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ChatGPT has the habit of throwing new knowledge back at you.
I no longer feel the need to hire juniors.
> 2. I no longer feel the need to hire juniors. This is a short-term positive and maybe a long-term negative. > A lot of stuff I used to delegate to fellow humans are now being delegated to ChatGPT. And I can get the results immediately and at any time I want. I agree that it cannot operate on its own. I still need to review and correct things. I have do that even when working with other humans. The only difference i…
> The threat of these models isn't that they'll go all Skynet and kill everyone, it's that they'll cause a lot of economic devastation to people who make a living Yes. This is pretty much my only concern about these models, and I'm powerfully concerned about this. It's hard to see how this will lead to a good place. It seems more likely that this will lead to increased poverty and multiple socioeconomic crises. I am…
If everything you do for money goes in and out over a wire, be very afraid.
Don't discard the juniors, maybe ask them to process your prompts for you. That'll give you some space. I feel the opposite: I had a great experience asking GPT-4 to do some tasks for me and have been feeling like I'm missing out ever since by not using it more often. However, I'm wary of posting work-related code into it so I either have to come up with similar examples, which is time-consuming or ask it conceptual…
GPT can give incorrect, bad, or non-functional code. A senior engineer that reviews GPT responses will (hopefully) spot that and rectify it right away. Junior engineers can end up being less productive and not learn a lot when encountering this.
> 2. I no longer feel the need to hire juniors. This is a short-term positive and maybe a long-term negative. > A lot of stuff I used to delegate to fellow humans are now being delegated to ChatGPT. And I can get the results immediately and at any time I want. I agree that it cannot operate on its own. I still need to review and correct things. I have do that even when working with other humans. The only difference i…
Or, for every junior that isn't hired by a business that can't expand its portfolio to exploit greater productivity or can’t figure out how to effectively use LLMs across the experience spectrum, two will be hired in shops that can do those things, and, as with previous software dev productivity increases, greater productivity in the field will mean a broader range of viable applications and more total jobs across all experience levels.
> 2. I no longer feel the need to hire juniors. This is a short-term positive and maybe a long-term negative. > A lot of stuff I used to delegate to fellow humans are now being delegated to ChatGPT. And I can get the results immediately and at any time I want. I agree that it cannot operate on its own. I still need to review and correct things. I have do that even when working with other humans. The only difference i…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This seems like a pretty good take - you found that you could 'get rid of juniors' by working in an unsustainable way. Why not work with now-super-productive junior employees that can spread the cognitive load? It would seem odd if this were the one time in the history of computing where a big productivity boost didn't just lead to increasingly big/complex software.
> Why not work with now-super-productive junior employees that can spread the cognitive load? It's all about scaling up or out. Having co-workers is like scaling out, you have to worry about aligning your goals, there's a lot of communication overhead in general. Using ChatGPT is like scaling up, you're just upgrading your skills and intelligence and you still have very low latency as there is only one mind in contro…
Perhaps I do not understand what you're actually using ChatGPT to do, but I can't see it taking over the role of junior developers anytime soon.
To me it feels exactly like finding wikipedia in 2005, or getting an iphone + wikipanion in 2008. The frontiers of my mind have been unleashed. A real bicycle for the mind.
Here are some tactics I use to "turn off gpt":
1. It'll be there tomorrow. The great thing about their threaded model is you can easily find the convo and continue it tomorrow. Remind yourself of that consciously (or tape it to your monitor!)
2. You're not behind, you're ahead. 80% of Americans haven't tried chatgpt. 95% of the world maybe.
3. Don't worry about juniors. They'll still be hired because now they'll ramp up faster and produce better code, using the same tool you're using. Same thing that happened when stackoverflow became popular and junior devs stopped "reading the source code" or "reading man pages."
For all the limitations of GPT4, it truly is great at coding. Exciting times.
> 2. I no longer feel the need to hire juniors. This is a short-term positive and maybe a long-term negative. > A lot of stuff I used to delegate to fellow humans are now being delegated to ChatGPT. And I can get the results immediately and at any time I want. I agree that it cannot operate on its own. I still need to review and correct things. I have do that even when working with other humans. The only difference i…
And a part of their role will morph into prompting GPT4 (much like this senior engineer has started doing).
If GPTx ends up in the narrow area where it's universally smarter than junior engs but definitely not capable of being a senior eng, then junior engs will just shift to the little remaining work for senior engs, shadow them for months to years like an apprenticeship.
Of course in that case the total number of eng needed will also decrease (already only a small percent ever get good enough to be considered truly senior), so there will be selection bias toward more intelligent engineers who are a step above GPTx. If none are left, then the profession will be gone and there will be no problem.
What tasks are you delegating to ChatGPT that were previously done by humans? Most of my input from others is regarding current information specific to the task at hand. I don't see how ChatGPT would have any idea what I'm talking about.
Do you have some specific examples you could share?