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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?

#891

Post by LouisSayers »

shiveenp wrote: post #487
pdimitar wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cognitive dissonance of seemingly educated people defending the LLMs when it comes to writing code is my top mystery for the entirety of 2024. Call me if you find a good reason. I still have not.

In my opinion people that harp on about how LLMs have been game changer for them are the people that put themselves as never actually having built anything sophisticated enough that a team of engineers can work and extend on for years.

"Game changer" maybe.

But what you'll probably find is that people that are skilled communicators are currently getting a decent productivity boost from LLMs, and I suspect that the difference between many that are bullish vs bearish is quite likely coming down to ability to structure and communicate thoughts effectively.

Personally, I've found AI to be a large productivity boost - especially once I've put certain patterns and structure into code. It's then like hitting the N2O button on the keyboard.

Sure, there are people making toy apps using LLMs that are going to quickly become a unmaintainable mess, but don't be too quick to assume that LLMs aren't already making an impact within production systems. I know from experience that they are.

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

#892

Post by [deleted] »

polotics wrote: post #59

This question is so super weird, because: Ask an LLM to generate you 100 more lines of code, no problem you will get something. Ask the same LLM to look at 10000 lines of code and intelligently remove 100... good luck with that! seriously, I tried uploading some (but not all) source code of my company to our private Azure OpenAI GPT 4o for analysis, as a 48 MB cora-generated context file, and really the usefulness is…

[deleted]

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

#893

Post by paulcole »

simianparrot wrote: post #264
jensensbutton wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question isn't about what you'll do when you're replaced by an LLM, it's what you're doing to future proof your job. There is a difference. The risk to hedge against is the productivity boost brought by LLMs resulting in a drop in the needs for new software engineers. This will put pressure on jobs (simply don't need as many as we used to so we're cutting 15%) AND wages (more engineers looking for fewer jobs with…

I'm future proofing my job by ensuring I remain someone whose brain is tuned to solving complex problems, and to do that most effectively I find ways to keep being engaged in both the fundamentals of programming (as already mentioned) and the higher-level aspects: Teaching others (which in turn teaches me new things) and being in leadership roles where I can make real architectural choices in terms of what hardware t…

Nobody who's been replaced by a parrot thought they were going to get replaced by a parrot.

Where's your espoused intellectual curiosity and mental ambidextrousness when it comes to LLMs? It seems like your mind is pretty firmly made up that they're of no worry to you.

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

#894

Post by chasemc67 »

the best engineers focus on outcomes. They use the best tools available to achieve the best outcome as fast as possible

AI coding tools are increasingly proving to be some of the highest leverage tools we’ve seen in decades. They still require some skill to use effectively and have unique trade-offs, though. Mastering them is the same as anything else in engineering, things are just moving faster than we’re used to.

the next generation of successful engineers will be able to do more with less, producing the output of an entire team by themselves.

be one of those 100x engineers, focused on outcomes, and you'll always be valuable

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

#895

Post by LouisSayers »

munk-a wrote: post #145
IshKebab wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there some expectation that these things won't improve? I definitely expect them to improve. But I also think the point at which they can actually replace a senior programmer is pretty much the exact point at which they can replace any knowledge worker, at which point western society (possibly all society) is in way deeper shit than just me being out of a job. > This is ego speaking. It definitely isn't. LLMs ar…

Intellisense style systems were a huge feature leap when they gained wider language support and reliability. LLMs are yet another step forward for intellisense and the effort of comprehending the code you're altering. I don't think I will ever benefit from code generation in a serious setting (it's excellent for prototyping) simply due to the fact that it's solving the easy problem (write some code) while creating a…

> I am keenly interested in seeing if someone can leverage AI for query performance tuning or, within the RDBMS, query planning. That feels like an excellent (if highly specific) domain for an LLM.

Pay the $20 for Claude, copy the table DDL's in along with a query you'd like to tune.

Copy in any similar tuned queries you have and tell it you'd like to tune your query in a similar manner.

Once you've explained what you'd like it to do and provided context hit enter.

I'd be very surprised if having done this you can't find value in what it generates.

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

#896

Post by JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B »

rybosworld wrote: post #172
hmillison wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's a lot more involved in senior dev work beyond producing code that works. if the stakeholders knew how to do what they needed to build and how, then they could use LLMs, but translating complex requirements into code is something that these tools are not even close to cracking.

> there's a lot more involved in senior dev work beyond producing code that works. Completely agree. What I don't agree with is statements like these: > LLM’s never provide code that pass my sniff test To me, these (false) absolutions about chat bot capabilities, are being rehashed so frequently, that it derails every conversation about using LLM's for dev work. You'll find similar statements in nearly every thread a…

> It's provably true that LLM's can produce working code

Then why can't I see this magical code that is produced? I mean a real big application with a purpose and multiple dependencies, not yet another ReactJS todo list. I've seen comments like that a hundred times already but not one repository that could be equivalent to what I currently do.

For me the experience of LLM is a bad tool that calls functions that are obsolete or do not exist at all, not very earth-shattering.

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

#898

Post by dreamfactored »

pdimitar wrote: post #821
dreamfactored wrote: post #714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLMs don't write code like that As someone who has been doing this since the mid 80's in all kinds of enterprise environments, I am finding that the latest generation are getting rather good at code like that, on par with mid-senior level in that way. They are also very capable of discussing architecture approaches with an encyclopaedic knowledge, although humans contribute meaningfully by drawing connections and a…

> I'm highly bullish on their capabilities as a force multiplier, but highly bearish on them becoming self-driving (for anything complex at least). Very well summed and this is my exact stance, it's just that I am not seeing much of the "force multiplier" thing just yet. Happy to be proven wrong, but last time I checked (August 2024) I didn't get almost anything. Might be related to the fact that I don't do throwaway…

Sonnet 3.5 v2 was released in October. Most people just use this. First and only one that can do passable front end as well.

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

#899

Post by pdimitar »

dreamfactored wrote: post #898
pdimitar wrote: post #821

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm highly bullish on their capabilities as a force multiplier, but highly bearish on them becoming self-driving (for anything complex at least). Very well summed and this is my exact stance, it's just that I am not seeing much of the "force multiplier" thing just yet. Happy to be proven wrong, but last time I checked (August 2024) I didn't get almost anything. Might be related to the fact that I don't do throwaway…

Sonnet 3.5 v2 was released in October. Most people just use this. First and only one that can do passable front end as well.

Thank you, I'll check it out.

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

#900

Post by dreamfactored »

irunmyownemail wrote: post #463
crystal_revenge wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> never provide code that pass my sniff test Unfortunately it won't be your sniff test that matters. It's going to be an early founder that realizes they don't need to make that extra seed round hire, or the resource limited director that decides they can forgo that one head count and still deliver the product on time, or the in house team that realizes they no longer need a dedicated front end dev because, for their…

"Personally, the team I lead is able to ship much faster with AI assistants than without, which means in practice we can out compete much larger teams in the same space." So, you're giving away your company's IP to AI firms, does your CEO understand this?

IP is a legal construct not a technical one. If it's protected by law it's protected by law.
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