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Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

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Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#441

Post by mdorazio »

RivieraKid wrote: post #283

Here's my current thinking on the impact of GPT-4 on the developer job market: - I expect developer productivity to go up 1.5x - 15x over the next several years assuming GTP-4 based tooling is integrated into IDEs. - There will be two opposing forces acting on developer wages. First, developers will be more productive, therefore the price of one hour of work should go up. But - the supply of developer output will inc…

I think you have two common misconceptions here.

1) Wages have very little to do with value/productivity in a free market. They are almost entirely determined by supply and demand. Value simply places a ceiling on compensation. Thus, if far more people can perform a "programming" job because of GPT-X, unless the demand for those jobs rises significantly the net result will be wage reduction.

2) There's this weird thinking on HN that since a developer's job involves [insert your % estimate of time spent actually coding/bug fixing] and the rest is figuring out requirements, dealing with weird requests, planning, etc. that means developers can't be replaced. However, I don't see a whole lot of discussion around what the difference is between a developer and a competent business analyst in a GPT-X world. The latter can be had for significantly less money, requires less training, and if the actual programming part is largely automated away or concentrated in the hands of fewer "real" developers, those roles start to look awfully similar.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#442

Post by lucidlive »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #381

As a self-taught polymath, I did a lot of research many years ago on how good teams create good products. I reached some unusual conclusions at the time, but they've stood the test of time. The main one in regards to John's tweet is this: desired behavior has to "force" out code and architecture. Typically teams and individual developers carry a lot of presumptions and assumptions into their solution space. They prob…

Calling yourself a polymath is akin to calling your self a genius.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#443

Post by dzikimarian »

samwestdev wrote: post #299
dzikimarian wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well - I've read some about origin of Doom/Wolfenstein - it was definitely a mixed bag (as expected from young man), but there was definitely a focus on end result (smoother animation, better 3d), than coding just for the sake of coding.

What do you mean by “mixed bag”?

There's a mention in the book from the sibling post that he thought that single text slide is enough for the story background in shooters. Not necessarily truth looking at modern games.

Still, even then he was far from "let's use new library, just because it's fun to play with".

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#444

Post by Der_Einzige »

gumballindie wrote: post #12

Just avoid careers in software development. These are not high paying, if you factor in total time invested and spent working; and you have to waste your life away sitting in an office chasing tickets. Nothing engineery about it. It’s modern day assembly line work.

Not to mention how it destroys your ability to date. Women don't like STEMlords. Watch a girl's face at a bar when she asks you how much you make, and watch as you follow up, say the 6 figure+ amount, and then watch the exact moment that you mention you code. Coding is an "ick" for an awful lot of people.

I don't blame them. I gave up on an awful lot of social skills so that I could escape the worst of capitalist exploitation. I pimp out my mind for my money. Others pimp out their bodies, or souls...

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#445

Post by joenot443 »

incongruity wrote: post #397
joenot443 wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a pretty funny example because if you follow the DJ scene much, you know the barrier for entry is literally on the floor now. A 10 year old with an iPad app can beat-match and “DJ” a 2h mix together in a way that 20 years ago required thousands of dollars of gear. The tragic part is that unless someone’s got some familiarity with what “good” mixing sounds like, they wouldn’t be able to tell they’re listening…

I’m in my 40s - one of my high school jobs was working at a photo lab and studio - I even became a photographer there, taking kids photos and whatnot. It was fun - I almost considered a career in photography. The truth is, had I done so, I’d feel a lot like you described. As things get easier, true craft and skill are less appreciated and lost as the application becomes more democratized. From the perspective of the…

Photography's a great example. Experts like you could make the difference matter I'm sure, but these days I feel like the shots I get on my 14 Pro are close to the quality I'd get from a DSLR. Like with so many other hobbies, it seems like the barrier for entry to produce something "good enough" has quickly become almost non-existent.

> In the end, we are collectively better for it, but individuals absolutely do see their value diminished.

You've summed it up well.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#446

Post by _-____-_ »

nfRfqX5n wrote: post #383

Curious about how licensing will play out. What’s stopping OpenAI from claiming copyright on everything produced in the last X years? Will every company need to be running their own GPT4 model to be safe from this?

The early indication from some government agencies is that AI output will not be copyrightable.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#447

Post by omnicognate »

wizofaus wrote: post #244
TheLoafOfBread wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am actually finding amusing that managers will generate 100k lines project with AI and then will start figuring out that it does not work as they want to. Then they figured out actual developers are needed to fix it, either in a very strict way telling AI what should happen (i.e. higher level programming) or directly fixing code generated by AI.

You're assuming that the AI is even generating anything that will make sense to a human. It seems inevitable we'll reach the point that for SaaS the AI will do everything directly based some internal model it has of what it believes the requirements are (e.g. it will be capable of acting just like a live web server), whereas for desktop and mobile apps, while that paradigm still remains relevant, it will generate the…

Are you arguing that LLMs already provide the technology to do this or are you arguing that it "seems inevitable" to you in the sense that somebody might think it "seems inevitable" that humans will some day travel to the stars, despite doing so requiring technological capabilities significantly beyond what we have yet developed?

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#448

Post by DanielBMarkham »

lucidlive wrote: post #442
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #381

As a self-taught polymath, I did a lot of research many years ago on how good teams create good products. I reached some unusual conclusions at the time, but they've stood the test of time. The main one in regards to John's tweet is this: desired behavior has to "force" out code and architecture. Typically teams and individual developers carry a lot of presumptions and assumptions into their solution space. They prob…

Calling yourself a polymath is akin to calling your self a genius.

Perhaps so, however I did not call myself humble.

Apologies. I overstated. How about "I study a lot of stuff"

And now the reply, if I've accurately modeled it, is "So you've studied a lot of stuff, what makes you an expert on any of it?"

Programming at its heart has always been cross-discipline, so there's really no judgment of ability aside from solving problems involving those disciplines you're working for. I find myself with a lack of adjectives that will keep our conversation short.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#449

Post by mdorazio »

banyaaa wrote: post #37
pcthrowaway wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This person is asking about career prospects 10-15 years out though. I'm sorry, but the landscape in then might be as alien to someone asking today, as todays would have been to someone asking 15 years ago (2008). What John said is correct, but personally I think he's underplaying how much people could be affected. Those "product skills" take years of grinding to really sharpen, and in 15 years only a few people migh…

I doubt AI will replace any job in my lifetime (got 40-50 years left). Progress will grind to a halt just like self driving cars did because the real world is just too chaotic and 'random' to be captured by a formula/equation/algorithm. My prediction is: AGI is theoretically possible, but would require impractical amounts of computing power - kinda like how intergalactic travel will never happen.

fwiw, self-driving cars did not grind to a halt, development just did not move as quickly as the pundits and self-promotion claimed. I just rode in a fully driverless car on public streets in downtown Austin this week.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#450

Post by dw_arthur »

RivieraKid wrote: post #304
yread wrote: post #291

I work a lot with doctors where there also worries about being replaced with AI. The pioneers there say that won't happen but doctors who use AI will replace the ones that don't. Same thing in our field. And just like in our field there will always be niches where AI output isn't good enough and there isn't enough money to improve it so human specialists will own it.

Doctors? They're safe. They interact with patients, use physical tooling, demand for their work is growing because of demographics. And you really don't want a doctor who sometimes hallucinates advice.

Doctors won't be replaced by medGPT. They will be replaced by a nurse practitioner using medGPT. The financial incentives to replace highly paid doctors with nurse practitioners are just too high.
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