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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

#231

Post by Wowfunhappy »

skydhash wrote: post #222
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (And for some reason we're pretending like these formalisms are hard and the people that understand them evil gatekeepers, to which I'd say: nope to both propositions. It has never been easier to learn how to code.) I am not a professional programmer, and I tend to bounce between lots of different languages depending on the problem I'm trying to solve. If I had all of the syntax for a given language memorized, I ca…

No one have the language syntax memorized, unless you're working with the language daily. Instead we store patterns, and there isn't a lot (checkout the formal grammar for any programming language). For any C like language, they overlap a lot, the difference are mostly in syntax minutia (which we can refresh in an afternoon with a reference) and the higher abstractions (which you learn once, like OOP, pattern matchin…

> Instead we store patterns, and there isn't a lot

That's kind of what I mean by "syntax". For example, "how do I find a value that matches X in this specific type of data structure?" AI is very good at this and it's a huge time saver for me. But I can imagine how it might be less helpful if I did this full time.

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

#232

Post by torben-friis »

greesil wrote: post #205
torben-friis wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: AI has help me refactor things where I normally couldn’t. Things like extracting some common structure that’s present in a slightly different way in 30 places, where cursor detects it, or suggesting potential for a certain pattern. The problem with vibe coding is more behavioral I think: the person more likely to jump in the bandwagon to avoid writing some code themselves is probably not the one thinkin…

What do you think is going to happen when management is pushing on deadlines?

The same thing as always: either a strong tech voice convinces them to invest the required time or corners are cut and we all cry later. But I don’t see how that is made better or worse by AI.

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

#233

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

telesilla wrote: post #54

Will AI also start developing creative tools such as new VST plugins or photoshop filters? What about low-level low-latency tools needed for some industries or for aerospace. I guess at some point we won't need so many humans to run our Kubernetes clusters or maintain our WordPress sites but won't there always be something to do that pushes the boundaries of human needs and desires that can't be done by AI?

I keep meaning to experiment with vibe-coded VSTs. The shell and UI parts should be easy to automate, because they're basically boilerplate. But I doubt AI knows enough about DSP to design an incredible new reverb algorithm, or is an expert on bandwidth-limited oscillator design.

Or maybe it is? When I have some time, I'll find out.

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

#234

Post by cobertos »

neilv wrote: post #192

You can speed up software development dramatically by simply copying the code that someone else was foolish/idealistic enough to store on GitHub, stripping out the copyright and licensing notices, and adapting it to your needs The problem with that is that you don't want to get caught doing that directly. So you need to hire a sleazy offshore firm to launder that for you. Or (faster and cheaper) use a sleazy "AI" to…

If that is the case, isn't the future more private code? The producers realize that public release is no longer in their favor and will keep it in their groups (until they leak or whatever)?

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

#236

Post by Jeff_Brown »

SoftTalker wrote: post #194
rynohack wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 means of production for a software engineer is a laptop. Many SEs own them. There are no raw materials or factories needed to produce software, at least not in the sense of traditional production.

You could say the same thing of hands. What really distinguishes capital from labor is not what counts as a tool, but market power. A large number of non-unionized workers are inherently at a disadvantage against a small number of employers with exorbitantly costly infra.

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

#237

Post by CooCooCaCha »

wkat4242 wrote: post #210
CooCooCaCha wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm very socialist, and anti-liberal (at least, in the economic sense of liberalism). But where I live we just have strong labour rights from the government so individual unions fighting for each type of labour's rights are not needed as much. Sometimes they are, when there are specific risks like chemicals that they work with. But for overall "not get taken advantage of" stuff, it's just not needed so much.

I’m glad the people in your country allow good things to happen. That’s definitely not the case in all countries and you need collective power to get nice things for workers.

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

#238

Post by greyadept »

stock_toaster wrote: post #218
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…

I wonder about codebase maintainability over time. I hypothesize that it takes some period of time for vibe-coding to slowly "bit rot" a complex codebase with abstractions and subtle bugs, slowly making it less robust and more difficult to maintain, and more difficult to add new features/functionality. So while companies may be seeing what appears to be increases in output _now_, they may be missing the increased dra…

I’m concerned that it might not be easy to vibecode a security fix for a complex codebase, especially when the flaw was introduced by vibecoding.

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

#239

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

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…

This can only go three ways.

The first is that the entire global codebase starts to become an unstable shitpile, and eventually critical infrastructure starts collapsing in a kind of self-inflicted Y2k event. Experienced developers will be rehired at astronomical rates to put everything back together, and then everyone will proceed more cautiously. (Perhaps.)

The second is that AI is just about good enough and things muddle along in a not-great-not-terrible way. Dev status and salaries drop slowly, profits increase, reliability and quality are both down, but not enough to cause serious problems.

The third is that the shitpile singularity is avoided because AI gets much better at coding much more quickly, and rapidly becomes smarter than human devs. It gets good enough to create smart specs with a better-than-human understanding of edge cases, strategy, etc, and also good enough to implement clean code from those specs.

If this happens development as we know it would end, because the concept of a codebase would become obsolete. The entire Internet would become dynamic and adaptive, with code being generated in real time as requirements and condition evolve.

I'm sure this will happen eventually, but current LLMs are hilariously short of it.

So for now there's a gap between what CEOs believe is happening - option 3. And what is really happening - option 1.

I think a shitpile singularity is quite likely within a couple of years. But if there's any sane management left it may just about be possible to steer into option 2.

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

#240

Post by geodel »

pjmlp wrote: post #155
locococo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of it is perception. Writing software was long considered somewhat difficult and that it required smart people to do so. AI changes this perception and coding starts to be perceived as a low level task that anyone can do easily with augmentation from AI tools. I certainly agree that writing software is turning more into a factory job and is less intellectually rewarding now.

It has been a factory job for decades. Not everyone gets to code the next ground breaking algorithm at some R&D department. Most programming tasks are rather repetitive, and in many countries there is hardly anything to look up to software developers, it is another blue collar job. And in many cultures if you don't go into management after about five years, usually it is seen as a failure to grow up on their career.

Of course it is true. The thing was 90% of Amazon engineers made far more money at their job while essentially doing typical enterprise software work. This money led them believe it is some creative work. And now those task management and time monitoring tools are catching up to Amazon IT workers so they are realizing it is similar to another low end IT job/ factory work.
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