Cuban recently pointed out.
thor_molecules 2y ago
> Many people who first entered senior roles in 2010-2020 are finding current roles a lot less fun. This resonates with me. I find that the current crop of new tech (AI) produces a lot of cognitive dissonance for me in my day-to-day work. Most initiatives/projects/whatever around AI seems to be of the "digging your own grave" variety - making tools to replace software engineers. Definitely not fun.
jll29 2y ago
> managers were generally evaluated in that period based on their ability to hire, retain and motivate teams. The current market doesn’t value those skills particularly highly, but instead prioritizes a different set of skills: working in the details, pushing pace, and navigating the technology transition to foundational models / LLMs. This means many members of the current crop of senior leaders are either worse at the skills they currently need to succeed, or are less motivated by those activities. Either way, they’re having less fun. Don't geeks enjoy playing with LLMs much more than hiring or any other admin/people/meeting type interaction? They should find dealing with the new wave of AI success a lot of fun, and a lot MORE fun that governance stuff, IMHO.
ogou 2y ago
Problem solving and UX are not code dependent. Non-coders and entry level folks are using these tools and confusing the output with solving a problem, a business or user problem. It has made my work more difficult to get bogged down into debates about slop that middle managers have posted and said they've done what I can do. Most of the real world integration of these things has devalued the skills of actual programmers. It's so much more than syntax and loops. It's kind of like people who think they've figured out magic tricks. Ok, but haven't you wondered why that isn't useful in any other context?
hackburg 2y ago
[dead]

307 points by herbertl 2y ago

"decision-makers can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent" - Very correct. Whether or not AI actually comes for your job, the fact that enough people at the top think so is enough to cause trouble.

from-nibly 2y ago
This is the problem. Right now we're not in the, I need AI to work or get out stage. We're in the AI might completely upend reality stage. It's just people telling stories to find bigger fools. Like the ads claiming they sell an AI employee that never needs sleep and never talks back. Those ads are the same thing as those ads shoved in the lawn near the mcdonnalds drive through that look like they were drawn with sharpie, but are really mass printed. "Real estate investor looking for pupil, trade my money" kind of stuff. They are purposefully looking for suckers that would overlook the sketchyness. They don't want normal people applying, that reduces the pitches effectiveness. Only desperate people who will fall for anything.
faizshah 2y ago
Same is true for remote work. All the engineers know the return to work policies are dumb but all the decision makers have decided we’re all wrong.
- __loam 2y ago
  Based on their own gut.
- jes5199 2y ago
  then why don’t they co-locate teams when they get RTO’d? I keep hearing about people who have to go sit in a mandatory hot desk but are still stuck on Zoom all day. Seems like the worst of both worlds
  - klodolph 2y ago
    It’s ordinary corporate dysfunction. The mandates come top-down. People in management don’t think too hard about exceptions. The people making decisions are far-removed from the consequences of their decisions.
    - mulmen 2y ago
      It’s not really an exception though. These are the same people who spent the last 20 years singing the praises of offshoring and follow-the-sun. It’s just trend chasing. Honestly I think the mistake we made was calling it “work from home” instead of “telecommuting”.
      - hosteur 2y ago
        > Honestly I think the mistake we made was calling it “work from home” instead of “telecommuting”. I am curious. Why do you think calling it telecommuting would have made any significant difference? And what difference would it have made? Where do you imagine we would be today if more people referred to it with that word?
        0hijinks 2y ago
        My drive-by opinion: "telecommuting" has an advantage in optics/marketing and flexibility over "work from home" for both business leaders and employees. If I tell a board of directors or shareholders that "80% of our workforce performs some fraction of their weekly tasks ______", I imagine the following: - "from home" elicits images of relaxation and lost productivity, while "via telecommuting" sounds like a commute still takes place and work is just as productive - "from home" sounds like retreating to a comfort zone, while "via telecommuting" sounds like embracing a new technology or skill - "from home" sounds like remote workers ought to be performing their tasks from their domicile only, while "via telecommuting" sounds like remote workers can do their work wherever they are If businesses had adopted "telecommuting" terminology, I believe business leaders would not feel obligated to push back in order to regain productivity. I think it's easier to attack the trend of WFH given the points above. I actually agree with the proposal that WFH is a weak terminology, but had never sat down and thought about it before. From the perspective of initial adoption, I think it would have happened just as fast. Workers were thrust into remote work arrangements during COVID, and everyone would have quickly gotten the gist of what "telecommuting" means, so it would have been the new buzzword to attract talent in job listings just as "remote" or "work from home" have been. Just without the downsides in CEO perception.
- from-nibly 2y ago
  RTOs generally have nothing to do with any of the things they say. They are just layoffs. You can't argue with them about the effectiveness of remote work. They aren't trying to optimize work. They are trying to fire people. Working from home doesn't fire people, being more productive and happy doesn't fire people. Your mental well being doesn't have any bearing on how many people they need to fire.
nextts 2y ago
We are still doing scrum-like stuff after all. And they are dragging people back to the office. Decision makers have billions at their disposal to be inefficient with.
SwtCyber 2y ago
Exactly. It’s less about whether AI can replace certain jobs and more about the fact that companies are making decisions as if it will. That alone reshapes hiring, budgets, and job security
pjmorris 2y ago
A non-technical friend was asking about the prospects of AI 'taking over' jobs. I told him that I'm less worried about 'Skynet' than I am about 'Slopnet', where bad takes on the applications of 'AI' just make life harder for all of us. That'll come more from decision-maker irrationality than from the tech itself.

