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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

#161

Post by swader999 »

trashtester wrote: post #144
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.

This 100%. It's rare to find anyone that wants to learn a complex biz domain.

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

#162

Post by trashtester »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #140
acedTrex wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, I've personally seen more interest in AI in devs that have little interest in technology, but a big interest in delivering. PMs love them though. Bingo, this, so much this. Every dev i know who loves AI stuff was a dev that I had very little technical respect for pre AI. They got some stuff done but there was no craft or quality to it.

SWE has a huge draw because frankly it's not that hard to learn programming, and the bar to clear in order to land a $100-120k work-from-home salary is pretty low. I know more than a few people who career hopped into software engineering after a lackluster non-tech career (that they paid through the nose to get a degree in, but were still making $70k after 5 years). By and large these people seem to just not be "into…

> However, it does look like LLM's are racing to make these junior devs unnecessary.

The main utility of "junior devs" (regardless of age) is that they can serve as an interface to non-technical business "users". Give them the right tools, and their value will be similar to good business controllers or similar in the org.

A salary of $100-$150k is really low for someone who is really a competent developer. It's kept down by those "junior devs" (of all ages) that apply for the same jobs.

Both kinds of developers will be required until companies use AI in most of those roles, including the controllers, the developers and the business side.

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

#163

Post by rongenre »

okwhateverdude wrote: post #122
nerdjon wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious about this also. I have now seen multiple PR's that I had to review that a method was clearly completely modified by AI with no good reason and when asked why something was changed we just got silence. Not exaggerating, literal silence and then trying to ignore the question and explain the thing we were first asking them to do. Clearly having no idea what is actually in this PR. This was done because we…

> Not saying these tools don't have a place. But people are using it without understanding what it is putting out and not understanding the long term effects it will have on a code base. It is worse than that. We're all maintaining in our heads the mental sand castle that is the system the code base represents. The abuse of the autocoder erodes that sand castle because the intentions of the changes, which are crucial…

There needs to be a pattern for including AI-generated code, recording all the context which led to the generation.

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

#164

Post by godelski »

mistrial9 wrote: post #132
godelski wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- my laundry app (that I must use) takes minutes to load, doesn't cache my last used laundry room, and the list of rooms isn't even fucking sorted (literally: room 3, room 7, room 1, room 2, ...) - my AC's app takes 45 s to load even if I just used it, because it needs to connect. Worse, I'll bring the temp down in my house and in the evening raise it, but it'll come on even when 5F below my target value, staying on…

... it is not "us" .. there is a collection of roles that each interact to produce products to market or releases. Add some game-theory to the thinking on that?

"Us" can mean different things depending on the context. The context here is "programmers" not "shitty programmers" (really we can be inclusive with engineers and any makers). Considering that it seems you appear to understand the context I'm a bit confused at the comment. You don't have to inject yourself if you're not in the referred to group (i.e. maybe I'm not talking about you. I can't know because I don't even know you)

I need to stress so much -- especially because how people think about AI and intelligence (my field of research[0]) -- that language is not precise. Language is not thoughts. Sure, many think "out loud" and most people have inner speech, but language (even inner) is compressed. You use language to convey much more complex and abstract concepts in your head to someone who is hopefully trying to make their decompression adapt to uncover the other person's intended meaning. This isn't a Chinese room where you just look in the dictionary (which also shows multiple definitions for anything). I know it's harder with text and disconnected cultures integration, but we must not confuse this and I think it's ignored far too often. Ignoring it seems to just escalate that problems.

  > Add some game-theory to the thinking on that?
And please don't be dismissive by hand waving. I'm sure you understand game theory. Which would mean you understand what a complex problem this is to actually model (to a degree I doubt anyone could to a good degree of accuracy). That you understand perturbation theory and chaos theory and how they are critical to modeling such a process meaning you only get probability distribution as results.

[0] I add this context because it decreases the amount of people that feel the need to nerdsplain things to me that they don't research.

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

#165

Post by trashtester »

fer wrote: post #51
alternatex wrote: post #5

I wonder if the study includes the technical debt that more experienced developers had to tackle after the less experienced devs have contributed their AI-driven efforts. Because my personal experience has involved a lot of that in one of the companies listed in the study. Also, I've personally seen more interest in AI in devs that have little interest in technology, but a big interest in delivering. PMs love them th…

Disclaimer: I work at a company who sells coding AI (among many other things). We use it internally and the technical debt is an enormous threat that IMO hasn't been properly gauged. It's very very useful to carpet bomb code with APIs and patterns you're not familiar with, but it also leads to insane amounts of code duplication and unwieldy boilerplate if you're not careful, because: 1. One of the two big bias of the…

If you're in a company that is valued at $10M+ per developer, the technical debt is not a big concern.

Either you will go bust, OR you will be able to hire enough people to pay those debts, once you get traction in the market.

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

#167

Post by GeoAtreides »

jajko wrote: post #101
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…

So its not going to stop. Typical C-suite who holds real power has absolutely 0 clue about IT complexity, we are overpriced janitors to them. Their fault, their blame, but they are probably long gone when these mistakes manifest fully. In my banking corp, in past 13 years I've seen massive rise of complexity, coupled with absolutely madly done bureaucracy increase. I still could do all stuff that is required but - I…

> 10 steps negotiating with obscure Pune team that I need to chase 10x

why are you doing the chasing? unless you're the project manager, comment "blocked by obscure pune team" on the ticket and move on

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

#169

Post by trashtester »

anonzzzies wrote: post #35
alternatex wrote: post #5

I wonder if the study includes the technical debt that more experienced developers had to tackle after the less experienced devs have contributed their AI-driven efforts. Because my personal experience has involved a lot of that in one of the companies listed in the study. Also, I've personally seen more interest in AI in devs that have little interest in technology, but a big interest in delivering. PMs love them th…

> Also, I've personally seen more interest in AI in devs that have little interest in technology, but a big interest in delivering. I found this too. But I also found the opposite, including here on HN; people who are interested in technology have almost an aversion against using AI. I personally love tech and I would and do write software for fun, but even that is objectively more fun for me with AI. It makes me far…

> people who are interested in technology have almost an aversion against using AI

I wonder if this is an age thing, for many people. I'm old enough to have started reading these discussions on Slashdot in the early 90s.

But between 2000 and 2010, Slashdot changed and became much less open to new ideas.

The same may be happening to HN right now.

It feels like a lot of people are stuck in the tech of 10 years ago.

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

#170

Post by ben_w »

simonw wrote: post #110
acedTrex wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, I've personally seen more interest in AI in devs that have little interest in technology, but a big interest in delivering. PMs love them though. Bingo, this, so much this. Every dev i know who loves AI stuff was a dev that I had very little technical respect for pre AI. They got some stuff done but there was no craft or quality to it.

I’m a developer who loves using AI, and I’m confident that I was a capable developer producing high quality code long before I started using AI tools.

If it were not for all the things in your profile, I would aver that the only devs I know that think otherwise of their coding abilities were students at the time.
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