4 ms·

What you bring to the table night be fine, but how long do you think you'll find emoloyers willing to still pay for this? One thing is for sure LLMs will bring

by samiv 7mo ago

What you bring to the table night be fine, but how long do you think you'll find emoloyers willing to still pay for this? One thing is for sure LLMs will bring down down the cost of software per some unit and increase the volume. But..cost = revenue. What is a cost to one party is a revenue to another party. The revenue is what pays salaries. So when software costs go down the revenues will go down too. When revenues go down lay offs will happen, salary cuts will happen. This is not fictional. Markets already reacted to this and many software service companies took a hit.

rps93 7mo ago
Just sold a house/moved out after being laid off in mid-January from a govt IT contractor(there for 8 great years and mostly remote). I started my UX Research, Design and Front End Web Design coding career in 2009, but now I think it's almost a stupid go nowhere vanishing career, thanks to AI. I think much like you that AI is and will just continue to destroy the economy! At least I got to sell a house and make a profit--stash it away for when the big AI market crash happens (hopefully not a 2030 great depression tho). As then it's a down market and buying stocks, bitcoin and houses is always cheaper.
atonse 7mo ago
I don't have an answer for this, and won't pretend to. But my take on this is that accountability will still be a purely human factor. It still is. I recently let go of a contractor who was hired to run our projects as a Scrum/PM, and his tickets were so bad (there were tickets with 3 words in them, one ticket was in the current sprint, that was blocked by a ticket deep in the backlog, basic stuff). When I confronted him about them, he said the AI generated them. So I told him that: 1. That's not an excuse, his job is to verify what it generated and ensure it's still good. 2. That actually makes it look WORSE, that not only did he do nearly 0 work, that he didn't even check the most basic outputs. And I'm not anti-AI, I expressly said that we should absolutely use AI tools to accelerate our work. But that's not what happened here. So you won't get to say (at least I think for another few years) "my AI was at fault" – you are ultimately responsible, not your tools. So people will still want to delegate those things down the chain. But ultimately they'll have to delegate to fewer people.
- eisa01 7mo ago
  What drives that behavior is what I like to call human slop :)
- jgilias 7mo ago
  In general I agree. But it’s somehow very unlikely for the AI to generate a three word ticket. That’s what humans do. AI might generate an overly verbose and specific ticket instead.
codebolt 7mo ago
Any given system will still need people around to steer the AI and ensure the thing gets built and maintained responsibly. I'm working on a small team of in-house devs at a financial company, and not worried about my future at all. As an IC I'm providing more value than ever, and the backlog of potential projects is still basically endless- why would anyone want to fire me?
- kristiandupont 7mo ago
  Why would it need people to steer the AI? I can easily see a future where companies that don't rely on the physical world (like manufacturing) are completely autonomous, just machines making money for their owner.
  - codebolt 7mo ago
    It's easy to imagine but there's still a vast amount of innovation and development that has to happen before something like that becomes realistic. At that point the whole system of capitalism would need to be reconsidered. Not going to happen in the foreseeable future.
  - skydhash 7mo ago
    Yours is a naive sight. You learn a bit about engineering and feedback control and realize that the world is too complex for that.
- _zagj 7mo ago
  > why would anyone want to fire me? Because they can hire some "prompt engineer" to "steer the AI" for $30-50k instead of $150-$250k.
  - ValentineC 7mo ago
    Anyone that only costs $30k-50k would either be doing this part-time, or have some limit that prevented them from earning $150k-250k.
linsomniac 7mo ago
>What you bring to the table night be fine, but how long do you think you'll find emoloyers willing to still pay for this? I'm assuming that the software factory of the future is going to need Millwrights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millwright https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millwright But, builders are builders. These tools turn ideas into things, a builders dream.
post-it 7mo ago
If AI completely erases the profession of software developer, I'll find something else to do. Like I can't in good faith ever oppose a technology just because it's going to make my job redundant, that would be insane.
- ipaddr 7mo ago
  There may not be a job for you in an office setting. What would you do?
  - satvikpendem 7mo ago
    That's when the problem shifts from individual to systemic, and only systemic solutions fix systemic problems.
    - pajamasam 7mo ago
      I think that a what a lot of anti-AI folks are trying to argue without saying it explicitly is that it already is a systemic problem. They're not necessarily against the technology on its own, but against the systemic problems it would introduce if society doesn't take a stance against it.
  - post-it 7mo ago
    I'd buy some good gloves and steel-toed boots.
- rapnie 7mo ago
  Take that to its extreme. Suppose there was a technology that you do not own that would make everyone's job redundant. Everyone out of a job. There is no need for education, for skills to be mastered, for expertise. Would it still be insane to complain?
  - satvikpendem 7mo ago
    There are bigger issues if everyone is out of a job.
jmalicki 7mo ago
"One thing is for sure LLMs will bring down down the cost of software per some unit and increase the volume. But..cost = revenue." That is Karl Marx's Labor theory of value that has been completely disproven. You don't charge what it costs to build something, you charge the maximum the customer is willing to pay.
- jthrilly 7mo ago
  Congrats - you caused me to create an account to reply, due to the sheer density of your incorrectness. - First, the LTV was not Marx's idea. Adam Smith held the same view, as did many many others during this era. Marx refined this idea, but there's nothing about your point that is unique to his version of it. - Second, while LTV is not widely used today, this is not because it was "completely disproven" (can you cite anything to back this claim up?). It is because economics shifted to a different paradigm based on marginal utility. These two frameworks operate at different levels of abstraction and address different aspects of the price of goods. There is actually empirical evidence of a correlation between the cost of a good and the cost of the labour, at an aggregate level. - Third, Marx explicitly differentiated between _value_ and _price_. LTV deals with value exclusively (in other words, what happens when externalities impacting price are accounted for). He would have had no issue accepting that externalities impacting supply and demand would impact price. The final irony of your comment is that the commenter's claim that you are incorrectly analysing is actually also fully defensible under your (presumably) neoclassical view of economics. In competitive markets, reduced production costs lead to reduced equilibrium prices as competitors undercut each other. The proposition that in the long run, under competition, price tends toward cost is a standard result in microeconomics. The idea that "you charge the maximum the customer is willing to pay" only holds without qualification in monopoly or monopolistic competition with strong differentiation, which are precisely the conditions that increased software supply would erode.
  - jmalicki 7mo ago
    Efficient markets barely exist anywhere, especially in tech, it's all monopolistic competition that's bad for the consumer and increases inequality.

