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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

#71

Post by layer8 »

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.

The problem I see is less that of losing jobs, but the fact that the jobs get less enjoyable, less deep work, more mindlessness and less reflection, and possibly also the quality of the produced software decreasing.

Modern AI encroaches upon what software engineers consider to be interesting work, and also adds more of what they find less enjoyable — using natural language instead of formal language (aka code) for detailed specification — which creates a conflict that didn’t previously exist in software technology.

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

#72

Post by talles »

It amazes me how immature our field can be. Anyone that worked for big corporations and in humongous codebases know how 'generating new code' is a small part of the job.

AI blew up and suddenly I'm seeing seasoned people talking about KLOC like in the 90s.

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

#73

Post by bgwalter »

mananaysiempre wrote: post #56
bgwalter wrote: post #34

Amazon is going down. 20 years ago they had excellent customer service, now they are violating EU laws and cheat the gmp developers out of a CPU replacement: https://gmplib.org/ Granlund's gcc optimizations probably save Amazon millions in electricity each year. But evidently they don't care about real programmers.

> 20 years ago they had excellent customer service, now ... you will use them anyway because, customer service or no, there’s a good chance you don’t have a choice that doesn’t cost half again as much. (Regional availability may vary.)

For the EU, use this search engine:

https://geizhals.eu/

Amazon is not nearly the cheapest or most reliable one for hardware.

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

#74

Post by iLoveOncall »

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.

Until you join a FAANG you simply cannot imagine the complexity of the systems and how much has not been automated and how much there is to build.

I've been in Amazon for close to a decade, and I constantly think "I can't believe X hasn't been automated in the 30 years that Amazon has existed and is still done on Excel".

Most engineers will work on new features for at least half of the year, and I personally work on brand new projects or at least features constantly.

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

#75

Post by casenmgreen »

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.

I may be wrong, but I think every job creates wealth overall (or it would not exist), and that software engineering has been making some jobs more efficient and others not necessary, and then the wealth which formerly had to be employed where those jobs were inefficient, or had to exist at all, is then employed elsewhere.

If you are the person who lost their job, you get all the downside.

Overall, over the whole of the economy, the entire population, and a reasonable period of time, this increasing efficiency is a core driver of the annual overall increase in wealth we know as economic growth.

When an economy is growing, there is in general demand for workers, and so pay and conditions are encouraged; when an economy is shrinking, there is less demand than supply, and pay and conditions are discouraged.

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

#76

Post by NBJack »

ath3nd wrote: post #9

The place known for: - High degree of warehouse injuries ( https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/16/business/economy/amazon-w... ) - Making its delivery drivers piss in bottles ( https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/05/24/de... ) - Illegally busting unions ( https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/amazon-union-bust... ) - Forcing people back into their offices on five day RTO ( https://www.businessinsider…

Ruby/Dawson in SLU even looks like a warehouse on the inside, complete with chain link fence decor, exposed concrete floors with a splash of paint, exposed ceiling infrastructure, and spartan decorations. And it was built over a decade ago.

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

#77

Post by almostgotcaught »

pbw wrote: post #30

Companies will always try to capture the productivity gains from a new tool or technique, and then quickly establish it as the new standard for everyone. This is frustrating and feels Sisyphean: it seems like you simply cannot get ahead. The game is to learn new tools quickly and learn to use them better than most of your peers, then stay quietly a bit ahead. But know you have to keep doing this forever. Or to work f…

Bro lol. You were this close - you're channeling Marx (literally saying the same stuff he was) and instead of coming to the obvious conclusion (unions) you're like nah I'm just gonna alienate myself further. It's just amazing how thoroughly people have been brainwashed. I'm 100% sure nothing will ever improve.

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

#78

Post by wkat4242 »

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.

Hmm on the other hand, there isn't much resistance against genAI in software development (unlike other creative industries) because ours is founded in collaboration and continuing others' work. It's where open source came from, and the use of libraries. Using stackoverflow was never frowned on. AI is just the same but more efficient. Nobody invents the wheel from scratch.

It will change the job yes but it also can mean the job can go in new directions because we can do more with less.

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

#79

Post by neom »

aatd86 wrote: post #58
smokel wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been in this industry for some time, and over the years I have only seen more people being glued to electronic devices, not less. It might have been a selling point, but the status quo is that we are inventing new jobs faster than phasing out old ones. The new jobs aren't necessarily more enjoyable, though, and there are no more smoking breaks.

not necessarily. the economies of scale might be increasing as dev productivity increases. the goal of many businesses being to do more with less.

The goal of all American business is exactly the same: maximize the return of profits to the shareholders at large. It is in fact, the law. Do more with less is a natural consequence of this.

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

#80

Post by nlitened »

ManBeardPc wrote: post #70

I feel my job in the future will be more secure than ever. Tons and tons of AI generated garbage code (trained on more and more existing garbage code) that the „developer“ will at a certain point no longer be able to maintain or fix. Not even speaking about trusting the output. Feels similar to all the outsourced development to cheap suppliers that inevitably collapse or create horrible maintenance overhead.

Do you feel you would be able to “maintain and fix” LLM-generated 100-megabyte source code blobs? And if you could, do you think it would be a job you’d want to do?
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