adamtaylor_13 2y ago

I started my own business last year that has happened to go quite well. As I’ve watched the software industry over the last year, all I can think is… “damn, what lucky timing.”

leetrout 2y ago
I keep looking for what you claim to be doing. I feel like reality continues to smack me in the face with “no one cares about quality”. I have tried big enterprises. I have tried 8 startups in 18 years. I watch the leaders / founders make the same mistakes over and over. Anyway - your profile resonates with me. Would love to grab a virtual coffee if you are up for it.
- stogot 2y ago
  Could you share the mistakes they are making repeatedly?
  - leetrout 2y ago
    In no particular order: Quality seems completely lost as a goal in any shop. See Demming and Peopleware. In very general terms: "founder mode" is more often than not toxic because it is taken out of context and used to scapegoat being an asshole. Much like the Steve Jobs worshipping of yesteryear. Lack of financial oversight by board/investors including founders putting up company money for personal investments including moving money into personal accounts to try and inflate their credit ratings. Non-VC startup: lack of preparing for a future where income is reduced for a period of time and keeping some amount of business savings around VC startup: lack of appropriate fund handling given the assumption that the money machine will always be there Hurting all option holders by removing the ability to exercise early or ruining their exit with poor financial stewardship including down rounds or bridge rounds Always time to fix it later vs taking the time to plan and execute correctly in the first place. This is a relative scale of time to market and risk to opportunity cost but with the exception of large events like tradeshows or such a few more weeks to get it right is better than hobbling along with literally millions of dollars of technical debt if success is found. And re:tradeshows - demoware is the name of the game and sales needs to be onboard with eng that demoware is demoware and what to sell ahead of the product Lack of clear execution plan as product market fit is found and everyone has been acting in "throw shit on the wall to see what sticks" mode General lack of discipline to keep things orderly as work is done which is a failure to understand systems and second / third order effects. Speed is a lagging indicator not a leading one. Everyone wants more, faster but then fails to slow down to put process in place to facilitate moving faster. Not growing teams appropriately. Lots of lack of empathy, poor hiring practices, abysmal firing practices. Lots of tolerance of "smart assholes" in small teams when leadership only cares about P/L and so the toxicity grows.

