Effects of Gen AI on High Skilled Work: Experiments with Software Developers • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by WalterBright » Sat, Sep 07, 2024, 12:55 AM UTC

Buttons840 wrote: post #199

WalterBright wrote: post #193

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. 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 sec…

Companies deliver what customers are willing to pay for.

If customers are willing to pay for X, and no companies make X available, you have a great case to make to a venture capitalist.

BTW, in every company I've worked for, the employees thought management was stupid and incompetent. In every company I've run, the employees thought I was stupid and incompetent. Sometimes these people leave and start their own company, and soon discover their employees think they're stupid and incompetent.

It's just a fact of life in any organization.

It's also a fact of life that anyone starting a business learns an awful lot the hard way. Consider Senator George McGovern (D), who said it best:

George McGovern's Mea Culpa

"In retrospect, I wish I had known more about the hazards and difficulties of such a business, especially during a recession of the kind that hit New England just as I was acquiring the inn's 43-year leasehold. I also wish that during the years I was in public office, I had had this firsthand experience about the difficulties business people face every day. That knowledge would have made me a better U.S. senator and a more understanding presidential contender. Today we are much closer to a general acknowledgment that government must encourage business to expand and grow. Bill Clinton, Paul Tsongas, Bob Kerrey and others have, I believe, changed the debate of our party. We intuitively know that to create job opportunities we need entrepreneurs who will risk their capital against an expected payoff. Too often, however, public policy does not consider whether we are choking off those opportunities."

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970203406404578070...

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

#252

Post by WalterBright » Sat, Sep 07, 2024, 12:59 AM UTC

makk wrote: post #215

WalterBright wrote: post #193

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

Why not start 10?

Feel free!

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

#253

Post by malfist » Sat, Sep 07, 2024, 1:10 AM UTC

djbusby wrote: post #208

malfist wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Personal horticulture is fun and rewarding! Grow your own lettuce, tomato, etc. BigAg is HARD WORK

Absolutely. I love having my own garden and growing food for myself and friends. I give away a ton of food with what I grow.

I'll never run a farm.

Closest thing I might come to is a florist's greenhouse, but that's probably still a no go

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

#254

Post by IgorPartola » Sat, Sep 07, 2024, 1:11 AM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #225

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…

One person can do the work of 3 and regularly does in startups. I think that what the MBAs miss is this phenomena of overconstraint . Once you have separate the generic role of "developer" into "developer, operations, and security", you've likely specified all sorts of details about how those roles need to be done. When you combine them back into DevSecOps, all the details remain, and you have one person doing 3x the…

I think there is another bit to this which is cargo cult tendencies. Basically DevOps is a great idea under certain circumstances and works well for specific people in that role. Realistically if you take a top talent engineer they can likely step into any of the three roles or even some others and be successful. Having the synergy of one person being responsible for the boundary between two roles then makes your ROI on that person and that role skyrocket.

And then you evangelize this approach and every other company wants to follow suit but they don’t really have top talent in management or engineering or both (every company claims to hire top talent which obviously cannot be true). So they make a poor copy of what the best organizations were doing and obviously it doesn’t go well. And the thing is that they’ve done it before. With Agile and with waterfall before that, etc. There is no methodology (organizational, programming, testing, etc.) that can make excellence out of mediocrity.

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

#255

Post by skydhash » Sat, Sep 07, 2024, 1:21 AM UTC

nuancebydefault wrote: post #102

insane_dreamer wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't found it that useful in my main product development (which while python based, uses our own framework and therefore there's not much code for CoPilot to go on and it usually suggests methods and arguments that don't exist, which just makes extra work). Where I do find it useful are 1) questions about frameworks/languages that I don't work in much and for which there is a lot of example content (i.e., Qt, CS…

It is revolutionary no doubt. How many pre-AI tools would accomplish an amount of 4 big features you mentioned at once?

> 1) questions about frameworks/languages that I don't work in much and for which there is a lot of example content

Books and manuals, they're pretty great for introductory materials. And for advanced stuff, you have to grok these first.

> 2) very specific questions I would have done a Google Search (usually StackOverflow) for ("what's the most efficient way to CPU and RAM usage on Windows using python")

I usually go backwards for such questions, searching for not what I want to do, but how it would look like if it exists. And my search-fu have not failed me that much in that regards, but that requires knowledge on how those things work, which again goes back to books and other such materials.

> 3) boilerplate code that I already know how to write but saves me a little time and avoids typing errors.

Snippets and templates in my editor. And example code in the documentation.

4) a quick way to search documentation

I usually have a few browser tabs open for whatever modules I'm using, plus whatever the IDE has, and PDFs and manual pages,...

For me, LLMs feel like building a rocketship to get groceries at the next village, and then hand-waving the risks of explosions and whether it would actually get you there.

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

#256

Post by sgarland » Sat, Sep 07, 2024, 1:32 AM UTC

jcgrillo wrote: post #211

sgarland wrote: post #27

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. Thank you, this says what I have been struggling to describe. The day I lost part of my soul was when I asked a dev if I could give them feedback on a DB schema, they said yes, and then cut me off a few minutes in with, “yeah, I don’t really care [about X].” You don’t care? I’m telling y…

In a similar vein, some days I feel like a human link generator into e.g. postgres or kafka documentation. When docs are that clear, refined, and just damn good but it seems like nobody is willing to actually read them closely enough to "get it" it's just a very depressing and demotivating experience. If I could never again have to explain what a transaction isolation level is or why calling kafka a "queue" makes no…

I've taken to asking if people have read docs (and linking them to the correct page). So far it hasn't changed anything. Unfortunate.

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

#257

Post by Buttons840 » Sat, Sep 07, 2024, 1:45 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #251

Buttons840 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sec…

Companies deliver what customers are willing to pay for. If customers are willing to pay for X, and no companies make X available, you have a great case to make to a venture capitalist. BTW, in every company I've worked for, the employees thought management was stupid and incompetent. In every company I've run, the employees thought I was stupid and incompetent. Sometimes these people leave and start their own compan…

I think those who run companies are often stupid and incompetent, and the workers are probably right most of the time. Just look at the quote again, there's lots of things people don't know when they're starting a company.

It would be nice if being smart and competent was the key to success in our society, but you hint at the real key to success in your own comment--getting favor and money from those who already have it.

You didn't really engage with the other half of my comment, but I'll say it again, in general our society seems to be crumbling and our ability to get things done efficiently and with competence is waning. Hopefully the right people can get the blessing of venture capitalists to fix this (/s).

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

#258

Post by ipaddr » Sat, Sep 07, 2024, 1:49 AM UTC

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…

Developers of the past worked towards the title of webmaster. A webmaster can manage a server, write the code and also be a graphic artist. Developers want to do it all.

What has changed is micromanaging of daily standup which reshapes work into neat packages for conversation but kills a non linear flow and limits exploration making things exactly as requested instead of what could be better.

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

#259

Post by sevensor » Sat, Sep 07, 2024, 1:52 AM UTC

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.

Funny, my world is full of the other kind of engineer. We all come with domain knowledge built in, and programming is the complex domain many people don’t want to learn.

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

#260

Post by romanows » Sat, Sep 07, 2024, 1:58 AM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #225

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…

One person can do the work of 3 and regularly does in startups. I think that what the MBAs miss is this phenomena of overconstraint . Once you have separate the generic role of "developer" into "developer, operations, and security", you've likely specified all sorts of details about how those roles need to be done. When you combine them back into DevSecOps, all the details remain, and you have one person doing 3x the…

This is a great observation, thanks.