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Ask HN: In 2024, is SWE a sustainable career?

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Re: Ask HN: In 2024, is SWE a sustainable career?

#31

Post by Gud »

aster0id wrote: post #29
ilaksh wrote: post #18

I've been programming since approximately age 8, so around 40 years. For the past few years have been focused on generative AI, agents, etc. I have built multiple agent frameworks in Node.js, Rust and now Python. I use AI with my agent system to help me write code for projects and my agent system. The leading edge models are incredible, but still somewhat brittle. They can make some weird mistakes. And I definitely h…

If AI agents do get better than human SWEs, they'll also get better than their human counterparts at other jobs - including being an entrepreneur. When people call out the doom of SWE careers at the hands of AI, they seem to think that only SWE careers will be affected, which seems weirdly biased to me. If AI comes for our jobs, it'll come for everyone's jobs. And if that is the case, economics/capitalism as it exist…

It absolutely still makes sense. It just won’t be so great for the humans.

Re: Ask HN: In 2024, is SWE a sustainable career?

#32

Post by solarmist »

danenania wrote: post #26
solarmist wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could (and ultimately I agree it's probably what they should), but that's not what people are seeing juniors do. They're seeing them blindly trust the AI tools and think they don't have to learn what they're doing. So they're building at best a fragle understanding of the code their writing.

Since the results of that approach are predictably bad, I think it will sort itself out. A junior who works like that is already less productive than an LLM in the hands of a skilled engineer, so there isn't really any reason to keep that junior around. But a junior who is using LLMs to rapidly improve their skills can be seen as a good investment even if it takes them some time to become a net positive on the team.

I agree, but I think it'll take far longer to happen than people expect. Kids are making it all the way through college (at state or regional universities) without needing to adjust this approach at all.

These kids are going to be convinced that it's a valid strategy. I'd be surprised if many didn't claim they were being unfaily discriminated against in their first couple of jobs instead of fixing the behavior.

Re: Ask HN: In 2024, is SWE a sustainable career?

#33

Post by fancyfredbot »

> A lot of SWE work is objectively make-work:

How did you decide on that?

> A lot of startups are building fluff or things that are net negative to society.

But a few startups aren't fluff or negative to society and those will be the ones which succeed. That's how startups work. This isn't a good reason to decide against an SWE career. It might be a reason not to work at a startup.

> Interviews have become nightmares, even at 'non-tech' companies, making switching very time consuming and difficult.

Job switching is almost always difficult. Easy switching is an artifact of boom times and frequently a bad sign (standards tend to drop). I don't think this is a reason to decide against an SWE career.

> Beyond this, the supply for SWEs vs the demand is clearly imbalanced on the supply side.

Demand is below the recent peak, but whether the supply of really good SWEs ever rose to meet demand is questionable.

> LLMs and Agents are not automating SWE, but they are changing it.

When things are changing that's usually a great time to make a career.

Re: Ask HN: In 2024, is SWE a sustainable career?

#34

Post by ilaksh »

harryquach wrote: post #5

> LLMs and Agents are not automating SWE, but they are changing it. Until an LLM can translate opaque product requirements into a working feature, including covering the nuances and edge cases of the product, I am not worried. I have written software professionally for 12 years and am convinced people skills are what make or break a successful developer. Kindness, empathy and generally being an easy person to work wi…

Have you used the SOTA models? Can you honestly say that any person is easier to work with than an LLM? Have you seen the capabilities of the realtime voice API that OpenAI just released?

Re: Ask HN: In 2024, is SWE a sustainable career?

#35

Post by SirMaster »

The world runs on software. So yes, someone who can understand, create, maintain, manage, etc software, i.e. a software engineer is certainly a sustainable career.

I really don't understand how anyone gets the idea that it's not or isn't.

There will always be a need to support, create, understand, and otherwise manipulate the software that make machines and devices work and do what we want them to do.

Re: Ask HN: In 2024, is SWE a sustainable career?

#36

Post by antonyt »

tuna74 wrote: post #20
trashface wrote: post #9

I'm probably more negative on this than average since I'm already x-tech and long term unemployed (middle aged) but my take is it was never a sustainable career for _most_ people. A minority get lucky, or are otherwise able to signal the right qualities to retain steady employment. Even if you do manage to make it as an IC all the way into your forties, you're going to run into the pervasive age discrimination, which…

"Even if you do manage to make it as an IC all the way into your forties, you're going to run into the pervasive age discrimination, which is only getting worse." Is this really the case? With the demographics of today, where can employers find all these young SWEs to replace the older SWEs?

