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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

#131

Post by CooCooCaCha »

wkat4242 wrote: post #116
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly back when I worked in IT, the people I worked with were mostly very much anti-union. I didn't hear much anti immigrant talk back then but I've been retired for a while.

I don't really believe in unions either. But I do believe in a good balance between capitalism and socialism (and welfare systems, employee rights etc). I don't believe in the market solving everything. The problem I have with unions is that they can be too unreasonable. They're too much on the other side, they're too hardline just like the ultracapitalists/neoliberals but on the other side. In a good system we would…

This comment reeks of liberalism and illustrates why liberalism doesn’t work.

You claim you’re trying to balance individualism and collectivism but don’t actually support things that make collectivism work so you end up de facto supporting individualism.

Its a way to support individualism while allowing people to feel extra good about themselves for supporting collectivist ideas, on paper.

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

#132

Post by rynohack »

timkam wrote: post #128
closewith wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The skilled class is the working class and always has been. The delusion that software developers were ever outside the working class because they were paid well is just that - an arrogant delusion.

Well, for the time SEs are substantially better paid than working-class jobs, they are not the working class. For now, this applies at least to some regions, not only within the US. I agree in that I have at times felt some level of arrogance among some people taking up software engineering jobs, but IMO this just confirms the social class aspect of it. So there may have been some level of delusion to it, but at leas…

Working class is not defined by income level.

The working class is those who own no significant means of production and thus must sell their labor at whatever price the market bears.

That the market for SE labor is good(for the workers), doesn't mean SE's don't need to work to earn money.

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

#133

Post by f33d5173 »

rynohack wrote: post #132
timkam wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, for the time SEs are substantially better paid than working-class jobs, they are not the working class. For now, this applies at least to some regions, not only within the US. I agree in that I have at times felt some level of arrogance among some people taking up software engineering jobs, but IMO this just confirms the social class aspect of it. So there may have been some level of delusion to it, but at leas…

Working class is not defined by income level. The working class is those who own no significant means of production and thus must sell their labor at whatever price the market bears. That the market for SE labor is good(for the workers), doesn't mean SE's don't need to work to earn money.

The way a word is defined by communists and the way it is defined by the rest of the world are seldom the same.

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

#134

Post by ath3nd »

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…

> But know you have to keep doing this forever. Or to work for yourself or in an environment where you get the gains, not the employer

Or, you know, being a member of society, you can find other members of society who feel like you, and organize together to place demands on employers that...you know...stops them from exploiting you.

- That's how you got the weekend: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200117-the-modern-phe...

- And that's how you got the 8-hour working week: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day_movement

- And that's how you got children off the factories: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labour

But, you know, you can always hustle against your fellow SEs, and try to appease your masters. Where others work the bare minimum of 8 hours, why not work 12, and also on the weekend? It's also fine.

Generating shareholder value is very important for the well-being of society! /s

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

#135

Post by ManBeardPc »

WD-42 wrote: post #93
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.

Secure, sure. But this sounds like a crappy job.

Not so crappy if the pain is big enough for the customer. Once a certain threshold is reached they are often very open to changes and giving freedom to develop a proper solution.

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

#136

Post by xtracto »

softwaredoug wrote: post #55

I am optimistic longer term, pessimistic near term What needs to happen is the education of "junior programmers" needs to be revamped to embrace generative AI. In the same way we embraced google or stackoverflow. We're at a weird transition state where the juniors are being taught to code with an abacus, while the industry has moved on to different tools. Generative AI feels taboo in education circles instead of embr…

You raise a good point. Ba k in the early 90s when i started with programming, my source of knowledge were magazines with code, a "programming with C/C++" book, and a lot of time.

Then the internet came, and it felt like 'cheating'.

Then forums came and it felt like cheating, Then SO, and so on and so forth.

Now AI is eating the [software] world, and to a lot of people, it feels like cheating. I am just amazed of what i can build.

In 10-15 years software will become a commodity, along with books/stories and maybe even music/art. I don't know how it looks like. But darn im excited to be here to experience it.

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

#137

Post by archagon »

timr wrote: post #11
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 bori…

Code reviews are fun when you can trust the competence of the coder.

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

#138

Post by timkam »

rynohack wrote: post #132
timkam wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, for the time SEs are substantially better paid than working-class jobs, they are not the working class. For now, this applies at least to some regions, not only within the US. I agree in that I have at times felt some level of arrogance among some people taking up software engineering jobs, but IMO this just confirms the social class aspect of it. So there may have been some level of delusion to it, but at leas…

Working class is not defined by income level. The working class is those who own no significant means of production and thus must sell their labor at whatever price the market bears. That the market for SE labor is good(for the workers), doesn't mean SE's don't need to work to earn money.

This is an interesting perspective, and I assume your definition is the technically correct one. Still, many SEs receive substantial compensation in RSUs, direct stocks, shares in startups, et cetera. So also from this perspective, there are many non-working class SEs. Another aspect is that culturally, the perception has been that SEs don't necessarily sell their work by the hour, but instead sell knowledge that scales tremendously, in exchange for a comfortable upper middle-to-lower upper class life.

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

#139

Post by soraminazuki »

closewith wrote: post #113
codr7 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

But you of course with your superior skills are above that risk?

No. The actual competency of AI won't matter. Lots of corporate executives will prioritize short-term cost savings, with little concern for the degradation for essential systems. They will hop from company to company, personally reaping the benefits while undermining the systems that users and society rely on. That's part of the reason why the current hype is blown way out of proportion by these people. Because who has faced consequences for behaving this way?

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

#140

Post by chobeat »

jampekka wrote: post #47
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.

Gloating about hardships was and is a great way to ensure things will get worse for workers as efficiency and automation increases. Another option would be to join forces to collectively demand more equitable distribution of the fruits of technological development. Sadly it doesn't seem to be very popular.

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