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Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

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Re: Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

#521

Post by danenania »

goalonetwo wrote: post #334
rybosworld wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nothing because I’m a senior and LLM’s never provide code that pass my sniff test, and it remains a waste of time. I am constantly surprised how prevalent this attitude is. ChatGPT was only just released in 2022. Is there some expectation that these things won't improve? > LLM’s never provide code that pass my sniff test This is ego speaking.

100% and even if they might not "replace" a senior or staff SWE, they can make their job significantly easier which means that instead of requiring 5 Senior or Staff you will only need two. LLM WILL change the job market dynamics in the coming years. Engineers have been vastly overpaid over the last 10 years. There is no reason to not see a reversal to the mean here. Getting a 500k offer from a FAANG because you stud…

“which means that instead of requiring 5 Senior or Staff you will only need two”

What company ever feels they have “enough” engineers? There’s always a massive backlog of work to do. So unless you are just maintaining some frozen legacy system, why would you cut your team size down rather than doubling or tripling your output for the same cost? Especially considering all your competitors have a similar productivity boost available. If your reaction is to cut the team rather than make your product better at a much faster rate (or build more products), you will likely be outcompeted by others willing to make that investment.

Re: Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

#522

Post by datadrivenangel »

pdimitar wrote: post #511
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLMs fail to generate such code As another oldster, yes, yes absolutely. But the deeper question is: can this change? They can't do the job now, will they be able to in the future? My understanding of what LLM's do/how they work suggests a strong "no". I'm not confident about my confidence, however.

I am sure it can change. Ultimately programming we be completely lost; we are going to hand-wave and command computers inside us or inside the walls of our houses. This absolutely will happen. But my issue is with people that claim we are either at that point, or very nearly it. ...No, we are not. We are not even 10% there. I am certain LLMs will be a crucial part of such a general AI one day but it's quite funny how…

Plenty of jobs for coming by to read the logs across 6 systems when the LLM applications break and can't fix themselves.

Re: Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

#523

Post by richardw »

pdimitar wrote: post #519
richardw wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analogy is that Japanese cars were initially utterly uncompetitive, and the arrogance of those who benefited from the status quo meant they were unable to adapt when change came. Humans improved those cars, humans are currently improving models and their use. Cheap toys move up the food chain. Find the direction of change and align yourself with it. > people trying to replace one guy like myself with 3 Indians ha…

You are assuming I am arrogant because I don't view the current LLMs as good coders. That's a faulty assumption so your argument starts with a logical mistake. Also I never said that I "have no equal". I am saying that the death of my career has been predicted for no less than 10 years now and it still has not happened, and I see no signs of it happening; LLMs produce terrible code very often. This gives me the right…

"You seem to confuse"

"Your analogy with the automakers seems puzzlingly irrelevant"

"Your take is rather romantic."

That's pretty charged language focused on the person not the argument, so if you're surprised why I'm annoyed, start there.

Meta has one: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.08806

Another, edited in above: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/multi-repo-ai-assisted-refact...

Another: https://codescene.com/product/ai-coding

However, I still don't recognise the names. The one I saw had no pricing but had worked with some big names.

Edit: WAIT found the one I was thinking of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ve-akpov78Q - company is https://about.grit.io

In an enterprise setting, I'm the one hitting the brakes on using LLM's. There are huge risks to attaching them to e.g. customer-facing outputs. In a startup setting, full speed ahead. Match the opinion to the needs, keep two opposing thoughts in mind, etc.

Re: Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

#524

Post by pdimitar »

datadrivenangel wrote: post #522
pdimitar wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sure it can change. Ultimately programming we be completely lost; we are going to hand-wave and command computers inside us or inside the walls of our houses. This absolutely will happen. But my issue is with people that claim we are either at that point, or very nearly it. ...No, we are not. We are not even 10% there. I am certain LLMs will be a crucial part of such a general AI one day but it's quite funny how…

Plenty of jobs for coming by to read the logs across 6 systems when the LLM applications break and can't fix themselves.

Yep, quite correct.

I am even fixing one small app currently that the business owner generated with ChatGPT. So this entire discussion here is doubly amusing for me.

