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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

#171

Post by godelski »

linotype wrote: post #151
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…

I use an Apple TV. It’s more expensive than Google and Amazon’s offerings, but fast as hell and gets better with time.

I mean this is my TV menu. I'm adjusting brightness (the explicit example given). Does Apple TV control the whole TV settings?

Fwiw, my TV just ends up being a big monitor because all the web apps are better and even with all the issues jellyfin has, it's better than many of those. I just mostly use a mouse or kdeconnect.

Speaking of which, does anyone have a recommendation for an android keyboard that gives me things like Ctrl and super keys? Also is there a good xdotool replacement for Wayland? I didn't find ydotool working as well but maybe I should give it another try.

I can suggest this setup and think it'll work for many. My desktop sits behind my TV because it mostly does computational work, might run servers, or gaming. I'm a casual and so 60fps 4k is more than enough even with the delay. Then I just ssh from my laptop and do most of the work from there. Pretty much the same as my professional work, since I need to ssh into hpc clusters, there's little I need to do on the machine I'm physically in front of (did we go back to the 70's?)

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

#172

Post by [deleted] »

godelski wrote: post #123
jajko wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

- 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…

[deleted]

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

#173

Post by trashtester »

anonzzzies wrote: post #21
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…

> had to tackle after the less experienced devs have contributed their AI-driven efforts. So, like before AI then? I haven't seen AI deliver illogical nonsense that I couldn't even decipher like I have seen some outsourcing companies deliver.

> that I couldn't even decipher

This is one of the challenges of being a tech lead. Sometimes code is hard to comprehend.

In my experience, AI delivered code is no worse than entry level developer code.

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

#174

Post by extr »

swader999 wrote: post #161
trashtester wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's because it's often a suboptimal career move from an individual perspective. By branding yourself as a "FinTech Developer" or whatever instead of just a "Developer" you're narrowing your possible job options for questionable benefit in terms of TC and skills growth. This isn't always the case and of course if you spend 20 years in one domain maybe you can brand yourself as an expert there and pull high $/hr consulting rates for fixing people's problems. Maybe. More likely IMO you end up stagnating.

I went through this myself early in my career. I did ML at insurance companies and got branded as an insurance ML guy. Insurance companies don't pay that well and there are a limited number of them. After I got out of that lane and got some name-brand tech experience under my belt, job hunting was much easier and my options opened up. I make a lot more money. And I can always go back if I really want to.

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

#175

Post by trashtester »

Kiro wrote: post #104
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…

I don't think it's that clear cut. I personally think the AI often delivers a better solution than the one I had in mind. It always contains a lot more safe guards against edge cases and other "boring" stuff that the AI has no problem adding but others find tedious.

If you're building a code base where AI is delivering on the the details of it, it's generally a bad thing if the code provided by AI provide safeguards WITHIN your code base.

Those kinds of safeguards should instead be part of the framework you're using. If you need to prevent SQL injection, you need to make sure that all access to the SQL type database pass through a layer that prevents that. If you are worried about the security of your point of access (like an API facing the public), you need to apply safeguards as close to the point of entry as possible, and so on.

I'm a big believer in AI generated code (over a long horizon), but I'm not sure the edge case robustness is the main selling point.

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

#176

Post by baxtr »

Delk wrote: post #130

It's probably worth going a bit deeper into the paper before picking up conclusions. And I think the study could really do a bit of a better job of summarizing its results. The abstract and the conclusion only give a single percentage figure (26.08% increase in productivity, which probably has too many decimals) as the result. If you go a bit further, they give figures of 27 to 39 percent for juniors and 8 to 13 perc…

Re 26.08%: I immediately question any study (outside of physics etc) that provides two decimal places.

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

#177

Post by sgarland »

neilv wrote: post #78
choilive wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its been a while since my undergrad (>10 yrs) but many of my peers were majoring in CS or EE/CE because of the money, at the time I thought it was a bit depressing as well. With a few more years under my belt I realized theres nothing wrong with doing good work and providing yourself/your family a decent living. Not everyone needs the passion in their field to become among the best or become a "10x"er to contribute.…

Yeah, I think that the quality of work (skill + conscientiousness), and the motivation for doing the work, are two separate things. Off-the-cuff, three groups: 1. There are people who are motivated by having a solid income, yet they take the professionalism seriously, and do skilled rock-solid work, 9-5. I'd be happy to work with these people. 2. There are other people who are motivated by having a solid or more-than…

I would definitely do this job even if it paid half as well. Nothing else is nearly as interesting to me, and I’ve tried quite a range.

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

#178

Post by trashtester »

extr wrote: post #174
swader999 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's because it's often a suboptimal career move from an individual perspective. By branding yourself as a "FinTech Developer" or whatever instead of just a "Developer" you're narrowing your possible job options for questionable benefit in terms of TC and skills growth. This isn't always the case and of course if you spend 20 years in one domain maybe you can brand yourself as an expert there and pull high $/hr consu…

> I did ML at insurance companies and got branded as an insurance ML guy.

If you're an "ML insurance guy" outside of the US, it may be quite lucrative compared to other developers. It's really only in the US (and maybe China) that pure developers are demanding $200k+ salaries.

In most places in Europe, even $100k is considered a high salary, and if you can provide value directly to the business, it will add a lot to your potential compensation.

And in particular, if your skills are more about the business than the tech/math of your domain, you probably want to leverage that, rather than trying to compete with 25-year-olds with a strong STEM background, but poor real-life experience.

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

#179

Post by einpoklum »

slt2021 wrote: post #93
einpoklum wrote: post #63

Reminds me of a situation I've been in a few times already: Dev: Hey einpoklum, how do I do XYZ? Me: Hmm, I think I remember that... you could try AB and then C. Dev: Ok, but isn't there a better/easier way? Let me ask ChatGPT. ... Dev: Hey einpoklum, ChatGPT said I should do AB and then C. Me: Let me have a look at that for a second. Me: -Right, so it's just what I read on StackOverflow about this, a couple of years…

true, ChatGPT even imports libraries and configs that are 4-5 year outdated.

I didn't mean to say the answer is outdated... I try not to give people outdated answers :-\

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

#180

Post by tensor »

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'…

I think it really depends on the users. The same people who would just paste stackoverflow code until it seems to work and call it a day will abuse LLMs. However, those of us who like to know everything about the code we write will likely research anything an LLM spits out that we don't know about.

Well, at least that's how I use them. And to throw a counter to your hypothesis, I find that sometimes the LLM will use functions or library components that I didn't know of, which actually saves me a lot of time when learning a new language or toolkit. So for me, it actually accelerates learning rather than retarding it.

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