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Looks like the AWS CEO has changed religion. A year back, he was aboard the ai-train - saying AI will do all coding in 2 years [1] Finally, the c-suite is gett

Looks like the AWS CEO has changed religion. A year back, he was aboard the ai-train - saying AI will do all coding in 2 years [1] Finally, the c-suite is getting it. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41462545 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41462545

N_Lens 1y ago
It’s a requirement for the C-suite to always be aware of which way the wind is currently blowing.
- pydry 1y ago
  An LLM would be more efficient at this task, truth be told.
  - chasd00 1y ago
    it could be if a new model was released every day where the training set included everything that happened yesterday.
- latexr 1y ago
  It’s one thing to be aware of which way the wind is blowing, and quite another to let yourself be blown by the wind. Not to say that‘s what the AWS CEO is doing—maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, I haven’t checked—I’m just commenting on the general idea.
n4r9 1y ago
To be fair, the two statements are not inconsistent. He can continue to hire junior devs, but their job might involve much less actual coding.
OJFord 1y ago
That's not necessarily inconsistent though - if you need people to guide or instruct the autonomy, then you need a pipeline of people including juniors to do that. Big companies worry about the pipeline, small companies can take that subsidy and only hire senior+, no interns, etc., if they want.
- klabb3 1y ago
  > That's not necessarily inconsistent though Pasting the quote for reference: > Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman claims that in 2 years coding by humans won't really be a thing, and it will all be done by networks of AI's who are far smarter, cheaper, and more reliable than human coders. Unless this guy speaks exclusively in riddles, this seems incredibly inconsistent.
- JustExAWS 1y ago
  There is no pipeline though. The average tenure of a junior developer even at AWS is 3 years. Everyone knows that you make less money getting promoted to an L5 (mid) than getting hired in as one. Salary compression is real. The best play is always to jump ship after 3 years. Even if you like Amazon, “boomeranging” is still the right play.
  - chasd00 1y ago
    that's interesting because that's how the consulting world works too. Start at a big firm, work for a few years, then jump to a small firm two levels above where you were. The after two years, come back to the big firm and get hired one level up from where you left. Rinse/repeat. It's the fastest promotion path in consulting.
    - JustExAWS 1y ago
      I went from an L5 (mid) working at AWS ProServe as a consultant (full time role) to a year later (and a shitty company in between) as a “staff architect” - like you said two levels up - at a smaller cloud consulting company. If I had any interest in ever working for BigTech again (and I would rather get an anal probe daily with a cactus), I could relatively easily get into Google’s equivalent department as a “senior” based on my connections.
    - nemomarx 1y ago
      Why is the hiring budget so much larger than the promotion budget?
trentnix 1y ago
He should face consequences for his cargo-cult thinking in the first place. The C-Suite isn't "getting" anything. They are simply bending like reeds in today's winds.
lukeschlather 1y ago
He didn't actually say that. He said it's possible that within 2 years developers won't be writing much code, but he goes on to say: "It just means that each of us has to get more in tune with what our customers need and what the actual end thing is that we're going to try to go build, because that's going to be more and more of what the work is as opposed to sitting down and actually writing code...." https://www.businessinsider.com/aws-ceo-developers-stop-coding-ai-takes-over-2024-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/aws-ceo-developers-stop-codi... If you read the full remarks they're consistent with what he says here. He says "writing code" may be a skill that's less useful, which is why it's important to hire junior devs and teach them how to learn so they learn the skills that are useful.
- bwfan123 1y ago
  He is talking his book. Management thinks it adds value in the non-coding aspects of the product - such as figuring out what customers need etc. I suggest management stays in their lanes, and not make claims on how coding needs to be done, leave that to the craftsmen actually coding.
  - mumbisChungo 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - pacoWebConsult 1y ago
      > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
onlyrealcuzzo 1y ago
Theoretically, a large part of Amazon's worth is the skill of its workforce. Some subset of the population likes to pretend their workforce is a cost that provides less than zero value or utility, and all the value and utility comes from shareholders. But if this isn't true, and collective skill is worth value, then saying anyone can have that with AI at least has some headwind on your share price - which is all they care about. Does that offset a potential tailwind from slightly higher margins? I don't think any established company should be cheerleading that anyone can easily upset their monopoly with a couple of carefully crafted prompts. It was always kind of strange to me, and seemed as though they were telling everyone, our moat is gone, and that is good. If you really believed anyone could do anything with AI, then the risk of PEs collapsing would be high, which would be bad for the capital class. Now you have to correctly guess what's the next best thing constantly to keep your ROI instead of just parking it in save havens - like FAANG.
- awsthrow123456 1y ago
  Amazon doesn't really work this way. Bedrock/Q is a great example of how Amazon works. If we throw $XXX at the problem and YYY SDEs at the problem we should be able to build Github Copilot, GPT-3, OpenRouter and Cursor ourselves instead of trying to competitively acquire and attract talent. The fact that Codewhisperer, Q and Titan barely get spoken about on HN or Twitter tells you how successful this is. But if you have that perspective then the equation is simple. If S3 can make 5 XXL features per year with 20 SDEs then if we adopt “Agentic AI” we should be able to build 10 XXL features with 10 SDEs. Little care is given to organizational knowledge, experience, vision etc. that is the value (in their mind) of leadership not ICs.
  - svnt 1y ago
    What do you mean, “Amazon doesn’t really work that way”? Parent is talking about how C-Suite doesn’t want to trumpet something that implies their entire corporate structure is extremely disadvantaged vs new entrants and your response is “Amazon wants to build everything themselves”? Amazon isn’t some behaviorally deterministic entity, and it could (and should?) want to both preserve goodwill and build more internally vs pay multiples to acquire. I guess it could be that people inside are not people they have to compete with, but it doesn’t seem like that’s what you're saying.
meindnoch 1y ago
>Finally, the c-suite is getting it. It can only mean one thing: the music is about to stop.
scotty79 1y ago
"Oh, how terrible" - he exclaims while counting dollar bills.
holtkam2 1y ago
He was right tho. AI is doing all the coding. That doesn’t mean you fire junior staff. Both can be true at once- you need juniors, and pretty much all code this days is AI-generated.
herval 1y ago
I'm not sure those are mutually exclusive? Modern coders don't touch Assembly or deal with memory directly anymore. It's entirely possible that AI leads to a world where typing code by hand is dramatically reduced too (it already has in a few domains and company sizes)
indoordin0saur 1y ago
There's definitely a vibe shift underway. C-Suites are seeing that AI as a drop-in replacement for engineers is a lot farther off than initial hype suggested. They know that they'll need to attract good engineers if they want to stay competitive and that it's probably a bad idea to scare off your staff with saying that they'll be made irrelevant.
andrepd 1y ago
Man how would we live without these folks and their sensational acumen. Millions well spent!

