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Effects of Gen AI on High Skilled Work: Experiments with Software Developers

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Re: Effects of Gen AI on High Skilled Work: Experiments with Software Developers

#141

Post by stuckkeys »

ang_cire wrote: post #90

I sometimes wonder about whether the decline in IT worker quality is down to companies trying to force more and more roles onto each worker to reduce headcount. Developers, Operations, and Security used to be dedicated roles. Then we made DevOps and some businesses took that to mean they only needed 2/3 of the headcount, rather than integrating those teams. Then we made DevSecOps, and some businesses took that to mea…

Sadly. It is an onward trend. I have become so discouraged from this subject, that I am evaluating my career choices. Farming is a the safest bet for now.

Re: Effects of Gen AI on High Skilled Work: Experiments with Software Developers

#142

Post by mistrial9 »

Bjorkbat wrote: post #94
simpleranchero wrote: post #76

Microsoft people in research team proving Microsoft tools are good. Elsevier will now do ads in research papers.

This is far, far more rigorous than the experiment Microsoft behind Microsoft's claim that Copilot made devs 55% faster. The experiment in question was to split 95 devs into two groups and see how long it took each group to setup a web server in Javascript. Control took a little under 3 hours on average, the copilot group took 1 hour and 11 minutes on average. https://github.blog/news-insights/research/research-quant…

what do these three things have in common?

* control the agenda items in a formal meeting

* fill a fixed amount of time in an interview with no rebuttal

* design the benchmark experiments and the presentation of the results

Re: Effects of Gen AI on High Skilled Work: Experiments with Software Developers

#143

Post by Workaccount2 »

arexxbifs wrote: post #53

My hunch - it's just a hunch - is that LLM-assisted coding is detrimental to one's growth as a developer. I'm fairly certain it can only boost productivity to a certain level - one which may be tedium for more senior developers, but formative for juniors. My experience is that the LLM isn't just used for "boilerplate" code, but rather called into action when a junior developer is faced with a fairly common task they'…

With the progress LLM's having been making in the last two years, is it actually a bad bet to not want to really get into it?

How many contemporary developers have no idea how to write machine code, when 50 years ago it was basically mandatory if you wanted to be able to write anything?

Are LLM's just going to become another abstraction crutch turned abstraction solid pillar?

Re: Effects of Gen AI on High Skilled Work: Experiments with Software Developers

#144

Post by trashtester »

ang_cire wrote: post #90

I sometimes wonder about whether the decline in IT worker quality is down to companies trying to force more and more roles onto each worker to reduce headcount. Developers, Operations, and Security used to be dedicated roles. Then we made DevOps and some businesses took that to mean they only needed 2/3 of the headcount, rather than integrating those teams. Then we made DevSecOps, and some businesses took that to mea…

They're realizing that 10x (+) developers exist, but think they can hire them at 1x developer salaries.

Btw, they key skill you're leaving out, is to understand the business your company is in.

If you can couple even moderate developer ability with a good understanding of business objectives, you may stay relevant even while some of the pure developers are replaced by AI.

Re: Effects of Gen AI on High Skilled Work: Experiments with Software Developers

#145

Post by zone411 »

This was likely Copilot based on GPT 3.5.

Microsoft: September 2022 to May 3rd, 2023

Accenture: July 2023 to December 2023

Anonymous Company: October 2023 to ?

Copilot _Chat_ update to GPT-4 was Nov 30, 2023: https://github.blog/changelog/label/copilot/

Re: Effects of Gen AI on High Skilled Work: Experiments with Software Developers

#146

Post by stuckinhell »

stuckkeys wrote: post #141
ang_cire wrote: post #90

I sometimes wonder about whether the decline in IT worker quality is down to companies trying to force more and more roles onto each worker to reduce headcount. Developers, Operations, and Security used to be dedicated roles. Then we made DevOps and some businesses took that to mean they only needed 2/3 of the headcount, rather than integrating those teams. Then we made DevSecOps, and some businesses took that to mea…

Sadly. It is an onward trend. I have become so discouraged from this subject, that I am evaluating my career choices. Farming is a the safest bet for now.

i'm worried this is the case as well

Re: Effects of Gen AI on High Skilled Work: Experiments with Software Developers

#147

Post by jjcm »

zone411 wrote: post #145

This was likely Copilot based on GPT 3.5. Microsoft: September 2022 to May 3rd, 2023 Accenture: July 2023 to December 2023 Anonymous Company: October 2023 to ? Copilot _Chat_ update to GPT-4 was Nov 30, 2023: https://github.blog/changelog/label/copilot/

Great call out. I'd be extremely curious what the results looked like with something like cursor or just using claude out of the box. I'm amazed at just how easy it is to get simple small scripts up and going now with claude.

Re: Effects of Gen AI on High Skilled Work: Experiments with Software Developers

#148

Post by goatlover »

yifanl wrote: post #99
ang_cire wrote: post #90

I sometimes wonder about whether the decline in IT worker quality is down to companies trying to force more and more roles onto each worker to reduce headcount. Developers, Operations, and Security used to be dedicated roles. Then we made DevOps and some businesses took that to mean they only needed 2/3 of the headcount, rather than integrating those teams. Then we made DevSecOps, and some businesses took that to mea…

They're cutting headcount because they have no conception of how to make a good product, so reducing costs is the only of making the bottom line go up. That's across the board, from the startups whose business plan is to be acquired at all costs, to the giant tech companies, whose business plan is to get monopoly power first, then figure out how to extract money later.

Failures of capitalism that probably need regulation. If the middle class and workers are to be protected.

Re: Effects of Gen AI on High Skilled Work: Experiments with Software Developers

#149

Post by trashtester »

lispisok wrote: post #125
ang_cire wrote: post #90

I sometimes wonder about whether the decline in IT worker quality is down to companies trying to force more and more roles onto each worker to reduce headcount. Developers, Operations, and Security used to be dedicated roles. Then we made DevOps and some businesses took that to mean they only needed 2/3 of the headcount, rather than integrating those teams. Then we made DevSecOps, and some businesses took that to mea…

Like most things the decline in quality is probably multi-faceted. There is also the component where tech became a hot attractive field so people flooded in who only cared about the paycheck and not the craft.

That definitely happend in the dotcom bubble. Plenty of "developers" were crowding the field, many of which neither had any real technical ability or interest.

The nerds who were into programming based on personal interest were really not affected.

Those who have tech as a passion will generally outpeform those who have it as a job, by a large margin.

But salary structures tend to ignore this.

Re: Effects of Gen AI on High Skilled Work: Experiments with Software Developers

#150

Post by agentultra »

Empirical studies like this are hard to conduct... I'm curious though. This study was authored by at least two folks from Microsoft and one of the sample groups in the study was also from Microsoft. The reason this seems to stand out to me as odd is that Microsoft also owns the AI tool being used in the study and would definitely want a favourable conclusion in this paper.

Is that a flag we should be watching out for?

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