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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

#501

Post by Flemlo »

malfist wrote: post #391
Flemlo wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A hype is over promising and under delivering. AI is extremely new, impressive and is already changing things. How can that be in any way be similar to crypto and VR?

You can see that in this article referencing Jassy's 4,500 years of effort. Which is said "sounds crazy but it's true!" It isn't true. The tool he's bragging about most went about changing JDK8 to JDK17 in a build config file, and if you're lucky tweaking log4j versions. 4,500 years my ass. It was more regex and AI

This was not even imaginable at all just a few years ago.

It doesn't matter if it's not working perfect yet. It's only a few years got 3 came out.

Having a reasonable chat with a computer was also not possible at all. AI right now already feels like another person.

You bought gasoline for the first cars in a pharmacy.

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

#502

Post by soraminazuki »

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…

It's a reckless stance that should never ever come from a software professional. "Let's develop modern spy^H^H^Hsoftware in the same way as the 737 Max, what could possibly go wrong?"

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

#503

Post by nssnsjsjsjs »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #52
picardo wrote: post #13

Sure, AI makes writing code easy, but code review remains a bottleneck. The individual coders are finding ways to use AI to improve their workflows, but as long as organizational culture remains stuck in the old ways of reviewing code, the overall throughput will not improve significantly. That's been my personal experience at Amazon. I get significant pushback when I submit a CR more than a few pages long. You need…

> I get significant pushback when I submit a CR more than a few pages long. Hum yeah, because it's insanely hard to properly review a CR that's more than a few pages long?

Username checks out. Bio even more so. Don't want to be oncall when a LGTM 1000-liner got dumped on prod.

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

#504

Post by blablablerg »

wiseowise wrote: post #441
ath3nd wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-m…

Not everything is about society.

Who claimed that?

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

#505

Post by Flemlo »

ModernMech wrote: post #292
Flemlo wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A hype is over promising and under delivering. AI is extremely new, impressive and is already changing things. How can that be in any way be similar to crypto and VR?

Yes, it's new and impressive and changing things, but nevertheless it's still underdelivering because the over-promising is out of control. They are selling these things as Ph.D. level researchers that can ace the SAT, pass the MCAT, pass the Bar, yet it still has trouble counting the R's in "strawberry".

The strawberry thing is solved.

Nonetheless it's different things.

Just because they struggle with that makes all the other things wrong? Underwhelming?

I don't think so.

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

#506

Post by elmt35 »

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…

To me the biggest difference between a software engineer and an assembly worker is the worker makes cars, the software engineer makes the assembly line.

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

#508

Post by staunton »

neom wrote: post #250
timkam wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sca…

To be technical, and to borrow a bit. Proletariat[1] are the working class, they work for the Bourgeoisie[2], the people who own the means of productions. That's why I asked why you used demote. Lower, Middle and Upper are strata or ranks within classes. Within the bourgeoisie, you can distinguish: Petite bourgeoisie: small business owners, shopkeepers Haute bourgeoisie: industrialists, financiers Managerial class (i…

> the Bourgeoisie[2], the people who own the means of productions

> Within the bourgeoisie, you can distinguish: [...] Managerial class [...] non owners who control labor

Contradiction?

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

#509

Post by fock »

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…

also software is a factory and the LLM is a workshop building factories. Also I strongly believe that people building factories still do a lot of a) ten people pounding out the metal AND b) measuring to check

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

#510

Post by lukan »

throwup238 wrote: post #497
lolinder wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, you know who did measure every angle to make sure it was correct? The engineers who put together the initial design. They sure as hell took their time getting every detail of the design right before it ever made it to the assembly line. Who's filling that role in this brave new world?

> Who's filling that role in this brave new world? Us? (Yeah, we’re fucked)

In a world of vibe coders, those who can still debug on their own, will have quite a valuable skill.
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