by samiv 7mo ago

rps93 7mo ago

Just sold a house/moved out after being laid off in mid-January from a govt IT contractor(there for 8 great years and mostly remote). I started my UX Research, Design and Front End Web Design coding career in 2009, but now I think it's almost a stupid go nowhere vanishing career, thanks to AI. I think much like you that AI is and will just continue to destroy the economy! At least I got to sell a house and make a profit--stash it away for when the big AI market crash happens (hopefully not a 2030 great depression tho). As then it's a down market and buying stocks, bitcoin and houses is always cheaper.

atonse 7mo ago

I don't have an answer for this, and won't pretend to. But my take on this is that accountability will still be a purely human factor. It still is. I recently let go of a contractor who was hired to run our projects as a Scrum/PM, and his tickets were so bad (there were tickets with 3 words in them, one ticket was in the current sprint, that was blocked by a ticket deep in the backlog, basic stuff). When I confronted him about them, he said the AI generated them. So I told him that: 1. That's not an excuse, his job is to verify what it generated and ensure it's still good. 2. That actually makes it look WORSE, that not only did he do nearly 0 work, that he didn't even check the most basic outputs. And I'm not anti-AI, I expressly said that we should absolutely use AI tools to accelerate our work. But that's not what happened here. So you won't get to say (at least I think for another few years) "my AI was at fault" – you are ultimately responsible, not your tools. So people will still want to delegate those things down the chain. But ultimately they'll have to delegate to fewer people.

eisa01 7mo ago
What drives that behavior is what I like to call human slop :)
jgilias 7mo ago
In general I agree. But it’s somehow very unlikely for the AI to generate a three word ticket. That’s what humans do. AI might generate an overly verbose and specific ticket instead.

