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

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

#601

Post by noisy_boy » Tue, Dec 17, 2024, 5:21 AM UTC

You still need a person to be responsible for the software being built - you cant fire chatGPT if the code blows up.

The developer has in fact even more responsibility because expectations have gone up so even more code is being produced and someone has to maintain it.

So there will be a point when that developer will throw their hands up and ask for more people which will have to be hired.

Basically the boiling point has gone up (or down, depending on how you interpret the analogy), the water still has to be boiled the more or less the same way.

Until we have AGI - then it's all over.

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

#602

Post by sleepybrett » Tue, Dec 17, 2024, 5:21 AM UTC

cweld510 wrote: post #455

from-nibly wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that do exactly what they want This presumes that they know exactly what they want. My brother works for a company and they just ran into this issue. They target customer retention as a metric. The result is that all of their customers are the WORST, don't make them any money, but they stay around a long time. The company is about to run out of money and crash into the ground. If people knew exactly what they wante…

Sure, but without an LLM, measuring customer retention might require sending a request over to your data scientist because they know how to make dashboards, then they have to balance it with their other work, so who knows when it gets done. You can do this sort of thing faster with an LLM, and the communication cost will be less. So even if you choose the wrong statistic, you can get it built sooner, and find out soo…

except how do you know that the llm is actually telling you things that are factual and not hallucinating numbers?

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

#603

Post by jameslk » Tue, Dec 17, 2024, 5:22 AM UTC

I worked at a big tech co years ago. Strolling up to my bus stop in my casual attire while others around me wore uniforms, rushing to get to work. A nice private shuttle would pick me up. It would deliver me pretty much at the doors of the office. If it were raining, somebody would be standing outside to hand me an umbrella even though the door was a short distance away. Other times there would be someone there waiting on the shuttle to hand me a smoothie. When I got to the door, there would be someone dedicated to opening it. When I got inside, a breakfast buffet fit for a king would be served. Any type of cuisine I wanted was served around campus for lunch and dinner, and it was high quality. If I wanted dessert, there was entire shops (not one but many) serving free handcrafted desserts. If I wanted my laundry done, someone would handle that. If I wanted snacks, each floor of my office had its own little 7/11. If I didn't feel like having all this luxury treatment, I'd just work from home and nobody cared.

All of that, and I was being paid a very handsome amount compared to others outside of tech? Several times over the national average? For gluing some APIs together?

What other professions are like this where there's a good chunk of people who can have such a leisurely life, without taking much risk, and get so highly compensated compared to the rest? I doubt there's many. At some point, the constrained supply must answer to the high demand and reality shows up at the door.

I quit a year into the gig to build my own company. Reality is much different now. But I feel like I've gained many more skills outside of just tech that make me more equipped for whatever the future brings.

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

#604

Post by kqr » Tue, Dec 17, 2024, 5:23 AM UTC

Assuming LLMs grow past their current state where they are kind of hit-and-miss for programming, I feel like this question is very similar to e.g. asking an assembly programmer what they are doing to future-proof their career in light of high-level languages. I can't recall a situation in which the correct answer would not be one of

(1) "Finding a niche in which my skills are still relevant due to technical constraints",

(2) "Looking for a different job going forward", or

(3) "Learning to operate the new tool".

Personally I'm in category (3), but I'd be most interested in hearing from others who think they are on track to (1). What are the areas where LLMs will not penetrate due to technical reasons, and why? I'm sure these areas exist, I just have trouble imagining which they are!

----

One might argue that there's another alternative of finding a niche where LLMs won't penetrate due to regulatory constraints, but I'm not counting this because that tends to be a short-term optimisation.

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

#605

Post by SoftTalker » Tue, Dec 17, 2024, 5:24 AM UTC

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #538

light_triad wrote: post #183

There's a great Joel Spolsky post about developers starting businesses and realising that there's a bunch of "business stuff" that was abstracted away at big companies. [1] One way to future proof is to look at the larger picture, the same way that coding can't be reduced to algorithm puzzles: "Software is a conversation, between the software developer and the user. But for that conversation to happen requires a lot…

Yep, I learned this the hard way. I thought meeting customers, selling them on an automated, cheaper version of their current crufty manual system would be so easy I'd barely need to try. I'd never been more wrong.

