Ask HN: In 2024, is SWE a sustainable career? • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by mrmansano » Mon, Oct 07, 2024, 9:53 PM UTC

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…

Instead, think of AI and robotics as incredibly cheap labor that will be available to just about everyone. So you become an entrepreneur, or the manager of a sophisticated network of teams of robots/AI running on a blockchain. Think about how to leverage these systems to provide goods and services.

This doesn't make sense to me... It is a genuine doubt: if you, and everyone else by extent, have the same ability to create a product or service, that can be easily replicated by AI, what value you are creating? What will you sell? Who will want to buy what you're selling if everyone can make the same thing?

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

#52

Post by purple-leafy » Tue, Oct 08, 2024, 2:33 AM UTC

I love LLMs. I love the doom and gloom. Why? It’s a giant filter.

Because all the clueless people in the room see it as doom to software engineers, because they have no real skills, and can’t think for themselves - and because of this they don’t understand the pros/cons/trade-offs of the tool that is an LLM. And so, they give up on their career or study something else, and no longer crowd the market. Win for me.

These are the same people that would have feared: the mouse when it was released, GUIs when they became the norm, the internet, low-code, no-code, WYSIWYG editors, and crypto.

LLMs are massively overhyped, someone who knows their stuff that has used them daily would know that. And they would understand how to wield them.

I’m not worried about my career at all. In fact, I’m doubling down hard on software. Tripling down even.

I’m learning as broad as I can, and as deep as I can where I care to.

If you know computer science fundamentals, computer architecture, and system design you are untouchable.

Go touch grass!

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

#53

Post by mraza007 » Tue, Oct 08, 2024, 4:26 AM UTC

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…

I would love to hear your experience around building agents

And how did you even got started with building agents

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

#54

Post by ativzzz » Tue, Oct 08, 2024, 2:01 PM UTC

throwaway123198 wrote: post #46

Kon-Peki wrote: post #15

SWE has always been in a boom and bust cycle. Sometimes they love you and pay accordingly, sometimes they hate you and look for any reason to possibly get rid of you. Some of the best advice I've ever received from senior engineers was to live below your means and to have a high savings rate. You don't have to go to the FIRE extreme and definitely shouldn't make yourself miserable. What would I do about LLMs? I'd liv…

Sounds like a pretty unsustainable career to me

Good thing the high pay balances it out. Also the fact that literally every company needs them to some extent means you can find the specific tradeoffs that work for you

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

#55

Post by thorin » Tue, Oct 08, 2024, 2:56 PM UTC

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…

Given the only real mass market "robots" that are popular currently are stuff like hoovers or lawnmowers I can't possible see how trades such as plumbing are at risk any time in the next 20+ years. This is from the perspective of UK / European housing where a huge amount of houses are over 50 years old and so each set up is completely different. Different heating systems, thermostats, piping, connectors. Maybe in a new build property where every house is essentially the same there might be some chance of automation, but in traditional housing I can't see how that would work until robots are essentially "humans".

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

#56

Post by lotsoweiners » Tue, Oct 08, 2024, 4:02 PM UTC

mrmansano wrote: post #51

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…

Instead, think of AI and robotics as incredibly cheap labor that will be available to just about everyone. So you become an entrepreneur, or the manager of a sophisticated network of teams of robots/AI running on a blockchain. Think about how to leverage these systems to provide goods and services. This doesn't make sense to me... It is a genuine doubt: if you, and everyone else by extent, have the same ability to cr…

Have you seen the average person’s Googling skills. How are they going to be able to produce anything complex with an LLM?

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

#57

Post by badpun » Tue, Oct 08, 2024, 7:53 PM UTC

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…

> So you become an entrepreneur, or the manager of a sophisticated network of teams of robots/AI running on a blockchain.

Wont managers and entrepreneurs be automated as well? Their jobs are not neccessarily harder to automate than software engineering.

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

#58

Post by fdlaks » Tue, Oct 08, 2024, 10:41 PM UTC

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

Where is the plateau though? What we have so far is definitely impressive and useful in some cases, but I can't help but eye-roll every time I hear someone seriously talk about making nuclear reactors JUST to power the millions of GPUs needed to train these models.

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

#59

Post by ilaksh » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 8:29 AM UTC

thorin wrote: post #55

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…

Given the only real mass market "robots" that are popular currently are stuff like hoovers or lawnmowers I can't possible see how trades such as plumbing are at risk any time in the next 20+ years. This is from the perspective of UK / European housing where a huge amount of houses are over 50 years old and so each set up is completely different. Different heating systems, thermostats, piping, connectors. Maybe in a n…

It's very obvious that humanoid robots will be quite capable and mass-produced in well under 20 years. Just do some searching on YouTube for humanoid robot and combine that with the progress in AI. The robots are improving quickly. I would be surprised if we didn't have something quite useful for the price of a car in less than 10 or maybe even 5 years. Just look at the state of the art and project improvements every year.

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

#60

Post by ilaksh » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 8:32 AM UTC

fdlaks wrote: post #58

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 Where is the plateau though? What we have so far is definitely impressive and useful in some cases, but I can't help but eye-roll every time I hear someone seriously talk about making nuclear reactors JUST to power the millions of GPUs needed to train these models.

We have already seen multiple plateaus as we reached barriers in terms of scaling the models the hardware and software. We have continued to innovate and break through them. The latest barrier is scaling training via inference time.

New hardware and even learning paradigms are being researched to get us over the next wall. This has been shown time and time again we keep innovating.

The power requirements with force investment to scale out the new memory-based compute paradigms.