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The notion of replacing programmers is not well thought out most of the times i see it. At some point, you have to be able to replace all of them (or all the w

The notion of replacing programmers is not well thought out most of the times i see it. At some point, you have to be able to replace all of them (or all the work they currently do), or else all you do is screw up the pipeline you need. I've seen lots of AI companies who believe they will replace junior software engineers, and leave the senior ones in place to do really complex things and drive the AI. One serious problem with this, obvious, but often totally ignored or handwaved, is that senior software engineers do not grow on trees, they were yesterday's junior software engineers. So once you've gotten rid of all the junior software engineers, you will no longer generate any more senior ones. When combined with likely increased attrition of senior software engineers, seems like a wildly bad plan. Or at least, something that needs to be taken into account but never is. Now, plans to replace all of them are at least logically coherent, but also seem far-fetched at best right now. By numbers, people do appear to be replacing software engineers with AI (the number of new software engineer jobs has dropped something like 30%, even relative to other jobs, but no linked causation obviously), but every company i talk with that is doing this keeps telling me they are just replacing their junior engineers, which is hilarious - they all expect they can just continue to hire senior engineers they need from "somewhere else". Freeloading works until it doesn't.

techpineapple 2y ago
I suspect we have this problem already in SRE. Back in the day, there were lots of manual processes to do to check on the health of servers, install packages, troubleshoot network problems. Now, there’s this mountain of ops knowledge you have to know to be productive, not to mention also have software engineering skills, but there’s very little manual tasks to do to step stone your way to that knowledge.
TheNewsIsHere 2y ago
Agreed. I have yet to see any evidence that AI companies are actually thinking about what they’re saying. They’re just trying to move markets and make money. In some cases they’re saying two different things. For example, Microsoft (arguably more a general software company desperately chasing AI rather than an “AI company”) would in one breath have you believe that the modern workplace will not survive without AI, while in the next breath Nadella is on the record noting that AI can’t exist without an ROI, and they’re not yet seeing an ROI that justifies it generally. The OpenAIs of the world can’t imagine a world where the premise of their product isn’t the default/a given, so they simply engage as if their vision is entirely sensible.
chii 2y ago
> So once you've gotten rid of all the junior software engineers, you will no longer generate any more senior ones. it's because those who are making these replacement decisions are at the CxO level, and they think software engineering is like factory workers. Cogs. A commodity that will always exist. And not to mention the whole process of senior decay will happen over a long period of time - these CxO's have retired by then with their golden parachute.

techpineapple 2y ago

I suspect we have this problem already in SRE. Back in the day, there were lots of manual processes to do to check on the health of servers, install packages, troubleshoot network problems. Now, there’s this mountain of ops knowledge you have to know to be productive, not to mention also have software engineering skills, but there’s very little manual tasks to do to step stone your way to that knowledge.

TheNewsIsHere 2y ago

Agreed. I have yet to see any evidence that AI companies are actually thinking about what they’re saying. They’re just trying to move markets and make money. In some cases they’re saying two different things. For example, Microsoft (arguably more a general software company desperately chasing AI rather than an “AI company”) would in one breath have you believe that the modern workplace will not survive without AI, while in the next breath Nadella is on the record noting that AI can’t exist without an ROI, and they’re not yet seeing an ROI that justifies it generally. The OpenAIs of the world can’t imagine a world where the premise of their product isn’t the default/a given, so they simply engage as if their vision is entirely sensible.

chii 2y ago

> So once you've gotten rid of all the junior software engineers, you will no longer generate any more senior ones. it's because those who are making these replacement decisions are at the CxO level, and they think software engineering is like factory workers. Cogs. A commodity that will always exist. And not to mention the whole process of senior decay will happen over a long period of time - these CxO's have retired by then with their golden parachute.