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> The response for now? Junior and mid-level engineers can no longer push AI-assisted code without a senior signing off. So basically, kill the productivity of

> The response for now? Junior and mid-level engineers can no longer push AI-assisted code without a senior signing off. So basically, kill the productivity of senior engineers, kill the ability for junior engineers to learn anything, and ensure those senior engineers hate their jobs. Bold move, we'll see how that goes.

dragonelite 7mo ago
Accelerate a person speed toward being burned out..
- altairprime 7mo ago
  ..and you lower overall engineering salary spend by rotating out seniority-paid engineers for newly-promoted AI reviewers with lower specs
almostdeadguy 7mo ago
I'm sorry what? Junior engineers can't learn anything without using AI assistants (or is the implication that having seniors review their code makes them incapable of learning?) and senior engineer would hate their jobs reviewing more code from their teammates? What reality do people live in now?
- ritlo 7mo ago
  > senior engineer would hate their jobs reviewing more code from their teammates Jesus, yes. Maybe I'm an oddball but there's a limit to how much PR reviewing I could do per week and stay sane. It's not terribly high, either. I'd say like 5 hours per week max, and no more than one hour per half-workday, before my eyes glaze over and my reviews become useless. Reviewing code is important and is part of the job but if you're asking me to spend far more of my time on it, and across (presumably) a wider set of projects or sections of projects so I've got more context-switching to figure out WTF I'm even looking at, yes, I would hate my job by the end of day 1 of that.
  - almostdeadguy 7mo ago
    If we can't spend that much time reviewing code, what are we exactly doing with this AI stuff? I don't disagree, I think reviewing is laborious, I just don't see how this causes any unintended consequences that aren't effectively baked into using an AI assistant.
    - bluefirebrand 7mo ago
      Yes, this is part of why AI tools are bad Code Review is hard and tiring, much moreso than writing it I've never met anyone who would be okay reviewing code for their full time job
- zdragnar 7mo ago
  I thought the implication was that juniors would continue to use AI to stay "productive" (AWS is not a rest and vest job for juniors, from what I've heard) and seniors would no longer have time to do anything but review code from juniors who just spin the AI wheel. There's a lot of learning opportunity in failing, but if failure just means spam the AI button with a new prompt, there's not much learning to be had.
whateveracct 7mo ago
Juniors could just code things the old fashioned way. It isn't hard. And if they do find it too hard, they aren't cut out for this job.
- thewhitetulip 7mo ago
  Well, not when they are mandated to use AI tools and asked for justification about their usage! I am saying in General, I've never worked in Amazon
- sdevonoes 7mo ago
  But aren’t companies enforcing AI usage? If noy, wait for it
  - ritlo 7mo ago
    Mine's tracking it complete with a leaderboard (LOL) and it's been suggested to me that it'd be in my best interest not to be too low on that list, so I suspect in the back half of the year some sterner conversations and/or pink-slips are going to be coming the way of those who've not caught on that they need to at least be sending some make-work crap to their LLMs every day, even if they immediately throw the output in the metaphorical garbage bin. It's basically an even-more-ridiculous version of ranking programmers by lines-of-code/week. What's especially comical is I've seen enormous gains in my (longish, at this point) career from learning other tools (e.g. expanding my familiarity with Unix or otherwise fairly common command line tools) and never, ever has anyone measured how much I'm using them, and never, ever has management become in any way involved in pushing them on me. It's like the CEO coming down to tell everyone they'll be making sure all the programmers are using regular expressions enough, and tracking time spent engaging with regular expressions, or they'll be counting how many breakpoints they're setting in their debuggers per week. WTF? That kind of thing should be leads' and seniors' business, to spread and encourage knowledge and appropriate tool use among themselves and with juniors, to the degree it should be anyone's business. Seems like yet another smell indicating that this whole LLM boom is built on shaky ground.
    - 7mo ago
dude250711 7mo ago
But Amazon is something you tolerate for a year or two early in the career, before moving somewhere better (which is anywhere else)?

dragonelite 7mo ago

Accelerate a person speed toward being burned out..

altairprime 7mo ago
..and you lower overall engineering salary spend by rotating out seniority-paid engineers for newly-promoted AI reviewers with lower specs

almostdeadguy 7mo ago

I'm sorry what? Junior engineers can't learn anything without using AI assistants (or is the implication that having seniors review their code makes them incapable of learning?) and senior engineer would hate their jobs reviewing more code from their teammates? What reality do people live in now?

ritlo 7mo ago
> senior engineer would hate their jobs reviewing more code from their teammates Jesus, yes. Maybe I'm an oddball but there's a limit to how much PR reviewing I could do per week and stay sane. It's not terribly high, either. I'd say like 5 hours per week max, and no more than one hour per half-workday, before my eyes glaze over and my reviews become useless. Reviewing code is important and is part of the job but if you're asking me to spend far more of my time on it, and across (presumably) a wider set of projects or sections of projects so I've got more context-switching to figure out WTF I'm even looking at, yes, I would hate my job by the end of day 1 of that.
- almostdeadguy 7mo ago
  If we can't spend that much time reviewing code, what are we exactly doing with this AI stuff? I don't disagree, I think reviewing is laborious, I just don't see how this causes any unintended consequences that aren't effectively baked into using an AI assistant.
  - bluefirebrand 7mo ago
    Yes, this is part of why AI tools are bad Code Review is hard and tiring, much moreso than writing it I've never met anyone who would be okay reviewing code for their full time job
zdragnar 7mo ago
I thought the implication was that juniors would continue to use AI to stay "productive" (AWS is not a rest and vest job for juniors, from what I've heard) and seniors would no longer have time to do anything but review code from juniors who just spin the AI wheel. There's a lot of learning opportunity in failing, but if failure just means spam the AI button with a new prompt, there's not much learning to be had.

whateveracct 7mo ago

Juniors could just code things the old fashioned way. It isn't hard. And if they do find it too hard, they aren't cut out for this job.

thewhitetulip 7mo ago
Well, not when they are mandated to use AI tools and asked for justification about their usage! I am saying in General, I've never worked in Amazon
sdevonoes 7mo ago
But aren’t companies enforcing AI usage? If noy, wait for it
- ritlo 7mo ago
  Mine's tracking it complete with a leaderboard (LOL) and it's been suggested to me that it'd be in my best interest not to be too low on that list, so I suspect in the back half of the year some sterner conversations and/or pink-slips are going to be coming the way of those who've not caught on that they need to at least be sending some make-work crap to their LLMs every day, even if they immediately throw the output in the metaphorical garbage bin. It's basically an even-more-ridiculous version of ranking programmers by lines-of-code/week. What's especially comical is I've seen enormous gains in my (longish, at this point) career from learning other tools (e.g. expanding my familiarity with Unix or otherwise fairly common command line tools) and never, ever has anyone measured how much I'm using them, and never, ever has management become in any way involved in pushing them on me. It's like the CEO coming down to tell everyone they'll be making sure all the programmers are using regular expressions enough, and tracking time spent engaging with regular expressions, or they'll be counting how many breakpoints they're setting in their debuggers per week. WTF? That kind of thing should be leads' and seniors' business, to spread and encourage knowledge and appropriate tool use among themselves and with juniors, to the degree it should be anyone's business. Seems like yet another smell indicating that this whole LLM boom is built on shaky ground.
  - 7mo ago

dude250711 7mo ago

But Amazon is something you tolerate for a year or two early in the career, before moving somewhere better (which is anywhere else)?