Programmer salaries in the age of LLMs • Hacker News Board

Re: Programmer salaries in the age of LLMs

#151

Post by jimmydddd » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 1:31 PM UTC

elicksaur wrote: post #28

The author doesn’t understand the reason for the bimodal distribution of attorney compensation. If you look at a distribution of salaries overall, they are not smooth. There will be small peaks at round numbers, $60k, $70k, 80k, etc., rather than a smooth curve from 60->80. People like round numbers. The top peak in the law is due to human bias just the same. >Just like how a partner at Cravath likely sketches an out…

Agreed. I was entering the law field around 2001. 1) During 1990's, silicon valley startups started poaching talented lawyers from west coast law firms. 2) To combat this, some top west coast law firms raised their salaries to retain talent. 3) At the same time, junior lawyers in NYC and CA starting sharing salary information on Internet message boards. 4) Almost over night, top NYC law firms raised their salaries to match the CA salaries. 5) So the bimodal distribution was formed from the "top" law firms all match each other's salaries.

Re: Programmer salaries in the age of LLMs

#152

Post by adolph » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 2:49 PM UTC

larve wrote: post #88

adolph wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speed of feature is less compelling than quality. There is a saying about EHRs, that they propagate error at the speed of light. Likewise speeding up feature accrual seems as if all the worst ideas will be implemented first as the best ones need time to think through and acculturate. On the other hand, if the models can be Atkinson-like and produce -2000 lines of code [0], that is a day to which I would look forward.…

I wouldn’t underestimate the ability to iterate on fully finished features quickly, if you have to operate with end users. Closing a feedback loop can lead to threshold effects.

That'd be great if true. Human nature being what it is, chances are good that the ill thought out and in retrospect harmful will be deployed just as faster than "fully finished" as they are now.

Could that be iterated? Can a half baked release ever become whole or does progress just slow down and stretch out exponentially? 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + ...

Will be grateful and relieved when proven wrong.

Re: Programmer salaries in the age of LLMs

#153

Post by dbancajas » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 3:34 PM UTC

bayesian_horse wrote: post #145

valdiorn wrote: post #125

Define your damn acronyms. I read the entire article and I STILL don't know what LLM means.

I feel you.. I think he means large language models.

Basic mistake. Can't believe this was not corrected in OP. He should write title as "xxxx in Large Language Models (LLM)"

Re: Programmer salaries in the age of LLMs

#154

Post by somethingreen » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 3:36 PM UTC

johnfn wrote: post #106

geraneum wrote: post #30

There is research [1] that suggests using GPS navigation could impact your brain function negatively. I wonder how this code generation “assistant” will impact the coding skills of its users in long term. As for the LLMs, stochastic parroting (hallucination), which is inherent to its design, makes it untrustworthy for precision work. Maybe some other architecture will prove more useful. LLMs can generate BS authorita…

> There is research [1] that suggests using GPS navigation could impact your brain function negatively. I wonder how this code generation “assistant” will impact the coding skills of its users in long term. I wonder how code completion and syntax highlighting have altered the brains of programmers negatively as well.

Have you never seen a project where exactly one use of a term is mistyped across whole project? Guess what tool is responsible for that.

Also there's distinct project structure difference between users of tree style project navigation vs find-anywhere or editor tabs vs modal windows/buffers. I mean, the influence is not negative, at least not obviously, but the deformation is there.

Re: Programmer salaries in the age of LLMs

#155

Post by larve » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 3:45 PM UTC

adolph wrote: post #152

larve wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t underestimate the ability to iterate on fully finished features quickly, if you have to operate with end users. Closing a feedback loop can lead to threshold effects.

That'd be great if true. Human nature being what it is, chances are good that the ill thought out and in retrospect harmful will be deployed just as faster than "fully finished" as they are now. Could that be iterated? Can a half baked release ever become whole or does progress just slow down and stretch out exponentially? 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + ... Will be grateful and relieved when proven wrong.

Yeah, I think my point is more that this makes it possible to iterate quicker while maintaining quality, which might be beneficial. Of course if you are working in a team that cares about the result (and the business does too), then iteration is always a win.

