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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

#381

Post by dpkirchner »

redtaperat wrote: post #345
protocolture wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recent example. Trying to get some third party hardware working with raspi The hardware provider provides 2 separate code bases with separate documentation but only supports the latest one. I literally had to force feed the newer code base into ChatGPT, and then feed in working example code to get it going, else it constantly reference the wrong methods. If I just kept going Code / output / repeat it would maybe have…

This is one of several shortcomings I’ve encountered in all major LLMs. The llm has consumed multiple versions of SDKs from the same manufacturer and cannot tell them apart. Mixing up apis, methods, macros, etc. Worse is that for more esoteric code with fewer samples, or more wrong than right answers in the corpus means always getting broken code. I had this issue working on some NXP embedded code.

Human sites are also really bad about mixing content from old and new versions. SO to this day still does not have a version field you can use to filter results or more precisely target questions.

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

#382

Post by jazzyjackson »

dragonwriter wrote: post #206
SoftTalker wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This also includes doctors, lawyers, academics, managers and executives, none of whom are traditionally thought of as "working class"

That group is, in fact, traditionally considered largely working class (proletarian, more specifically the proletarian intelligentsia, though some in that group might be middle class, again, in the traditional class analysis, petit bourgeois sense.) American popular usage defers from traditional economic role-based class analysis to be instead do income-based “class” terminology which instead of defining the middle c…

Whose tradition? Not the American working class. Despite the strong labor unions extent I think you'd be hard pressed to find marxists among them. We talk of middle and upper class precisely because we don't ascribe to the "traditional" framing of bourgeoisie v. proletariat, because running a business is actually work too, even if you own the capital. If you sit around and spend money all day we just call you an aristocrat.

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

#383

Post by lovich »

salomonk_mur wrote: post #356
bdangubic wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It ends up being a collection of disorganized business problems converted into code, without any kind of structure. this matches the description of every codebase (except one) I came across in my 30-year career

Then you had some very shitty jobs. Good teams put time and effort in architecture before development. LLMs will produce code with good structure, as long as you provide that architecture before hand.

> Good teams put time and effort in architecture before development.

I can only accept that as true if I also accept the fact that the vast majority of jobs won’t be on a good team

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

#384

Post by nicetryguy »

> Andy Jassy ... said working faster was essential because competitors would gain ground if Amazon doesn’t give customers what they want “as quickly as possible” and cited coding as an activity where A.I. would “change the norms.”

Bruh, no competitor is going to set up an army of datacenters and warehouses on the gargantuan scale of amazon anytime soon... What do customers want? How about fixing your search function accuracy and policing the disgusting influx of scam products with fake reviews!!! Ugh. How about you get AI working on THAT jackknife...

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

#385

Post by apical_dendrite »

gerdesj wrote: post #348
Nasrudith wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Organizations have long had a preference for 'deskilling' to something reliable through bureaucratic procedures, regardless of the side effects or even if it results in it costs more due to needing three people where one talented could do it before. Because it is more dependable, even if it is dependably mediocre. Even though this technique may lead to their long-term doom and irrelevance.

Please give some worked examples. I'm not sure what: "'deskilling' to something reliable through bureaucratic procedures" ... means. I'm the Managing Director of a small company and I'm pretty sure you are digging at the likes of me (int al) - so what am I doing wrong?

Are you familiar with Taylorism?

From the 19th century onwards, businesses have wanted to replace high-skilled craftsmen with low-skilled workers who would simply follow a repeatable process. A famous example is Ford. Ford didn't want an army of craftsmen, who each knew how to build a car. He wanted workers to stay at one station and perform the same single action all day. The knowledge of how to build a car would be in the system itself, the individual workers didn't have to know anything. This way, the workers have limited leverage because they are all replaceable, and the output is all standardized.

You can see this same approach everywhere. McDonalds for instance, or Amazon warehouses, or call centers.

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

#386

Post by echelon »

nicetryguy wrote: post #384

> Andy Jassy ... said working faster was essential because competitors would gain ground if Amazon doesn’t give customers what they want “as quickly as possible” and cited coding as an activity where A.I. would “change the norms.” Bruh, no competitor is going to set up an army of datacenters and warehouses on the gargantuan scale of amazon anytime soon... What do customers want? How about fixing your search function…

> Bruh, firstly, no competitor is going to set up an army of datacenters and warehouses on the gargantuan scale of amazon anytime soon.

Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI covet what AWS has. They are absolutely coming for AWS.

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

#387

Post by intended »

agarren wrote: post #351

> [Harper Reed] cautioned against being overly precious about the value of deeply understanding one’s code, which is no longer necessary to ensure that it works. That just strikes me as an odd thing to say. I’m convinced that this is the dividing line between today’s software engineers and tomorrow’s AI engineers (in whatever form that takes - prompt, vibe, etc.) Reed’s statement feels very much like a justification…

The fact that they used the auto industry as an example is funny, because the Toyota way and six sigma came out of that industry.

So you are telling me, your AI code passes a six sigma grade of quality control?

I have a bridge to sell you. No, Bridges!

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

#388

Post by Izikiel43 »

nicetryguy wrote: post #384

> Andy Jassy ... said working faster was essential because competitors would gain ground if Amazon doesn’t give customers what they want “as quickly as possible” and cited coding as an activity where A.I. would “change the norms.” Bruh, no competitor is going to set up an army of datacenters and warehouses on the gargantuan scale of amazon anytime soon... What do customers want? How about fixing your search function…

AWS has competition in Azure and Google Cloud, and AWS is the money maker for Amazon, everything else is incidental.

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

#389

Post by anonzzzies »

majormajor wrote: post #367
agarren wrote: post #351

> [Harper Reed] cautioned against being overly precious about the value of deeply understanding one’s code, which is no longer necessary to ensure that it works. That just strikes me as an odd thing to say. I’m convinced that this is the dividing line between today’s software engineers and tomorrow’s AI engineers (in whatever form that takes - prompt, vibe, etc.) Reed’s statement feels very much like a justification…

One of the reasons outsourcing for software fizzled out some compared to manufacturing is because in a factory you don't have "measuring to make sure every angle is correct" because (a) the manufacturing tools are tested and repeatable already and (b) the heavy lifting of figuring out all the angles was done ahead of time. So it was easy to mechanize and send to wherever the labor was cheapest since the value was in…

> outsourcing for software fizzled out

Any data on that? I see everyone trying to outsource as much as they can. Sure, now it is moving toward AI, but every company I walk into have 10-1000s of FTEs in outsource countries.

I see most fortune 1000 companies here doing some type of agile/planningexecution which is in fact more waterfall. The people here in the west are more management and client facing, the rest is 'thrown over the fence'.

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

#390

Post by [deleted] »

SoftTalker wrote: post #198
closewith wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The working class is globally the class of people who must sell their labour. That includes - to a rounding error - all software developers and that is completely uncontroversial.

This also includes doctors, lawyers, academics, managers and executives, none of whom are traditionally thought of as "working class"

[deleted]
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