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Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

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Re: Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

#141

Post by from-nibly »

m_ke wrote: post #23

I've been thinking about this a bunch and here's what I think will happen as cost of writing software approaches 0: 1. There will be way more software 2. Most people / companies will be able to opt out of predatory VC funded software and just spin up their own custom versions that do exactly what they want without having to worry about being spied on or rug pulled. I already do this with chrome extensions, with the h…

> that do exactly what they want

This presumes that they know exactly what they want.

My brother works for a company and they just ran into this issue. They target customer retention as a metric. The result is that all of their customers are the WORST, don't make them any money, but they stay around a long time.

The company is about to run out of money and crash into the ground.

If people knew exactly what they wanted 99% of all problems in the world wouldn't exist. This is one of the jobs of a developer, to explore what people actually want with them and then implement it.

The first bit is WAY harder than the second bit, and LLMs only do the second bit.

Re: Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

#142

Post by TZubiri »

simianparrot wrote: post #80

Nothing because I’m a senior and LLM’s never provide code that pass my sniff test, and it remains a waste of time. I have a job at a place I love and get more people in my direct network and extended contacting me about work than ever before in my 20 year career. And finally I keep myself sharp by always making sure I challenge myself creatively. I’m not afraid to delve into areas to understand them that might look “…

"Nothing because I’m a senior and LLM’s never provide code that pass my sniff test, and it remains a waste of time"

That's why the question is future proof. Models get better with time, not worse.

Re: Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

#144

Post by akira2501 »

thegrim33 wrote: post #71

I don't worry about it, because: 1) I believe we need true AGI to replace developers. 2) I don't believe LLMs are currently AGI or that if we just feed them more compute during training that they'll magically become AGI. 3) Even if we did invent AGI soon and replace developers, I wouldn't even really care, because the invention of AGI would be such an insanely impactful, world changing, event that who knows what the…

Even if AGI suddenly appears we will most likely have an energy feed and efficiency problem with it. These scaling problems are just not on the common roadmap at all and people forget how much effort typically has to be spent here before a new technology can take over.

Re: Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

#145

Post by munk-a »

IshKebab wrote: post #98
rybosworld wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nothing because I’m a senior and LLM’s never provide code that pass my sniff test, and it remains a waste of time. I am constantly surprised how prevalent this attitude is. ChatGPT was only just released in 2022. Is there some expectation that these things won't improve? > LLM’s never provide code that pass my sniff test This is ego speaking.

> Is there some expectation that these things won't improve? I definitely expect them to improve. But I also think the point at which they can actually replace a senior programmer is pretty much the exact point at which they can replace any knowledge worker, at which point western society (possibly all society) is in way deeper shit than just me being out of a job. > This is ego speaking. It definitely isn't. LLMs ar…

Intellisense style systems were a huge feature leap when they gained wider language support and reliability. LLMs are yet another step forward for intellisense and the effort of comprehending the code you're altering. I don't think I will ever benefit from code generation in a serious setting (it's excellent for prototyping) simply due to the fact that it's solving the easy problem (write some code) while creating a larger problem (figure out of the code that was generated is correct).

As another senior developer I won't say it's impossible that I'll ever benefit from code generation but I just think it's a terrible space to try and build a solution - we don't need a solution here - I can already type faster than I can think.

I am keenly interested in seeing if someone can leverage AI for query performance tuning or, within the RDBMS, query planning. That feels like an excellent (if highly specific) domain for an LLM.

Re: Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

#146

Post by dayvid »

My job is determining what needs to be done, proving it should be done, getting people to approve it and getting it done.

LLMs help more with the last part which is often considered the lowest level. So if you're someone who just wants to code and not have to deal with people or business, you're more at risk.

Re: Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

#147

Post by dayvid »

sdybskiy wrote: post #102

I just copied the html from this thread into Claude to get a summary. I think being very realistic, a lot of SWE job requirements will be replaced by LLMs. The expertise to pick the right tool for the right job based on previous experience that senior engineers poses is something that can probably be taught to an LLM. Having the ability to provide a business case for the technology to stakeholders that aren't technol…

I'd argue design and UX will be more important for engineers. You need taste to direct LLMs. You can automate some things and maybe have it do data-driven feedback loops but there are so many random industries/locations with off requirements, changes in trends, etc. that it will require someone to oversee and make adjustments

Re: Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

#149

Post by [deleted] »

TechDebtDevin wrote: post #110
ramesh31 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As someone who's personally tried ( with lots of effort) to build agentic assistants/systems 3+ times over the course of the last few years I haven't seen any huge improvements in the quality of output. I think you greatly underestimate the plateau these models are running into. As someone who's personally tried with great success to build agentic systems over the last 6 months, you need to be aware of how fast thes…

>As someone who's personally tried with great success to build agentic systems over the last 6 months. Like what? You're the only person ive seen claim they've built agentic systems with great success. I dont regard improved chat-bot outputs as success, im talking about agentic systems that can roll their own auth from scratch, or gather data from the web independently and build even a mediocore prediction model with…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

#150

Post by haolez »

Maybe creating your own AI agents with your own "touch". Devin, for example, is very dogmatic regarding pull requests and some process bureaucracy. Different tasks and companies might benefit from different agent styles and workflows.

However, true AGI would change everything, since the AGI could create specialized agents by itself :)

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