Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

papers.ssrn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 532 posts

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

#191

Post by mrighele »

liminalsunset wrote: post #155
mrighele wrote: post #134

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. For them programming is a means to an end, and I think it is fine, in a way. But you cannot just ask an AI to write you tiktok clone and expect to get the finished product. Writing software is an iterative process, and LLMs currently used are not good enough for tha…

I've been playing with Cursor (albeit with a very small toy codebase) and it does seem like it could do some of what you said - it has a number of features, not all of which necessarily generate code. You can ask questions about the code, about documentation, and other things, and it can optionally suggest code that you can either accept, accept parts of, or decline. It's more of a fork of vscode than a plugin right…

Thanks, I might give it a try

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

#192

Post by WalterBright »

goatlover wrote: post #148
yifanl wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The city of Seattle decided that gig delivery drivers needed to be protected. They passed a minimum wage for them. The income of gig drivers promptly dropped, as the rise in prices corresponded with a drop in customers.

Who regulates the regulators?

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

#193

Post by WalterBright »

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.

> 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.

The field is wide open for a startup to do it right. Why not start one?

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

#194

Post by godelski »

pojzon wrote: post #190
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…

Those are all small symptoms of late stage capitalism and closing on end of an era. Like Rome, corruption, laziness and barbarians will tear it all down.

I don't need help identifying the problem, I need help solving the problem.

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

#195

Post by ghaff »

matrix2003 wrote: post #182
trashtester wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> In most places in Europe, even $100k is considered a high salary I think it's worth adding here that US developers can have a much higher burden for things like health insurance. My child broke his arm this year, and we hit our very high deductible. I would like to see numbers factoring in things like public transportation, health insurance, etc., because I personally feel like EU vs US developers are a lot closer…

I'm skeptical.

I live in a location that wouldn't have public transportation even in Europe. And my healthcare, while not "free," was never expensive outside of fairly small co-pays and a monthly deduction that wasn't cheap but was in the hundreds per month range. Of course, there are high deductible policies but that's a financial choice.

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

#196

Post by godelski »

smokel wrote: post #152
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…

> What the fuck is wrong with us? This is simple: we can't just trust each other. When programming started, people were mostly interested in building things, and there was little incentive to spoil other peoples work. Now there is money to be made, either through advertising, or through malpractice. This means that people have to protect their code from others. Program code is obfuscated (compiled and copyright enfor…

  >  When programming started, people were mostly interested in building things, and there was little incentive to spoil other peoples work. Now there is money to be made, either through advertising, or through malpractice
Yeah, I lean towards this too. Signals I use now to determine good software usually are things that look auxiliary because I'm actually looking for things that tell me the dev is passionate and "having fun." Like easter eggs, little things like it looks like they took way too much time to make something unimportant pretty (keeping doing this devs. I love it and it's appreciated. Always makes me smile ^_^). But I am also sympathetic, because yeah I also get tons of issues opened that should have been a google search or are wildly inappropriate. Though I try to determine if these are in good faith because we don't get wizards without noobs, and someone's got to teach them.

But it all makes me think we forgot what all of this is about, even "the economy." Money is supposed to be a proxy for increasing quality of life. Not even just on a personal level. I'm happy that people can get rich doing their work and things that they're passionate about but I feel that the way current infrastructures are we're actively discouraging or handcuffing people who are passionate. Or that we try to kill that passion. Managers, let your devs "have fun." Reign them in so that they don't go too deep of rabbit holes and pull too far away, but coding (like any engineering or any science) is (also) an art. When that passion dies, enshitification ensues.

For a concrete example: I'm wildly impressed that 99.9 times I'm filling out a forum that includes things like a country or timezone that my country isn't either autoselected or a copy isn't located at the top (not moved! copied!). It really makes me think that better than chasing leet code questions for interviews you ask someone to build a simple thing and what you actually look for is the details and little things that make the experience smoother (or product better). Because it is hard to teach people to about subtly, much harder than teaching them a stack or specific language (and if they care about the little things they'll almost always be quicker to learn those things). Sure, this might take a little more work to interview people and doesn't have a precise answer, but programs don't have precise answers either. And given how long and taxing software interviews are these days I wouldn't be surprised if slowing down actually ends up speeding things up and saving a lot of money.

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

#197

Post by malfist »

WalterBright wrote: post #193
yifanl wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. The field is wide open for a startup to do it right. Why not start one?

Because the field isn't even. Monopoly or oligopoly power works to prevent new competitors while at the same time stagnating their offerings.

Look at the explosion of browsers and their capabilities after the IE monopoly was broken.

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

#198

Post by malfist »

WalterBright wrote: post #192
goatlover wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The city of Seattle decided that gig delivery drivers needed to be protected. They passed a minimum wage for them. The income of gig drivers promptly dropped, as the rise in prices corresponded with a drop in customers. Who regulates the regulators?

You need a citation for that claim. And something more than just "the week after this went into effect it reduced sale volume"

And besides, what's the alternative here? Don't protect employees? Let them work below minimum wage?

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

#199

Post by Buttons840 »

WalterBright wrote: post #193
yifanl wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. The field is wide open for a startup to do it right. Why not start one?

Well, either (1) our free market is not healthy and the ability to form new companies that do better is weak and feeble, or (2) the current companies are doing about as well as possibe and it is hard to out compete them.

If it's the latter (number 2), then we need to start asking why American companies "doing about as well as possible" are incapable of producing secure and reliable software. Being able to produce secure and reliable software, in general and en masse, seems like a useful ability for a nation.

Reminds me of our national ability to produce aircraft; how's the competition in that market working out? And are we getting better or worse at producing aircraft?

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

#200

Post by malfist »

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.

Have you actually done farming? I grew up on a farm. It's no where close to a safe bet.

It's capital intensive, high risk, hard work with low margins. Not at all like stardew.

Post reply on HN