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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

#421

Post by andyferris »

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 correct analogy is that software engineers design and build the _factory_. The software performs the repeatable process as defined by code, and no person sits and watches if each machine instruction is executed correctly.

Do you really want your auto tool makers to not ensure the angle of the tools are correct _before_ you go and build 10,000 (misshaped) cars?

I’m not saying we don’t embrace tooling and automation as appropriate at the next level up, but sheesh that is a misguided analogy.

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

#423

Post by kloop »

bartread wrote: post #393
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…

And except that the factory analogy of software delivery has always been utterly terrible. If you want to draw parallels between software delivery and automotive delivery then most of what software engineers do would fall into the design and development phases. The bit that doesn’t: the manufacturing phase - I.e., creating lots of copies of the car - is most closely modelled by deployment, or distribution of delivera…

> The idea that because software goes through a standardised workflow and pipeline over and over and over again as it’s built it’s somehow like a factory is also bullshit.

I don't think it's bs. The pipeline system is almost exactly like a factory. In fact, the entire system we've created is probably what you get when cost of creating a factory approaches instantaneous and free.

The compilation step really does correspond to the "build" phase in the project lifecycle. We've just completely automated by this point.

What's hard for people to understand is that the bit right before the build phase that takes all the man-hours isn't part of the build phase. This is an understandable mistake, as the build phase in physical projects takes most of the man-hours, but it doesn't make it any more correct.

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

#424

Post by baalimago »

Seems to me like FANG is primarily sacrificing QA to increase productivity, with AI as the reason. Will be interesting to see if they too are 'peeing their pants' (warm and nice -> cold and not so nice), or if it actually will be sustainable.

LLM's were trailed as customer service bots, which backfired (for the most part). Now they're exploring different areas.

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

#425

Post by bgwalter »

pchristensen wrote: post #401
bgwalter wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazing. What has Harper Reed written? Does he have any significant output? This is frankly the most idiotic statement I have heard about programming yet.

This made the rounds recently: https://harper.blog/2025/02/16/my-llm-codegen-workflow-atm/ That quote really misrepresents his writing.

Then one wonders what the agenda of the NYT is here. Does this also misrepresent Willison's writing?

And just as the proliferation of factories abroad has made it cheap and easy for entrepreneurs to manufacture physical products, the rise of A.I. is likely to democratize software-making, lowering the cost of building new apps. “If you’re a prototyper, this is a gift from heaven,” Mr. Willison said. “You can knock something out that illustrates the idea.”

Why do they cite bloggers who relentlessly push this technology rather than interviewing a representative selection of programmers?

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

#426

Post by tho234j234234 »

baalimago wrote: post #424

Seems to me like FANG is primarily sacrificing QA to increase productivity, with AI as the reason. Will be interesting to see if they too are 'peeing their pants' (warm and nice -> cold and not so nice), or if it actually will be sustainable. LLM's were trailed as customer service bots, which backfired (for the most part). Now they're exploring different areas.

May be it's easier in FAANG because a lot of the work comes from the sheer (and unnecessary IMO) complexity of the stack/tools.

In fact, a common meme within Google is that Engineers are mere plumbers routing protos from one place to another.

(Given how brittle these systems are though, I'm not sure if I trust LLMs to be better; but they may be more suited for dealing with un-interactive delayed-feedback baroque systems that are the norm in such places.)

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

#427

Post by bgwalter »

pchristensen wrote: post #401
bgwalter wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazing. What has Harper Reed written? Does he have any significant output? This is frankly the most idiotic statement I have heard about programming yet.

This made the rounds recently: https://harper.blog/2025/02/16/my-llm-codegen-workflow-atm/ That quote really misrepresents his writing.

What does your link prove? That article is rambling nonsense that is pushing AI. It confirms the NYT quote.

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

#428

Post by tho234j234234 »

ozim wrote: post #411

As a software dev I always felt like working warehouse - sprints, strony points being held on productivity metrics. people think all devs work FAANG like companies when there is loads of companies where devs are treated like dirt only now one FAANG company catches up with reality. Where business people seem to never be measured in any way. If requirements were shitty - well dev team did a bad job - not that business…

I thought devs were always treated like dirt at Amazon ?

I've tried interviewing at that place, and have't felt that kind of hostility ever - one guy even wanted me to prove that K-means in 2d is in P. This I later found was a was the topic of a key paper in this niche of ML theory.

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

#429

Post by lodovic »

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.

Most teams are understaffed and under pressure to deliver. Agile is all the rage so why spend time developing architecture when you can yolo it during the implementation phase?

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

#430

Post by JodieBenitez »

ggregoire wrote: post #335
lawgimenez wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just came out from a cave, what is this vibe coding?

Might not be the case for the senior devs on HN, but for most people in this industry, it's copy/pasting a jira ticket into a LLM, which generates some code that seems to work and a ton of useless comments, then pushing it on github without even looking at it once and then moving to the next ticket.

I have a much less glossy term for this.
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