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

Mark Zuckerberg says AI could soon do the work of Meta's midlevel engineers

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 106 posts

Re: Mark Zuckerberg says AI could soon do the work of Meta's midlevel engineers

#51

Post by tombert »

MattGaiser wrote: post #36
tombert wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, this is what I've been trying to say for awhile now. It feels like people are assuming that there's only so much work that can actually be done, and I don't think that's what happens in practice; instead we figure out how to exploit the resources more instead of doing "the same with less". Basically I feel most people are not thinking in terms of Gustafson's Law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustafson%27s…

I can see it turning the job into a quasi-product/engineering manager role and for some, they may not have chosen the new social version of the career. For some of my smaller projects, AI makes them vastly more efficient to do, but it is far from the hacker-style type of work they started as. For many of them, the human communication, typing the change request into ChatGPT, and pasting the new code into the file are…

Oh definitely, no doubt that the world is changing, and of course not everyone is going to like the change. I wasn't exactly slap-happy that everyone decided to start writing their desktop apps in a rebranded version of Chrome, but it makes sense when memory is infinite and CPUs are fast.

I just don't think it's quite as doom-and-gloom as everyone is paranoid about. I feel like most of the jobs that could be easily replaced by AI also could have already fairly easily been outsourced to India. If you already have a job in a rich country like the US, it's likely that your employer thinks that it's necessary.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg says AI could soon do the work of Meta's midlevel engineers

#52

Post by janice1999 »

bsaul wrote: post #38

i'm quite surprised by the level of skepticism in this thread. I've been developping my website + webservice + db only using cursor "composer" mode, not typing a single line of code, and i'm already with something fully functional. I am voluntarely refraining from fixing the bugs myself by digging into the code, just to see how far someone with 0 coding skill can go. And this answer is : as far as a junior / midlevel…

Could someone with "0 coding skill" really compose the prompts in the first place? You need to understand the problem space, the right terminology and visualise a general architecture/structure for the solution. These things might be obvious to you and me but take someone from a different field and it would be the same as handing me the controls to a medical robot and telling me to start pushing buttons.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg says AI could soon do the work of Meta's midlevel engineers

#53

Post by jltsiren »

flareback wrote: post #5

One day they're going to want only senior engineers, but with AI taking all the mid-level jobs there won't be any seniors.

That's not a real problem. There are established models for training people to work in fields, where you need plenty of experience to qualify for an entry-level position. Medicine is the most prominent example.

And it's going to be easier than in medicine, because software is so forgiving. You can do real work during training with minimal supervision, as mistakes rarely cause serious harm.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg says AI could soon do the work of Meta's midlevel engineers

#54

Post by hackingonempty »

resource_waste wrote: post #11

Great, more midlevel engineers for me. I genuinely cannot see how AI is going to be bad for programmers. It doesnt do the entire job. It does snippits and you must integrate everything. (And if it does the entire job, amazing! Maybe we can spend extra time on a good UI or extra unit tests) AI could reduce our staff by half, but that isnt what happens. Instead we just get more work done. The productivity increase seem…

> AI could reduce our staff by half, but that isnt what happens. Instead we just get more work done. The productivity increase seems to warrent spending more money on programmers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

Re: Mark Zuckerberg says AI could soon do the work of Meta's midlevel engineers

#55

Post by throwaway48476 »

tombert wrote: post #30
rstat1 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> frees up resources for the remaining engineers to work on something more interesting. Or forces them to waste all their time babysitting the "AI" workers that can't do basic tasks.

If that's the case, I don't think we have anything to worry about anyway. If productivity actually drops then I suspect that this program will be sunsetted.

Have you found the fabled solution for measuring programmer productivity?

Re: Mark Zuckerberg says AI could soon do the work of Meta's midlevel engineers

#57

Post by rvz »

seatac76 wrote: post #14

I don’t know how they think that’s going to work. The best AI has been able to do for me is smarter Auto Complete, I doubt it can just fit into larger code bases without the searching a human can do. I know the job market has been rough which has emboldened these CEO’s but we are starting to see hiring pick up again, and not just Staff+, interns, SDE 1 and 2 as well, which bodes well for 2025.

> we are starting to see hiring pick up again

There is a different picture. You are now seeing the same jobs but this time it has a reduced salary + equity and fewer openings. It is not the same as before 2020.

For every tech role open, it will be ultra competitive to the point where companies may start hiring olympians for the job that match the so-called "exceptional talent".

The truth is, it will get worse before it gets any better.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg says AI could soon do the work of Meta's midlevel engineers

#58

Post by davesque »

The whole debate about whether or not he can realistically do this based on the state of the technology seems like a side issue to me. What really stands out is that he and CEOs like him would imply that a large, critical segment of their work force is not especially valuable to them, and also that they don't really see them as people. Rather, they are things that can be set aside as soon as they aren't needed.

These business owners aren't going to see us as people until we force them to. Unionize and strike.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg says AI could soon do the work of Meta's midlevel engineers

#59

Post by indrora »

pdelboca wrote: post #48

So the plan would be to have your most brilliant engineers reviewing code that was generated by AI? Next step will be having AI writing LGTM! and automatically merging PRs.

I'm reminded of the github issue opened by a machine, commented on by a machine, LGTM'd by a machine, and merged by a machine.

With self-congratulatory post-merge success gif post by a machine.

Post reply on HN