codebolt 7mo ago

Any given system will still need people around to steer the AI and ensure the thing gets built and maintained responsibly. I'm working on a small team of in-house devs at a financial company, and not worried about my future at all. As an IC I'm providing more value than ever, and the backlog of potential projects is still basically endless- why would anyone want to fire me?

kristiandupont 7mo ago
Why would it need people to steer the AI? I can easily see a future where companies that don't rely on the physical world (like manufacturing) are completely autonomous, just machines making money for their owner.
- codebolt 7mo ago
  It's easy to imagine but there's still a vast amount of innovation and development that has to happen before something like that becomes realistic. At that point the whole system of capitalism would need to be reconsidered. Not going to happen in the foreseeable future.
- skydhash 7mo ago
  Yours is a naive sight. You learn a bit about engineering and feedback control and realize that the world is too complex for that.
_zagj 7mo ago
> why would anyone want to fire me? Because they can hire some "prompt engineer" to "steer the AI" for $30-50k instead of $150-$250k.
- ValentineC 7mo ago
  Anyone that only costs $30k-50k would either be doing this part-time, or have some limit that prevented them from earning $150k-250k.

linsomniac 7mo ago

>What you bring to the table night be fine, but how long do you think you'll find emoloyers willing to still pay for this? I'm assuming that the software factory of the future is going to need Millwrights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millwright https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millwright But, builders are builders. These tools turn ideas into things, a builders dream.

post-it 7mo ago

If AI completely erases the profession of software developer, I'll find something else to do. Like I can't in good faith ever oppose a technology just because it's going to make my job redundant, that would be insane.

ipaddr 7mo ago
There may not be a job for you in an office setting. What would you do?
- satvikpendem 7mo ago
  That's when the problem shifts from individual to systemic, and only systemic solutions fix systemic problems.
  - pajamasam 7mo ago
    I think that a what a lot of anti-AI folks are trying to argue without saying it explicitly is that it already is a systemic problem. They're not necessarily against the technology on its own, but against the systemic problems it would introduce if society doesn't take a stance against it.
- post-it 7mo ago
  I'd buy some good gloves and steel-toed boots.
rapnie 7mo ago
Take that to its extreme. Suppose there was a technology that you do not own that would make everyone's job redundant. Everyone out of a job. There is no need for education, for skills to be mastered, for expertise. Would it still be insane to complain?
- satvikpendem 7mo ago
  There are bigger issues if everyone is out of a job.

jmalicki 7mo ago

"One thing is for sure LLMs will bring down down the cost of software per some unit and increase the volume. But..cost = revenue." That is Karl Marx's Labor theory of value that has been completely disproven. You don't charge what it costs to build something, you charge the maximum the customer is willing to pay.

jthrilly 7mo ago
Congrats - you caused me to create an account to reply, due to the sheer density of your incorrectness. - First, the LTV was not Marx's idea. Adam Smith held the same view, as did many many others during this era. Marx refined this idea, but there's nothing about your point that is unique to his version of it. - Second, while LTV is not widely used today, this is not because it was "completely disproven" (can you cite anything to back this claim up?). It is because economics shifted to a different paradigm based on marginal utility. These two frameworks operate at different levels of abstraction and address different aspects of the price of goods. There is actually empirical evidence of a correlation between the cost of a good and the cost of the labour, at an aggregate level. - Third, Marx explicitly differentiated between _value_ and _price_. LTV deals with value exclusively (in other words, what happens when externalities impacting price are accounted for). He would have had no issue accepting that externalities impacting supply and demand would impact price. The final irony of your comment is that the commenter's claim that you are incorrectly analysing is actually also fully defensible under your (presumably) neoclassical view of economics. In competitive markets, reduced production costs lead to reduced equilibrium prices as competitors undercut each other. The proposition that in the long run, under competition, price tends toward cost is a standard result in microeconomics. The idea that "you charge the maximum the customer is willing to pay" only holds without qualification in monopoly or monopolistic competition with strong differentiation, which are precisely the conditions that increased software supply would erode.
- jmalicki 7mo ago
  Efficient markets barely exist anywhere, especially in tech, it's all monopolistic competition that's bad for the consumer and increases inequality.