4 ms·
I think in the future, those who succeed will be equivalent to wayfinders. People who _can_ see the wood for the trees, and are able to understand multiple (so
by lwhi 4mo ago
I think in the future, those who succeed will be equivalent to wayfinders.
People who _can_ see the wood for the trees, and are able to understand multiple (sometimes conflicting) requirements and work out a way through that solves the problems that arise, for all involved parties.
An understanding of domain, the ability to communicate effectively and a mind that can think laterally, will all be vital.
- csomar 4mo agoIn a perfect world, yes. However, the current tech world is akin to a flea market. Those who shout out more stand out more.
- lwhi 4mo agoSurely you can judge people by results though?
- RugnirViking 4mo agomeasuring programmer productivity is notoriously difficult. Does james, who shipped 20 features without testing thoroughly provide more value? or does joe, who patched a security hole in that time and avoided disaster? what about jason, who facilitated communication between them, and kept the infra going so their changes could go into prod without issues?
- lwhi 4mo agoWe won't be programmers in this scenario. The results will hopefully be a lot more tangible.
- RugnirViking 4mo agoThis also was true for teams, and indeed, businesses. It's not a property of the code itself, its a property of products and outcomes. I don't think AI agents doing the day to day changes will affect this directly (but people may have more time to think about these higher level problems, and increased volume of changes may make the issue more important)
- lwhi 4mo agoI agree. I suppose, my best guess is that a team will be reduced to one or two people; the those that are left will be judged solely on outcomes. Two (human) brains are always useful; the benefit of a human in these scenarios is that we can be accountable, and that we have a very real incentive to do well and not be fired. The LLM obviously doesn't care in that regard!
- pirates 4mo agoIt’s clearly Jason in this scenario
- csomar 4mo agoHow do you do that in practice though? You won't know the engineer is a con-man until after you have spent $$ and months into the process. Then you are in the position of trusting nobody.
- Tanjreeve 4mo agoWelcome to the problem of hiring and managing employees generally.
- lelanthran 4mo ago> I think in the future, those who succeed will be equivalent to wayfinders. In the future, those who succeed will be the owners of capital.
- lwhi 4mo agoWell, yes .. but they're going to need people to do their evil bidding /s
- oompydoompy74 4mo agoPast, Present, and Future. If you control the means of production you win. Knowledge, skill, and experience are largely irrelevant to the conversation. I’ve held this opinion for quite some time and would be interested to hear alternative perspectives.
- lelanthran 4mo ago> Past, Present, and Future. If you control the means of production you win. Yeah, but we were talking about only success, not winning. In the past and the present, you could succeed purely on a combination of skill, talent and labour. This approach looks like it will not work much longer.
- lwhi 4mo agoI can see where you're coming from. We exchange our knowledge, time, and skill for money. If this exchange is no longer viable — because similar value can be accessed via LLM agents — we'll have no way of making money. I do think some (non-billionaire) people will survive the transition, but the question then becomes: what happens to everyone else?
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- Ferret7446 4mo agoThat's clearly wrong, because capital doesn't just appear out of thin air. You are ignoring that there's clearly rare skills involved that enable a few to become very successful. Your strawman only applies to the second generation that inherits wealth, and case in point inherited wealth tends to disappear in a couple of generations further proving that skill is required to build and maintain wealth.
- lofaszvanitt 4mo ago[flagged]
- dang 4mo agoCould you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- lofaszvanitt 4mo agoNo probs, I'm leaving, since the amount of ridiculous idiocy lately went through the roof.