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At Amazon, some coders say their jobs have begun to resemble warehouse work

nytimes.com

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Re: At Amazon, some coders say their jobs have begun to resemble warehouse work

#11

Post by timr »

jt2190 wrote: post #4

This is interesting: > “It’s more fun to write code than to read code,” said Simon Willison, an A.I. fan who is a longtime programmer and blogger, channeling the objections of other programmers. “If you’re told you have to do a code review, it’s never a fun part of the job. When you’re working with these tools, it’s most of the job.” > This shift from writing to reading code can make engineers feel as if they are bys…

I was just thinking about this the other day (after spending an extended session talking to an LLM about bugs in its code), and I realized that when I was just starting out, I enjoyed writing code, but now the fun part is actually fixing bugs.

Maybe I'm weird, but chasing down bugs is like solving a puzzle. Writing green-field code is maybe a little bit enjoyable, but especially in areas I know well, it's mostly boring now. I'd rather do just about anything than write another iteration of a web form or connect some javascript widget to some other javascript widget in the framework flavor of the week. To some extent, then, working with LLMs has restored some of the fun of coding because it takes care of the tedious part, and I get to solve the interesting problems.

Re: At Amazon, some coders say their jobs have begun to resemble warehouse work

#12

Post by usrnm »

I said it before and I'll say it again: it's high time we got the taste of our own medicine. Getting people out of jobs has been the main selling point of our industry since its first days, this is what we've collectively been doing for decades. Do I want my job to be automated right in front of my eyes? Not really. Do I see some poetic justice in the whole thing? Absolutely.

Re: At Amazon, some coders say their jobs have begun to resemble warehouse work

#13

Post by picardo »

Sure, AI makes writing code easy, but code review remains a bottleneck. The individual coders are finding ways to use AI to improve their workflows, but as long as organizational culture remains stuck in the old ways of reviewing code, the overall throughput will not improve significantly. That's been my personal experience at Amazon. I get significant pushback when I submit a CR more than a few pages long. You need to have high degrees of trust within a team for this to work at scale, and that's very rarely the case in my group.

Re: At Amazon, some coders say their jobs have begun to resemble warehouse work

#14

Post by rvz »

Well if the majority of developers are mostly using web-based technologies such as JS, TS, HTML and CSS, and all you're doing is modifying the site and shuffling around elements + a11y addition, etc that is something an AI can do in seconds.

Seems indeed to be like Warehouse work, which is why Web developers will be the first to be affected by AI.

Doesn't matter if you are "senior" or "staff" in Web development. AI is already senior staff level in that.

Re: At Amazon, some coders say their jobs have begun to resemble warehouse work

#15

Post by timkam »

Is it really that LLM-based tools make developers so much more productive or rather that organizations have found out they can do with less -- and less privileged -- developers? What I don't really see, especially not big tech-internally, are stories of teams that have become amazingly more productive. For now it feels we get some minor productivity improvements that probably do not off-set the invest and are barely enough to keep the narrative alive.

Re: At Amazon, some coders say their jobs have begun to resemble warehouse work

#16

Post by eitally »

andrewstuart wrote: post #8

“OK Andrew, we’re looking for someone for this senior developer and they’ve got to be really really great at copying and pasting between Claude and an IDE. Now we’re going to set up a whiteboard test here and you can demonstrate to us your best copying and pasting.” “errrr, do I do any actual coding in the job?” “Well, yes, inasmuch as anyone does these days. It’s mostly copying and pasting though, but hey that’s wha…

But for about ten years, at least, the majority of Google swe rules have been talked about as "just moving protobufs", which is effectively the same. If your job is just plumbing other people's designs for existing products, how fun can it be?

Re: At Amazon, some coders say their jobs have begun to resemble warehouse work

#17

Post by Braxton1980 »

usrnm wrote: post #12

I said it before and I'll say it again: it's high time we got the taste of our own medicine. Getting people out of jobs has been the main selling point of our industry since its first days, this is what we've collectively been doing for decades. Do I want my job to be automated right in front of my eyes? Not really. Do I see some poetic justice in the whole thing? Absolutely.

How is it poetic justice? Were we advocating for automation?

Re: At Amazon, some coders say their jobs have begun to resemble warehouse work

#18

Post by codr7 »

timkam wrote: post #15

Is it really that LLM-based tools make developers so much more productive or rather that organizations have found out they can do with less -- and less privileged -- developers? What I don't really see, especially not big tech-internally, are stories of teams that have become amazingly more productive. For now it feels we get some minor productivity improvements that probably do not off-set the invest and are barely…

[flagged]

Re: At Amazon, some coders say their jobs have begun to resemble warehouse work

#19

Post by Mistletoe »

Braxton1980 wrote: post #17
usrnm wrote: post #12

I said it before and I'll say it again: it's high time we got the taste of our own medicine. Getting people out of jobs has been the main selling point of our industry since its first days, this is what we've collectively been doing for decades. Do I want my job to be automated right in front of my eyes? Not really. Do I see some poetic justice in the whole thing? Absolutely.

How is it poetic justice? Were we advocating for automation?

You were writing all the code for automation.

Re: At Amazon, some coders say their jobs have begun to resemble warehouse work

#20

Post by Bombthecat »

John23832 wrote: post #7
chongli wrote: post #6

What even are most programmers at Amazon doing? It seems like all the interesting bits (the MVP of Amazon's major products) was developed long ago. All the low-hanging fruit is gone so the task is now focused on squeezing the few remaining drops of efficiency out of the stone.

That’s most major tech companies at this point. The fun was building closer to the mvp of the core product. Once that’s done, it’s just corporate druggery with computers.

Yeah, most of the things in IT are just in maintenance mode now.

You need way way less people for that.

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