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Coders Automating Their Own Job

theatlantic.com

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Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#121

Post by proverbialbunny »

vinceguidry wrote: post #4

If you're coding for a non-technical business, i.e. one in which they're not directly selling your productive output, then it's not hard at all to get to a point where your daily tasks don't take more than a few minutes a day. After all, it's other people that are actually driving the revenue. You can ask for more duties, but their capacity to define tasks for you is never going to outpace your ability to deliver. My…

imho a great sweet spot is turning most of that free time into learning new skills. It's fun, productive, and not frowned upon, even if the class has nothing to do with the current job.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#122

Post by lgessler »

riazrizvi wrote: post #106
forinti wrote: post #69

It's interesting how people expect workers to "earn" their salaries through suffering. It's almost religious. At the same time, lots of businesses charge their clients a percentage of their earnings and it's ok.

David Graeber in Bullshit Jobs, says people have been conditioned to insist that you can't be productive without suffering in the process, and he goes on to makes a case for Universal Income (because modern society is productive enough to feed and house everyone). I think it misses the point. People want a job where they grow as human beings, and you can't grow without suffering/trial. Pointless jobs are depressing.…

I think your observation can coexist with Graeber's take. If you implemented a UBI, it seems reasonable to expect that most people would take the opportunity to take on some kind of "work" or self-development that is not tied to how they meet their basic needs.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#123

Post by hinkley »

pvarangot wrote: post #102
hinkley wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had very good luck changing the behavior of junior developers and moderate luck changing the behavior of mid level developers that are hungry for a promotion. I can count on my fingers (couldn't say if that's one hand or two) how many senior devs I've gotten to come around. If you're interested in progress and growth, I can say with a high degree of certainty that what you don't want to do is apply to work on a…

I had senior people change habits and practices but at the expense of huge failures or years of leading by example. The patience and the effort are humongous and almost ridiculous when you compare them to how quarterly or even bi-quarterly planing cycles look.

Early in my career, the concept that someone might know of a showstopping problem and chose to do nothing left me appalled and feeling rather betrayed.

Fifteen years later I sit in meetings telling people (some of them still older than me) not to touch the stove because it will hurt, and I have to patiently wait until someone gets hurt before we can discuss the proverbial oven mitts.

The problem with doing something right the first time is nobody appreciates how hard it was.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#124

Post by kbenson »

wvenable wrote: post #8

It should be noted that programmers are not automating themselves out of programming jobs . They're automating themselves out of data entry, or testing, or any number of other mindless tasks easily done by computers.

Yes. In programming, laziness is a virtue. To some degree, so is the desire to work on interesting problems instead of boring problems. Those generally intersect to provide an enormous benefit to everyone.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#125

Post by wheelie_boy »

buboard wrote: post #25
wvenable wrote: post #8

It should be noted that programmers are not automating themselves out of programming jobs . They're automating themselves out of data entry, or testing, or any number of other mindless tasks easily done by computers.

> of programming jobs They do that to and have always done so. It's barely remarkable because it is expected and part of the job. The problem is you can't benefit from that, as soon as you automate one part, you are given other tasks.

Absolutely.

I don't hand-create machine code. I don't write assembly.

I write in the highest-level language that still lets me fully specify everything I care about, and then all of the lower levels of code generation are completely automated. Programmers have always automated programming jobs as much as possible.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#126

Post by peteforde »

iamleppert wrote: post #115

And what happens when this job eventually ends (as they all do) and the only thing you've had to show for your time spent in industry is your league of legends score? Meanwhile your peers would have likely moved on, gained skills and progressed in their careers in someway. Sounds like a sure-fire way to deadend your career and limit your future prospects.

One thing that I find maddening about this topic is the assumption that people who automate their jobs won't take the new time they get back and put it to better use. For some, that could be learning skills or working on a startup, and others might just want to spend time with their kids.

That said, it seems incredibly wrong to judge someone for being clever enough to relax and get paid for it. And if someone enjoys relaxing as much as I enjoy coding, who am I to say that I'm righteous and they are a loser?

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#127

Post by peteforde »

peteforde wrote: post #119

You know how sometimes you love an article so much that you are annoyed you didn't write it? This does a better job than I could have of tieing together a dozen threads of conversation that I've had with various friends for years. I actually believe that there's a culture war implied in this debate; the question of who deserves to reap the gains of automation is more than just philosophy or ethics. The question "is t…

One thing that I find maddening about this topic is the assumption that people who automate their jobs won't take the new time they get back and put it to better use. For some, that could be learning skills or working on a startup, and others might just want to spend time with their kids.

That said, it seems incredibly wrong to judge someone for being clever enough to relax and get paid for it. And if someone enjoys relaxing as much as I enjoy coding, who am I to say that I'm righteous and they are a loser?

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#128

Post by bmj »

wvenable wrote: post #8

It should be noted that programmers are not automating themselves out of programming jobs . They're automating themselves out of data entry, or testing, or any number of other mindless tasks easily done by computers.

What about programmers automating other programmers out of jobs? My employer's core product line is designed in such a way that it can be configured for specific customers via an API. Much of that work is done by "operations developers." The complexity of their work varies based on the customer's needs. We are currently developing a designer tool that will allow the configuration to be developed via a graphical interface that will allow much of the work to be done by non-programmers (and eventually the customers themselves). As the tool matures, it will generate the code necessary to handle more complex requirements.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#129

Post by 3pt14159 »

vinceguidry wrote: post #4

If you're coding for a non-technical business, i.e. one in which they're not directly selling your productive output, then it's not hard at all to get to a point where your daily tasks don't take more than a few minutes a day. After all, it's other people that are actually driving the revenue. You can ask for more duties, but their capacity to define tasks for you is never going to outpace your ability to deliver. My…

The key for this type of setup is to make sure that they understand your job is like that of a security guard. You're there for when all your carefully coded alarms start going off. You're not there to help shovel the sidewalk because then you might miss your alarms.

As long as that is properly understood you can get a contract that is permissive enough to allow you to work on something else at work when nothing is burning. Even if you have to offer a reduced salary, it's worth it.

Another option is to go the work on OSS route, especially on tools you use for work. After a couple years of doing semi-fulltime OS work you'll be commanding double the salary.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#130

Post by tabtab »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #49
wvenable wrote: post #8

It should be noted that programmers are not automating themselves out of programming jobs . They're automating themselves out of data entry, or testing, or any number of other mindless tasks easily done by computers.

Development jobs are shifting as more and more towards "plugging APIs together" and much less end to end development. Modern web dev is fantastically more productive and efficient than it was 10 or 15 years ago. Most/many SAAS apps are substitutes for aspects of what previously would have been part of a developers job to put into place.

Re: Modern web dev is fantastically more productive and efficient than it was 10 or 15 years ago.

I have to disagree. The esthetical expectations of the user/customer are higher now. If it's not "in style" they think you are sticking them with old tech. And you have the desktop/mobile split that frameworks only get half right and require days of black-box fiddling to get working right on all devices. And JavaScript gizmos often "break" as new browser versions or related components come out. It's almost as bad as the "DLL hell" that desktop applications used to face.

From a purely utility standpoint, I was much more productive back then because I only had to make it work and be easy to use, not "pretty" and animated with toys or the latest style fad.

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