N_Lens 1y ago

It’s a requirement for the C-suite to always be aware of which way the wind is currently blowing.

pydry 1y ago
An LLM would be more efficient at this task, truth be told.
- chasd00 1y ago
  it could be if a new model was released every day where the training set included everything that happened yesterday.
latexr 1y ago
It’s one thing to be aware of which way the wind is blowing, and quite another to let yourself be blown by the wind. Not to say that‘s what the AWS CEO is doing—maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, I haven’t checked—I’m just commenting on the general idea.

n4r9 1y ago

To be fair, the two statements are not inconsistent. He can continue to hire junior devs, but their job might involve much less actual coding.

OJFord 1y ago

That's not necessarily inconsistent though - if you need people to guide or instruct the autonomy, then you need a pipeline of people including juniors to do that. Big companies worry about the pipeline, small companies can take that subsidy and only hire senior+, no interns, etc., if they want.

klabb3 1y ago
> That's not necessarily inconsistent though Pasting the quote for reference: > Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman claims that in 2 years coding by humans won't really be a thing, and it will all be done by networks of AI's who are far smarter, cheaper, and more reliable than human coders. Unless this guy speaks exclusively in riddles, this seems incredibly inconsistent.
JustExAWS 1y ago
There is no pipeline though. The average tenure of a junior developer even at AWS is 3 years. Everyone knows that you make less money getting promoted to an L5 (mid) than getting hired in as one. Salary compression is real. The best play is always to jump ship after 3 years. Even if you like Amazon, “boomeranging” is still the right play.
- chasd00 1y ago
  that's interesting because that's how the consulting world works too. Start at a big firm, work for a few years, then jump to a small firm two levels above where you were. The after two years, come back to the big firm and get hired one level up from where you left. Rinse/repeat. It's the fastest promotion path in consulting.
  - JustExAWS 1y ago
    I went from an L5 (mid) working at AWS ProServe as a consultant (full time role) to a year later (and a shitty company in between) as a “staff architect” - like you said two levels up - at a smaller cloud consulting company. If I had any interest in ever working for BigTech again (and I would rather get an anal probe daily with a cactus), I could relatively easily get into Google’s equivalent department as a “senior” based on my connections.
  - nemomarx 1y ago
    Why is the hiring budget so much larger than the promotion budget?