I don’t think general population trends are mirrored in the distribution of potential software engineers.

More of those attending university are pursuing SWE-related degrees than ever.

Re: Ask HN: In 2024, is SWE a sustainable career?

#37

Post by karamanolev »

SirMaster wrote: post #35

The world runs on software. So yes, someone who can understand, create, maintain, manage, etc software, i.e. a software engineer is certainly a sustainable career. I really don't understand how anyone gets the idea that it's not or isn't. There will always be a need to support, create, understand, and otherwise manipulate the software that make machines and devices work and do what we want them to do.

A lot of people who get the idea that it isn't (a sustainable, valuable career) give me the impression of asking a tangential question:

> Is SWE a career that will remain in insane demand, commanding outsized salaries and giving crazy perks.

May be, may not be, but as you said - the world runs of software and will like continue to do so.

Re: Ask HN: In 2024, is SWE a sustainable career?

#38

Post by ilaksh »

ilkhan4 wrote: post #6
codingwagie wrote: post #4

My personal opinion is most software will be easy to write by a junior programmer. There will still be high paid roles, but this will be a low paid profession. Web development, UI, etc will be heavily automated with LLMs. You will guide the model in building the software. It's already this way using cursor.sh, most people just havent realized it yet.

I think it will be the opposite, actually. AI seems to be eating the bottom, but there is still demand for higher level decision making that seniors or architects do. The stuff that I would usually delegate to junior devs, e.g. "move this button" or "change this column" are the things it can easily do now and in the near term. But questions like "How should I design this system" are not and I don't see that happening…

The SOTA models can absolutely create system designs very effectively. Have you even tried that?

Like literally, let's get someone to randomly propose a few specs. Then we get some developers to try to create a system design. Some have Claude 3.5 Sonnet or o1-preview to help them work on it. Some of them have you to help. Each group has one hour.

Then we have another group that evaluates the system designs on some number of objective criteria. Feasibility, completeness, robustness, etc.

I'm willing to bet that a significant percentage will prefer the system designs made with the AI as an aid rather than your help. Because they will be better.

That's today. The LLMs continue to get better every few months.

It's true that we still can use human engineers for "awhile". But that is probably only a few more years.

Re: Ask HN: In 2024, is SWE a sustainable career?

#39

Post by SirMaster »

karamanolev wrote: post #37
SirMaster wrote: post #35

The world runs on software. So yes, someone who can understand, create, maintain, manage, etc software, i.e. a software engineer is certainly a sustainable career. I really don't understand how anyone gets the idea that it's not or isn't. There will always be a need to support, create, understand, and otherwise manipulate the software that make machines and devices work and do what we want them to do.

A lot of people who get the idea that it isn't (a sustainable, valuable career) give me the impression of asking a tangential question: > Is SWE a career that will remain in insane demand, commanding outsized salaries and giving crazy perks. May be, may not be, but as you said - the world runs of software and will like continue to do so.

I guess my definition of what makes a sustainable career does not at all need to include "being in insane demand", or "commanding outsized salaries and crazy perks".

Maybe the question is being asked by people who got into this industry to get rich or something, I don't know.

I got into it because I love working with computers and making software and it seems to pay fair enough for me. I don't see any shortage or work or opportunities to make software and make more than enough money to live a comfortable life.

To me that is a perfectly reasonable definition of sustainable.

Re: Ask HN: In 2024, is SWE a sustainable career?

#40

Post by qeternity »

p1esk wrote: post #28
ilaksh wrote: post #18

I've been programming since approximately age 8, so around 40 years. For the past few years have been focused on generative AI, agents, etc. I have built multiple agent frameworks in Node.js, Rust and now Python. I use AI with my agent system to help me write code for projects and my agent system. The leading edge models are incredible, but still somewhat brittle. They can make some weird mistakes. And I definitely h…

The thing that people strangely still seem to not get is that these systems will continue to improve rapidly. This baffles me as well. So many low hanging fruits to pick, we literally just started with these large models. One obvious direction is predicting the next video frame. Infinite training data is available.

> One obvious direction is predicting the next video frame.

This is being done. There are incredible generative video models...

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