Zee2 2y ago

The statement >The current market doesn’t value those skills particularly highly, but instead prioritizes a different set of skills: working in the details, pushing pace, and navigating the technology transition to foundational models / LLMs. depends on the assumption that technology must "transition" to "foundational models / LLMs". The author doesn't seem to interrogate this assumption. In fact, most of the career malaise I've seen in my work is based on the assumption that, for one reason or another, technologists "must transition" to this new world of LLMs. I wish people would start by interrogating this bizarre backwards assumption (ie., - damn the end product! Damn the users! It must contain AI!) before framing career discussions around it. However, >decision-makers can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent is unfortunately painfully true.

__loam 2y ago
Think about what you're asking when you tell these people to interrogate the assumption that LLM based AIs are going to be the dominant technology going forward. Hundreds of billions, the growth of the technology industry, the entire US stock market, and the global economy has been wagered on this technology. Imagine the turmoil when those in power realize the reality of what they're betting the farm on.
- bayarearefugee 2y ago
  The next time I am angrily typing to claude 3.7 in all caps because he overengineered a bunch of code I didn't even ask him to write in the first place, I'll be sure to let him know his continued failures are risking the entire world economy.
  - __loam 2y ago
    You can be as snarky as you want but the reality is we're years deep into a market cycle that has seen a tremendous amount of capex with very little visible return. How much more productive do you think claude makes you as compared to Google or Stack Overflow? 15%? 50%? 200? Do you think that's enough to satisfy the market or are we all trading on unrealistic expectations? Do you think shareholders are going to like it that they're losing billions a quarter so Anthropic can run a service that helps you write web dev projects marginally faster? Do you even understand the amount of value that's tied up in these questions having a good answer right now?

tibbar 2y ago

Some more free advice, in no particular order: * Try to get at least one job offer every year, even if you don't accept it. * Look at the requirements for your dream job and figure out what you need to learn to qualify. * Pick one skill and get very good at it. Spend an hour a day on it for a year. * Steer away from skills like web development that are clearly getting eaten by LLMs. * Look for work in major U.S. tech hubs like the Bay Area. Pay is better and network effects are strong, so your next job will be easier to get.

breput 2y ago
> Look for work in major U.S. tech hubs like the Bay Area. Pay is better and network effects are strong, so your next job will be easier to get. Jobs and the network effects happen all across the country. As you get older and maybe don't want the grind, or have a family, or just want a better work/life balance, this will become apparent. Basically, always have at least two people who will support you for your next job.
- tibbar 2y ago
  There are plenty of tech hubs besides the Bay Area, that's for sure. But I can tell you that when I moved from a small company in a small economy to a moderately-well known startup in the Bay, the rate at which recruiters contacted me jumped from maybe a few times a year to multiple times per week. And after a few years, many of my coworkers started their own companies and invited me to join them. By contrast, I have very talented friends who did not make the jump to work at a tech hub, and they don't have the same kind of network or opportunities. With that said, I very much agree with you about wanting work life balance, making sure there are people who will support you in your next job, etc. However, I think that this is much easier to optimize for when you do have an established career and an extensive network already.
  - breput 2y ago
    I didn't mean to nullify your experience. You've undeniably right about how there have been spheres of influence where people and capital come together. Every area of the United States has some kind of forced name of "Silicon *" for a reason. I just don't think this will be true in the future. Move where you want to, maybe have to work harder to break through, but that was also true in the Valley.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

flamboyant_ride 2y ago

> decision-makers can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent Feels definitely true. I wish ICs had much more agency. Wish there was something actionable even as a small step (which I don't think is there on the article). Having been laid off due to unclear reasons, can't help but think the same could happen in my next prospective job (if I get one in this market that is) and there's nothing I could do about it.

