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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?

#941

Post by pdimitar »

purple-leafy wrote: post #936
pdimitar wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, you have built exactly zero commercial-grade applications that us the working programmers work on building every day. LLMs are good for playing with stuff, yes, and that has been implied by your parent commenter as well I think. But when you have to scale the work, then the code has to be easy to read, easy to extend, easy to test, have extensive test coverage, have proper dependency injection / be ea…

There are some very narrow minded, snarky people here, “doesn’t pass my sniff test” okay Einstein, you do you

Surely, you actually mean those who extrapolate from a few niche tasks to "OMG the programmers are toast"?

Fixed it for you. ;)

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

#942

Post by aprilthird2021 »

tumetab1 wrote: post #772
aprilthird2021 wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There will be less SWE and DevOps and related jobs available in the next 24 months. Period. I wish an AI could revisit this comment 2 years later and post the stats to see if you're right.

My personal estimation is that this will be noticeable in the first six months of 2025 in the USA big tech organizations. I think this is actually already in motion in board meetings, I'm pretty sure executives are discussing something like "if we spend Z$ on AI tools, can we avoid hiring how many engineers?"

Okay, I'll come back in 6 months and we can assess this honestly.

The government projects this job type will grow 18% in the next decade: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...

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

#943

Post by aprilthird2021 »

amrocha wrote: post #626
aprilthird2021 wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, massive LOC means massive maintenance. Maybe the LLMs can maintain their own code? I'm skeptical. I feel like they can easily code themselves into an unmaintainable corner. But maybe the times that happens is so rare and low that you just hire a human to unstuck the whole thing and get it running again. Maybe we'll become more like mechanics you visit every now and then for an expensive, quick job, vs an annual…

I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a developer who enjoys refactoring a messy, bug ridden code base. This is the reason why rewrites happen, nobody wants to touch the old code with a ten foot pole and it’s easier to just rewrite it all. So if you turn the entire job into that? I don’t think skilled people will be lining up to do it. Maybe consulting firms would take that on I guess.

You can't just rewrite all of some of the most profitable software systems out there. Banks, HFTs, FAANG, these cannot just be rewritten

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

#944

Post by aprilthird2021 »

dogman144 wrote: post #915
aprilthird2021 wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

you are missing that trading in what I’m talking about != “e.g investing.” And, certainly, prob a good thing for some, bad thing for the money conveyor belt of the last 20 yrs of tech careers.

I am not missing that. I understand the difference. I'm saying the economic engine behind trading is still good (investing). So while people don't do the trading as much (machines do it), the economic rewards are still there and we can still capture them. The same may be true in a potential future where software becomes automated.

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

#945

Post by HeikoKemp »

sureglymop wrote: post #719

As a junior dev, I do two conscious things to make sure I'll still be relevant for the workforce in the future. 1. I try to stay somewhat up to date with ML and how the latest things work. I can throw together some python, let it rip through a dataset from kaggle, let models run locally etc. Have my linalg and stats down and practiced. Basically if I had to make the switch to be an ML/AI engineer it would be easier t…

I'm shocked that I had to dig this deep in the comments to see someone mention cybersecurity. Same as you, seeing this trend, I'm doubling down on security. As more businesses "hack away" their projects. It's going to be a big party. I'm sure black hats are thrilled right now. Will LLMs be able to secure their code? I'm not so sure. Even human-written code is exploitable. That's their source for training.

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

#946

Post by raxxorraxor »

lordnacho wrote: post #776
pdimitar wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, you have built exactly zero commercial-grade applications that us the working programmers work on building every day. LLMs are good for playing with stuff, yes, and that has been implied by your parent commenter as well I think. But when you have to scale the work, then the code has to be easy to read, easy to extend, easy to test, have extensive test coverage, have proper dependency injection / be ea…

We're gonna get mini-milled. People with the attitude that real programmers are producing the high level product are going to get eaten slowly, from below, in the most embarrassing way possible. Embarrassing because they'll actually be right. LLMs aren't making the high quality products, it's true. But the low quality CRUD websites (think restaurant menus) will get swallowed by LLMs. You no longer need a guy to code…

I don't think they will vanish at all.

A modern CRUD website (any software can be reduced to CRUD for that matter) is not trivially implemented and far beyond what current LLM can output. I think they will hit a wall before they will ever be able to do that. Also, configuration and infrastructure management is a large part of such a project and far out of scope as well.

People build some useful tools for LLM to enable them to do anything besides outputting text and images. But it is quite laborious to really empower them to do anything still.

LLM can indeed empower technical people. For example those working in automation can generate little Python or JavaScript scripts to push bits around, provided the endpoints have well known interfaces. That is indeed helpful, but the code still always needs manual review.

Work for amateur web developers will likely change, but they certainly won't be out of work anytime soon. Although the most important factor is that most websites aren't really amateur land anymore, LLM or not.

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

#948

Post by throwaway_36924 »

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 “…

I have been an AI denier for the past 2 years. I genuinely wanted to try it out but the experience I got from Copilot in early 2023 was just terrible. I have been using ChatGPT for some programming questions for all that time, but it was making mistakes and lack of editor integration did not seem like it would make me more productive.

Thanks to this thread I have signed up again for Copilot and I am blown away. I think this easily makes me 2x productive when doing implementation work. It does not make silly mistakes anymore and it's just faster to have it write a block of code than doing it myself.

And the experience is more of an augmentation than replacement. I don't have to let it run wild. I'm using it locally and refactor its output if needed to match my code quality standards.

I am as much concerned (job market) as I am excited (what I will be able to build myself).

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

#949

Post by crowcountry »

w-hn wrote: post #408

I have been unemployed for almost a year now (it started with a full division layoff and then no willingness or motivation to look for work at the time). Seeing the way AI can do most of the native app development (which is what I did) code I wrote I am losing almost any motivation to even try now. But I have been sleeping the best after college (where I slept awesome) and I have been working out, watching lots of th…

I love this comment. AI can't enjoy a book for you. Enjoy your time off.

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

#950

Post by jgerrish »

Have you seen The Expanse?

There's a scene where Sergeant Gunner Bobby Draper from Mars visits Earth. Mars is being terraformed, it has no real liquid water.

She wants to see the ocean.

She makes it eventually, after traveling through the squats of Earth.

In that world, much of Earth's population lives on "Basic Support". This is seen as a bad thing by Mars "Dusters".

The Ocean isn't just a dream of a better Mars. It's an awesome globally shared still-life, something Earther's can use in their idle free time for, to use a Civilization term, a Cultural Victory.

So yeah, I suppose that's the plan for some who can't get a job coding. Universal Basic Income and being told that we're all in this together as we paint still lives.

I have a feeling there are others who also were happy playing the Economic Victory game. Maybe more so.

I wonder where the other options are. It's going to be difficult enough for the next generation dealing with one group hating "Earther Squats" and another group hating "Dusters / regimented (CEO / military)".

That is work itself.

But I'll keep coding and hope those who become leaders actually want to.

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