There are always people vested in the current way of doing things. If they happen to be influential, you will have to swim upstream no matter how much better your solution is. Companies are ultimately people, not in the Citizens United sense but in that they are made by people, staffed by people, and you will be dealing with people and all their foibles.

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

#606

Post by wewtyflakes » Tue, Dec 17, 2024, 5:25 AM UTC

9cb14c1ec0 wrote: post #568

wewtyflakes wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're fighting the tide with a broom.

No, I'm fighting for the software I sell my customers to be actually reliable.

I would not hire someone who eschews LLMs as a tool. That does not mean I would accept someone mindlessly shoving its code through review, as it is a tool, not a wholesale solution.

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

#607

Post by SoftTalker » Tue, Dec 17, 2024, 5:26 AM UTC

indigoabstract wrote: post #216

throwaway_43793 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good advice indeed. But there is a slight problem with it. Young people can learn and fight for their place in the workforce, but what is left for older people like myself? I'm in this industry already, I might have missed the train of "learn to talk with people" and been sold on the "coding is a means to an end" koolaid. My employability is already damaged due to my age and experience. What is left for people…

It's good advice, but not easy to follow, since knowing what to do and doing it are very different things. I think that what he means is that how successful we are in work is closely related to our contributions, or to the perceived "value" we bring to other people. The current gen AI isn't the end of programmers. What matters is still what people want and are willing to pay for and how can we contribute to fulfill t…

> All the greats, like Steve Jobs and so on said that you've got to love what you do.

This is probably true for them but the other thing that can happen is that when you take what you love and do it for work or try to make it a business you can grow to hate it.

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

#608

Post by sleepybrett » Tue, Dec 17, 2024, 5:32 AM UTC

tinthedev wrote: post #46

angoragoats wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So frankly, I'm afraid that the belief that software engineers of any level are safe in the intelligence age is 100% cope. In 2025, I predict that there will be more layoffs because of this. If this point could be clarified into a proposal that was easily testable with a yes/no answer, I would probably be willing to bet real money against it. Especially if the time frame is only until the end of 2025.

I'd gladly double up on your bet. Frankly, I think it's ridiculous that anyone who has done any kind of real software work would predict this. Layoffs? Probably. Layoffs of capable senior developers, due to AI replacing them? Inconceivable, with the currently visible/predictable technology.

Not inconceivable. There are plenty of executives and mba types that are eating up the 'ai thing'... those guys will pay some consultants layoff their workforce and fucking die in the market when the consultants can't deliver.

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

#609

Post by Derbasti » Tue, Dec 17, 2024, 5:34 AM UTC

simianparrot wrote: post #152

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.

At my job I review a lot of code, and I write code as well. The only type of developer an LLM’s output comes close to is a fresh junior usually straight out of university in their first real development job, with little practical experience in a professional code-shipping landscape. And the majority of those juniors improve drastically within a few weeks or months, with handholding only at the very start and then les…

That's a good observation. How would you teach an LLM the processes and conduct in your company? I suppose you'd need to replace code reviews and tutoring with prompt engineering. And hope that the next software update to the LLM won't invalidate your prompts.

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

#610

Post by gabriel-uribe » Tue, Dec 17, 2024, 5:34 AM UTC

cies wrote: post #187

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.

> ChatGPT was only just released in 2022. Bitcoin was released in what year? I still cannot use it for payments. No-code solutions exist since when? And still programmers work... I dont think all hyped techs are fads. For instance: we use SaaS now instead of installing software locally. This transition took the world by storm. But those tech that needs lots of ads, and lots of zealots, and make incredible promises: t…

Cryptocurrency more broadly can be used to send vast amounts of money, anywhere in the world for near-zero fees regardless of sovereignty. And Bitcoin is still faster and cheaper than shipping gold around.