advael 2y ago

I get why someone would want to tell people this, but I think it fails to be advice, as it describes the current state of affairs without much actual guidance for how to do better in it Which, to be fair, no one really seems to be able to answer that meaningfully

n_ary 2y ago
The real answer is, leaders chase trends, so to keep them satisfied you need to also chase trends. Some advises can be: * learn prompt engineering to impress your boss and next employer * adapt AI IDE at work, of course don’t go for cline or freemium ones, go for max expensive tier of Cursor/Windsurf/v0 etc * Take some expensive(more the better) courses and workshops on Agentic topics, build some small projects. Justify your expenditure by citing being more well prepared for AI transition and adapting to new paradigm to strategically beat the competition businesses who will be extinct without employees with such trainings * build some proof of concept projects to convert the smaller trivial projects to use agentic workflow. Then show these to your boss and put these up on github for future reference * learn to train smaller models on your own internal documents, build a chat interface on top and give access to your boss(trust me, they will be blown away and will sell this to their superior) * seed fear in your colleagues’ minds by using AI stuff where possible Think of this AI as a new trend we must adapt to, just like FE moved from jQuery to React. Life and work goes on, just this wave nudges the complacent bunch to finally get out of their comfort zone and learn something new or get left out.
- tonyedgecombe 2y ago
  >seed fear in your colleagues’ minds by using AI stuff where possible You mean make them terrified of debugging your code after you have moved on?
- stogot 2y ago
  Watch your boss file you for training a model on internal documents without permission
- Havoc 2y ago
  > seed fear in your colleagues’ minds Jikes

SwtCyber 2y ago

The shift in what's valued (moving from team-building and hiring prowess to sheer execution speed and adaptability) has been stark. It's also unsettling to see so many senior folks feeling -left behind- not because they lack skills, but because the rules of the game have changed so quickly...

diordiderot 2y ago

> Steer away from skills like web development that are clearly getting eaten by LLMs. There's a slim chance that frontend work runs into Jevons paradox. Rather than churning out simpler interfaces faster, the complexity will grow. More 3D sites, MR, etc

apwell23 2y ago

> Many companies that were stable, durable market leaders are now in tenuous positions because foundational models threaten to erode their advantage. uh.. which companies are these ? Chegg?

axpy906 2y ago

The blog confused me. The author opens with senior leaders but does not distinguish between ic and managers. That is a very important difference and the way they are written is somewhat interchangeable at the start but I don’t think that’s necessarily correct. Managers and senior ics are both facing unique challenges now. However, they are very different and don’t have a lot in common. For me, as a senior ic, it’s having the right skills and staying afloat in this challenging environment. For the middle managers, from what I can see, it’s not being redundant as Mark Cuban recently pointed out.

thor_molecules 2y ago

> Many people who first entered senior roles in 2010-2020 are finding current roles a lot less fun. This resonates with me. I find that the current crop of new tech (AI) produces a lot of cognitive dissonance for me in my day-to-day work. Most initiatives/projects/whatever around AI seems to be of the "digging your own grave" variety - making tools to replace software engineers. Definitely not fun.

jll29 2y ago

> managers were generally evaluated in that period based on their ability to hire, retain and motivate teams. The current market doesn’t value those skills particularly highly, but instead prioritizes a different set of skills: working in the details, pushing pace, and navigating the technology transition to foundational models / LLMs. This means many members of the current crop of senior leaders are either worse at the skills they currently need to succeed, or are less motivated by those activities. Either way, they’re having less fun. Don't geeks enjoy playing with LLMs much more than hiring or any other admin/people/meeting type interaction? They should find dealing with the new wave of AI success a lot of fun, and a lot MORE fun that governance stuff, IMHO.

ogou 2y ago

Problem solving and UX are not code dependent. Non-coders and entry level folks are using these tools and confusing the output with solving a problem, a business or user problem. It has made my work more difficult to get bogged down into debates about slop that middle managers have posted and said they've done what I can do. Most of the real world integration of these things has devalued the skills of actual programmers. It's so much more than syntax and loops. It's kind of like people who think they've figured out magic tricks. Ok, but haven't you wondered why that isn't useful in any other context?

hackburg 2y ago

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