Re: Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

#525

Post by esafak »

throwing_away wrote: post #395
globnomulous wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a very pervasive expectation that LLM's will continue to improve, and it seems odd to suggest otherwise. There is hundreds of billions of dollars being spent on AI training and that number is increasing each year. It isn't odd at all. In the early 21st century there were expectations of ever, exponentially increasing processing power. This misconception partially gave us the game Crysis, which, if I'm not…

> because we'd have seen the writing on the wall and invested in Nvidia before the AI craze reached its current fever pitch. I did this when I saw the first stable diffusion AI titties. So far up over 10x. If I had a nickel for every tech that takes off once porn finds its way to it, I wouldn't be counting in nickels.

What's the logic behind that? Porn has had nothing to do with the current AI boom.

Re: Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

#526

Post by Seb-C »

TZubiri wrote: post #142
simianparrot wrote: post #80

Nothing because I’m a senior and LLM’s never provide code that pass my sniff test, and it remains a waste of time. I have a job at a place I love and get more people in my direct network and extended contacting me about work than ever before in my 20 year career. And finally I keep myself sharp by always making sure I challenge myself creatively. I’m not afraid to delve into areas to understand them that might look “…

"Nothing because I’m a senior and LLM’s never provide code that pass my sniff test, and it remains a waste of time" That's why the question is future proof. Models get better with time, not worse.

LLMs are not the right tool for the job, so even if some marginal bits can be improved, it fundamentally cannot "get better".

The job of a software engineer is to first understand the real needs of the customer/user, which requires a level of knowledge and understanding of the real world that LLMs simply don't have and will never do because that is simply not what it does.

The second part of a software engineer's job is to translate those needs into a functional program. Here the issue is that natural languages are simply not precise enough for the kind of logic that is involved. This is why we invented programming languages rather than use plain English. And since the interface of LLMs is by definition human (natural) languages, it fundamentally will always have the same flaws.

Any precise enough interface for this second part of the job will by definition just be some higher level programming language, which not only involves an expert of the tool anyway, but also is unrealistic given the amount of efforts that we already collectively invest into getting more productive languages and frameworks to replace ourselves.

Re: Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

#528

Post by aprilthird2021 »

dogman144 wrote: post #378

The last fairly technical career to get surprisingly and fully automated in the way this post displays concern about - trading. I spent a lot of time with traders in early '00's and then '10's when the automation was going full tilt. Common feedback I heard from these highly paid, highly technical, highly professional traders in a niche indusry running the world in its way was: - How complex the job was - How high a…

Okay, but one thing you kinda miss is that trading (e.g. investing) is still one of the largest ways for people to make money. Even passively investing in ETFs is extremely lucrative.

If LLMs become so good that everyone can just let an LLM go into the world and make them money, the way we do with our investments, won't that be good?

Re: Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

#529

Post by aprilthird2021 »

627467 wrote: post #436
taylodl wrote: post #25

Back in the late 80s and early 90s there was a craze called CASE - Computer-Aided Software Engineering. The idea was humans really suck at writing code, but we're really good at modeling and creating specifications. Tools like Rational Rose arose during this era, as did Booch notation which eventually became part of UML. The problem was it never worked. When generating the code, the best the tools could do was create…

It's interesting you say this because in my current process to learn to build apps for myself I first try build mermaid diagrams aided by LLM. And when I'm happy, i then ask it to generate the code for me based on these diagrams. I'm no SWE and probably never will be. SWE probably don't consider what I do "building an app" but I don't really care

Diagramming out what needs to be built is often what some of the highest paid programmers do all day

Re: Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

#530

Post by Bjorkbat »

76SlashDolphin wrote: post #389
Bjorkbat wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am constantly surprised how prevalent this attitude is. ChatGPT was only just released in 2022. Is there some expectation that these things won't improve? I mean, in a way, yeah. Last 10 years were basically one hype-cycle after another filled with lofty predictions that never quite panned out. Besides the fact that many of these predictions kind of fell short, there's also the perception that progress on these v…

The funny thing about 3D printers is that they're making a bit of a comeback. The early ones managed to get the capabilities right - you can print some really impressive things on the older Creality printers, but it required fiddling, several hours of building the bloody things, cogged extruders, manual bed leveling and all sorts of technical hurdles. A very motivated techy person will persevere and solve them, and w…

Like I said, 3D printers have gotten incrementally better. Buddy of mine makes high-quality prints on one that’s way cheaper than what I owned back in the day.

And yet nothing has really changed because he’s still using it to print dumb tchotchkes like every other hobbyist 10 years ago.

I can foresee them getting better but never getting good enough to where they actually fundamentally change society or live up to past promises

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