trentnix 1y ago

He should face consequences for his cargo-cult thinking in the first place. The C-Suite isn't "getting" anything. They are simply bending like reeds in today's winds.

lukeschlather 1y ago

He didn't actually say that. He said it's possible that within 2 years developers won't be writing much code, but he goes on to say: "It just means that each of us has to get more in tune with what our customers need and what the actual end thing is that we're going to try to go build, because that's going to be more and more of what the work is as opposed to sitting down and actually writing code...." https://www.businessinsider.com/aws-ceo-developers-stop-coding-ai-takes-over-2024-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/aws-ceo-developers-stop-codi... If you read the full remarks they're consistent with what he says here. He says "writing code" may be a skill that's less useful, which is why it's important to hire junior devs and teach them how to learn so they learn the skills that are useful.

bwfan123 1y ago
He is talking his book. Management thinks it adds value in the non-coding aspects of the product - such as figuring out what customers need etc. I suggest management stays in their lanes, and not make claims on how coding needs to be done, leave that to the craftsmen actually coding.
- mumbisChungo 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - pacoWebConsult 1y ago
    > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

onlyrealcuzzo 1y ago

Theoretically, a large part of Amazon's worth is the skill of its workforce. Some subset of the population likes to pretend their workforce is a cost that provides less than zero value or utility, and all the value and utility comes from shareholders. But if this isn't true, and collective skill is worth value, then saying anyone can have that with AI at least has some headwind on your share price - which is all they care about. Does that offset a potential tailwind from slightly higher margins? I don't think any established company should be cheerleading that anyone can easily upset their monopoly with a couple of carefully crafted prompts. It was always kind of strange to me, and seemed as though they were telling everyone, our moat is gone, and that is good. If you really believed anyone could do anything with AI, then the risk of PEs collapsing would be high, which would be bad for the capital class. Now you have to correctly guess what's the next best thing constantly to keep your ROI instead of just parking it in save havens - like FAANG.

awsthrow123456 1y ago
Amazon doesn't really work this way. Bedrock/Q is a great example of how Amazon works. If we throw $XXX at the problem and YYY SDEs at the problem we should be able to build Github Copilot, GPT-3, OpenRouter and Cursor ourselves instead of trying to competitively acquire and attract talent. The fact that Codewhisperer, Q and Titan barely get spoken about on HN or Twitter tells you how successful this is. But if you have that perspective then the equation is simple. If S3 can make 5 XXL features per year with 20 SDEs then if we adopt “Agentic AI” we should be able to build 10 XXL features with 10 SDEs. Little care is given to organizational knowledge, experience, vision etc. that is the value (in their mind) of leadership not ICs.
- svnt 1y ago
  What do you mean, “Amazon doesn’t really work that way”? Parent is talking about how C-Suite doesn’t want to trumpet something that implies their entire corporate structure is extremely disadvantaged vs new entrants and your response is “Amazon wants to build everything themselves”? Amazon isn’t some behaviorally deterministic entity, and it could (and should?) want to both preserve goodwill and build more internally vs pay multiples to acquire. I guess it could be that people inside are not people they have to compete with, but it doesn’t seem like that’s what you're saying.

meindnoch 1y ago

>Finally, the c-suite is getting it. It can only mean one thing: the music is about to stop.

scotty79 1y ago

"Oh, how terrible" - he exclaims while counting dollar bills.

holtkam2 1y ago

He was right tho. AI is doing all the coding. That doesn’t mean you fire junior staff. Both can be true at once- you need juniors, and pretty much all code this days is AI-generated.

herval 1y ago

I'm not sure those are mutually exclusive? Modern coders don't touch Assembly or deal with memory directly anymore. It's entirely possible that AI leads to a world where typing code by hand is dramatically reduced too (it already has in a few domains and company sizes)

indoordin0saur 1y ago

There's definitely a vibe shift underway. C-Suites are seeing that AI as a drop-in replacement for engineers is a lot farther off than initial hype suggested. They know that they'll need to attract good engineers if they want to stay competitive and that it's probably a bad idea to scare off your staff with saying that they'll be made irrelevant.

andrepd 1y ago

Man how would we live without these folks and their sensational acumen. Millions well spent!