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A lot of good points here which I agree with. Another way to think about it is SWE agents. About a year ago Devin was billed as a dev replacement, with the now

A lot of good points here which I agree with. Another way to think about it is SWE agents. About a year ago Devin was billed as a dev replacement, with the now common reaction that it's over for SWEs and it's no longer a useful to learn software engineering. A year later there have been large amounts of layoffs that impacted sw devs. There have also been a lot of fluff statements attributing layoffs to increased efficiency as a result of AI adoption. But is there a link? I have my doubts and think it's more related to interest rates and the business cycle. I've also yet to see any AI solutions that negate the need for developers. Only promises from CEOs and investors. However, I have seen how powerful it can be in the hands of people that know how to leverage it. I guess time will tell. In my experience the current trajectory is LLMs making tasks easier and more efficient for people. And hypefluencers, investors, CEOs, and others will continue promising that just around the corner is a future in which human software developers are obsolete.

apwell23 1y ago
ceos found AI as escape hatch for their over hiring during pandemic boom year. they were just playing to this market reaction layoffs = bad layoffs because of AI = good
- namaria 1y ago
  Yup. Also I am excited for the bump in my rates when the cycle inverts and there's a dearth of people who can code without the then defunct LLMs.
throw1235435 1y ago
On my side we've refrained from hiring people/training people due to AI. Its mostly been a good decision especially at the frontend layer where those teams are starting to do more with less. Don't get me wrong - I don't like the path the SWE profession is going and I'm not an AI fan for a variety of reasons. But at the same time I don't want to over hire and have no work for the people to do (i.e. the bottleneck being business ideas, regulation, ability to iterate in our domain, etc rather than tech). I can't just "work faster" and "ship more" - you start hitting other bottlenecks. Over hiring is not a great problem to manage either; morale at the very least decreases as people have no work to do. The people in those bottlenecks anecdotally are seeing pay increases btw which goes to show - the inefficient get the spoils.

apwell23 1y ago

ceos found AI as escape hatch for their over hiring during pandemic boom year. they were just playing to this market reaction layoffs = bad layoffs because of AI = good

namaria 1y ago
Yup. Also I am excited for the bump in my rates when the cycle inverts and there's a dearth of people who can code without the then defunct LLMs.

throw1235435 1y ago

On my side we've refrained from hiring people/training people due to AI. Its mostly been a good decision especially at the frontend layer where those teams are starting to do more with less. Don't get me wrong - I don't like the path the SWE profession is going and I'm not an AI fan for a variety of reasons. But at the same time I don't want to over hire and have no work for the people to do (i.e. the bottleneck being business ideas, regulation, ability to iterate in our domain, etc rather than tech). I can't just "work faster" and "ship more" - you start hitting other bottlenecks. Over hiring is not a great problem to manage either; morale at the very least decreases as people have no work to do. The people in those bottlenecks anecdotally are seeing pay increases btw which goes to show - the inefficient get the spoils.