Re: Programmer salaries in the age of LLMs

#156

Post by HideousKojima » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 3:51 PM UTC

whateveracct wrote: post #82

geraneum wrote: post #30

There is research [1] that suggests using GPS navigation could impact your brain function negatively. I wonder how this code generation “assistant” will impact the coding skills of its users in long term. As for the LLMs, stochastic parroting (hallucination), which is inherent to its design, makes it untrustworthy for precision work. Maybe some other architecture will prove more useful. LLMs can generate BS authorita…

Most programmers wish to be stupid. They willingly embrace philosophies predicated on their inability to be conscious and learn. Goddamn do I hate this industry. I work hard to sow dissent in my blue-chip, VC startup though. Guerrilla tactics. And I get to do it raking in a quarter mil a year in my underwear.

It's a real struggle, the company I work for was just bought out by a megacorp (in the top 1,000 in the world by employee count, and most posters here would recognize their name) and the sheer lack of motivation to learn of many of the devs both at the acquired company and the acquiring company is staggering. Really basic stuff like "instead of package management let's pass DLLs around over email/Slack/wherever and then complain about all the time we have to spend debugging because of version mismatches." It's like they intentionally make things harder on themselves through willful ignorance.

Re: Programmer salaries in the age of LLMs

#157

Post by shitpostbot » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 4:03 PM UTC

roncesvalles wrote: post #103

aetherson wrote: post #35

Comment here seem to largely miss the point of the article, which isn't saying that nobody will employ software engineers. It is saying that instead of the current model of: 1 very highly compensated staff+ engineer 4 highly compensated senior engineers 4 pretty well-compensated mid-level engineers 2 decently compensated junior engineers The future might look like: 1 yet-more-highly-compensated staff+ engineer who sp…

A team with "1 yet-more-highly-compensated staff+ engineer" would also have a pipeline of people one step below that for progression. Usually people who are "yet-more-highly-compensated" are not easy to poach and don't tend to change their job. You have to develop them internally. E.g. most DEs and Fellows in tech companies rose through the ranks over decades. It's very hard to hire a DE from the job market. The unin…

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Re: Programmer salaries in the age of LLMs

#158

Post by ghaff » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 4:16 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #137

ghaff wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Law is extreme because you have people who went to a relative handful of law schools, clerked for federal court justices including SCOTUS, and work at white shoe big city law firms (like Cravath)--and everyone else. Yes, senior partners make more than junior partners make more than associates at those firms but it's also sort of up or out (and the out associates tend to move on to other things). And then there are th…

> went to a relative handful of law schools, clerked for federal court justices including SCOTUS, and work at white shoe big city law firms This is the "not what you know, it's WHO you know" pattern. I imagine it's likely to accelerate. It'll still be important to go to the right university and pay expensive tuition - probably even MORE important - but you'll be able to have AI do most of the tedious, irrelevant acad…

At the partner level of big firms, law is at least as much about signing clients as it is doing legal work.

Re: Programmer salaries in the age of LLMs

#159

Post by eouwt » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 5:31 PM UTC

la64710 wrote: post #51

I beg to differ with the author’s perception ..in all it’s glory I don’t think L7 or principals or even software managers will have a reasonable chance of surviving. Because it is quite possible that agents built on LLM and AGI will be perfectly capable of not only arguing with each other and weigh on the pros and cons of any given option and arrive at a consensus just like the current Principals or managers do their…

"LLM and AGI"

Feels like the three letters A-G-I are doing a lot of heavy lifting there

Re: Programmer salaries in the age of LLMs

#160

Post by bitL » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 5:57 PM UTC

mprovost wrote: post #132

bitL wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it will be the opposite - it will take all fun out of programming and leave just the mess around connecting different interfaces and making them work reliably in a single product, i.e. debugging with nobody having the internal knowledge how the system actually works.

I feel like this is something that people said when they started using compilers instead of manually writing assembly.

Back in those times you had more competent managers though, now the decision to generate code using AI will be made by some clueless PHB and people will be only needed to glue fragments together without actually designing the most interesting parts.