4 ms·

You can't get paid doing them. If coding goes away, decades of experience become worthless instantly. Not all of it, but the vast majority, enough to justify s

You can't get paid doing them. If coding goes away, decades of experience become worthless instantly. Not all of it, but the vast majority, enough to justify starting over in another career. In that world, it will have become more cost-effective for most companies to spend most of their budget on inference vendors and employ a few low-paid LLM wranglers, even if the final output is of terrible quality. No point in competing for that kind of employment experience with that kind of pay.

dasil003 7mo ago
I really don't get this point of view at all. I acknowledge that two yours into my quarter century of experience, most of what I knew was easily replaceable by the AI of today. After two decades of experience however, syntax and specific algorithm and language knowledge was perhaps 10% of my value, nowhere near the vast majority. The idea that low-paid LLM wranglers are going to push out the experienced engineers just doesn't wash. What I think is much more likely to happen is the number of software engineers greatly reduces, but the remaining ones actually get paid more, because writing code is no longer the long pole, and having fewer minds designing the system at a high level will allow for more cohesive higher-level design, and less focus on local artesenal code quality. To be honest AI is just the catalyst and excuse for overhiring that happened due to the gold rush over the last 20 years related to the internet and smart phone revolutions, zero-interest rate, and pandemic effect.
- bluefirebrand 7mo ago
  > What I think is much more likely to happen is the number of software engineers greatly reduces So you just believe you'll be one of the ones left behind? Best of luck to you
- tetris11 7mo ago
  > language knowledge was perhaps 10% of my value, nowhere near the vast majority. Do you not see LLM's catching up with your experience fast? You might not lose your job, but you'll definitely have to take a pay cut
- chickenimprint 7mo ago
  > What I think is much more likely to happen is the number of software engineers greatly reduces, but the remaining ones actually get paid more. You realize that this is contradictory, right? If the number of competitors remains the same, yet there are far fewer jobs, it's a buyer's market: companies have to offer very little to find someone desperate enough. > It will allow for more cohesive higher-level design, and less focus on local artesenal code quality. I don't buy this, LLM code is extremely bloated. It never reuses abstractions or comes up with novel designs to simplify systems. It can't say no, it just keeps bolting on code. In a very very abstract sense you might be right, but that's outside the realm of engineering, that's product design.
  - dasil003 7mo ago
    You raise some good points about the economics, that's where I feel the least confident, but let me explain my reasoning. Software has eaten the world, and thus the value of maintaining software has never been hire. Engineers are the people who understand how software works. Therefore unless we move away from software, the value of software engineering remains high. AI does not reduce software, it increases the amount of software, makes messier software and generally increases the surface area of what needs to be maintained. I could be wrong, but as impressive as LLM's language and code processing capabilities are, I believe there is a huge chasm that will likely never be crossed between the human intent of systems and their implementation that only human engineers can actually bridge. And even if I'm wrong, there's another headwind which is that, as Simon Willison has point out, you can't hold an LLM accountable, and therefore corporate leaders are very unlikely to put AI in any position of power, because all the experience and levers they have for control are based on millenia of evolution and a shared understanding of human experience; in short they want a throat to choke. The other factor is that while AI can clearly replace rote coding today, I think the demos oversell the utility of that software. Sure it's fine to get started, but you quickly paint yourself in a corner if you attempt to run a business on that code overtime where UX cohesion, operational stability and data integrity over time are paramount and not something that can be solved for without a lot of knowledge and guardrails. So net of all this, where I think we land is a lot of jobs that are based purely on knowledge of one slow-changing system and specific code syntax will go away, but there will be engineers who maintain all the same code, they'll just cover more scope with LLM assisted tools. You put your finger on something, that I do believe this moves engineering closer to product design, but I still think there's a huge amount on the engineering side that LLMs won't be able to do any time soon (both for technical and the social reasons stated above), and ultimately I don't see the boundary the same way you do, as software engineers we have always had to justify our systems by their real world interaction.

dasil003 7mo ago

I really don't get this point of view at all. I acknowledge that two yours into my quarter century of experience, most of what I knew was easily replaceable by the AI of today. After two decades of experience however, syntax and specific algorithm and language knowledge was perhaps 10% of my value, nowhere near the vast majority. The idea that low-paid LLM wranglers are going to push out the experienced engineers just doesn't wash. What I think is much more likely to happen is the number of software engineers greatly reduces, but the remaining ones actually get paid more, because writing code is no longer the long pole, and having fewer minds designing the system at a high level will allow for more cohesive higher-level design, and less focus on local artesenal code quality. To be honest AI is just the catalyst and excuse for overhiring that happened due to the gold rush over the last 20 years related to the internet and smart phone revolutions, zero-interest rate, and pandemic effect.

bluefirebrand 7mo ago
> What I think is much more likely to happen is the number of software engineers greatly reduces So you just believe you'll be one of the ones left behind? Best of luck to you
tetris11 7mo ago
> language knowledge was perhaps 10% of my value, nowhere near the vast majority. Do you not see LLM's catching up with your experience fast? You might not lose your job, but you'll definitely have to take a pay cut
chickenimprint 7mo ago
> What I think is much more likely to happen is the number of software engineers greatly reduces, but the remaining ones actually get paid more. You realize that this is contradictory, right? If the number of competitors remains the same, yet there are far fewer jobs, it's a buyer's market: companies have to offer very little to find someone desperate enough. > It will allow for more cohesive higher-level design, and less focus on local artesenal code quality. I don't buy this, LLM code is extremely bloated. It never reuses abstractions or comes up with novel designs to simplify systems. It can't say no, it just keeps bolting on code. In a very very abstract sense you might be right, but that's outside the realm of engineering, that's product design.
- dasil003 7mo ago
  You raise some good points about the economics, that's where I feel the least confident, but let me explain my reasoning. Software has eaten the world, and thus the value of maintaining software has never been hire. Engineers are the people who understand how software works. Therefore unless we move away from software, the value of software engineering remains high. AI does not reduce software, it increases the amount of software, makes messier software and generally increases the surface area of what needs to be maintained. I could be wrong, but as impressive as LLM's language and code processing capabilities are, I believe there is a huge chasm that will likely never be crossed between the human intent of systems and their implementation that only human engineers can actually bridge. And even if I'm wrong, there's another headwind which is that, as Simon Willison has point out, you can't hold an LLM accountable, and therefore corporate leaders are very unlikely to put AI in any position of power, because all the experience and levers they have for control are based on millenia of evolution and a shared understanding of human experience; in short they want a throat to choke. The other factor is that while AI can clearly replace rote coding today, I think the demos oversell the utility of that software. Sure it's fine to get started, but you quickly paint yourself in a corner if you attempt to run a business on that code overtime where UX cohesion, operational stability and data integrity over time are paramount and not something that can be solved for without a lot of knowledge and guardrails. So net of all this, where I think we land is a lot of jobs that are based purely on knowledge of one slow-changing system and specific code syntax will go away, but there will be engineers who maintain all the same code, they'll just cover more scope with LLM assisted tools. You put your finger on something, that I do believe this moves engineering closer to product design, but I still think there's a huge amount on the engineering side that LLMs won't be able to do any time soon (both for technical and the social reasons stated above), and ultimately I don't see the boundary the same way you do, as software engineers we have always had to justify our systems by their real world interaction.