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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

#551

Post by CapricornNoble »

ModernMech wrote: post #298
OptionOfT wrote: post #171

To me it feels like part of the hype train, like crypto & VR. I recently had the (dis)pleasure of fixing a bug in a codebase that was vibe coded. It ends up being a collection of disorganized business problems converted into code, without any kind of structure. Refinements are implemented as super-narrow patches, resulting in complex and unorganized code, whereas a human developer might take a step back to try and ex…

> English (or all spoken human language) is not precise enough to articulate what you want your code to do Exactly. And this is why I feel like we are going to go full circle on this. We've seen this cycle in our industry a couple times now: "Formal languages are hard, wouldn't it be great if we could just talk in English and the computer would understand what we mean?" -> "Natural languages are ambiguous and not pre…

>> The eternal hope is that someday, somehow, we will be able to invent a natural language way of communicating something precise like a program, and it's just not going to happen.

I think the closest might be the constructed language "Ithkuil". Learning it is....difficult, to put it mildly.

https://ithkuil.net/

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

#552

Post by Krei-se »

vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #60

With all the changes coming up, I am happy that I am retiring soon. Since I started in the 90s, SW dev has become more and more tightly controlled and feels more like an assembly line. When I started, you could work for weeks and months without much interruption. You had plenty of time for experimentation and creativity. Now everything is ticked based and you constantly have to report status and justify what you are…

Knowing Amazons backends this is just their technical debt creeping up. Coders do repetetive work there because extending from their architecture means lots of code simply to keep the machine running. I would be surprised if they did not assign ASIN (which come from the need to keep ISBN compatibility everywhere) to not only Apps but other virtual goods lol.

From my integrations pov Ebay was ahead of their time with their data structure and pushed for deprecation fast to not keep the debt. Amazon ooth only looks more modern through acquiring new market fields instantly followed by throwing a lot of money to facade up the mess. Every contact like key account managers there were usually pushed for numbers, this has nothing to do with coders being coders.

Bosses always look for ways to instantly measure coders output which is just short-sighted way of thinking. My coworkers were measured by lines of code obviously. I wonder how you measure great engineering.

So no, this has not changed, you can still work uninterrupted on stuff for months or years if you want and skip these places, maybe even proved over your career that previous designs are stable for years to come.

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

#553

Post by throwaway2037 »

torben-friis wrote: post #184
OptionOfT wrote: post #171

To me it feels like part of the hype train, like crypto & VR. I recently had the (dis)pleasure of fixing a bug in a codebase that was vibe coded. It ends up being a collection of disorganized business problems converted into code, without any kind of structure. Refinements are implemented as super-narrow patches, resulting in complex and unorganized code, whereas a human developer might take a step back to try and ex…

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…

    > 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.
I have a feeling this post is going to get a lot of backlash, but I think this is a very good counterpoint. To be clear: I am not here to shill for LLMs nor vibe coding. This is a good example where an "all seeing" LLM can be helpful. Whether or not you choose to accept the recommendation from the LLM isn't my main point. The LLM making you aware is the key value here.

Recently, I was listening to a podcast about realistic real world uses for an LLM. One of them was a law firm trying to review details of a case to determine a strategy. One of podcasters (sp?) recoiled in horror: "An LLM is writing your briefs?" They replied: "No, no. We use it generate ideas. Then, we select best." It was experts (lawyers, in this case) using an LLM as a tool.

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

#554

Post by throwaway2037 »

makeitdouble wrote: post #319
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…

> AI has help me refactor things where I normally couldn’t. Reading "couldn't" as, you would technically not be able to do it because of the complexity or intricacy of the problem, how did you guarantee that the change offered by the AI made proper sense and didn't leave out critical patterns that were too complex for you to detect ? Your comment makes it sound like you're now dependent on AI to refactor again if dir…

Before I started using advanced IDEs that could navigate project structures very quickly, it was normal to have a relatively poor visibility -- call it "fog of war/code". In a 500,000 line C++ project (I have seen a few in my career), as a junior dev, I might only understand a few thousand lines from a few files I have studied. And, I had very little idea of the overall architecture. I see LLMs here as a big opportunity. I assume that most huge software projects developed by non-tech companies look pretty similar -- organic, and poorly documented and tested.

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

#555

Post by never_inline »

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 yet people here keep arguing proper cs education is not important.

Without proper understanding of CS, this is what we get. Lack of rigour.

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

#556

Post by margalabargala »

lolbert6 wrote: post #547
andyferris wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 automatio…

works for tesla

Depends on your definition of "works".

Do they YOLO the angles of tools and then produce 10,000 misshapen cars? Yes. But do they also sell those cars? Impressively, also yes, at least up until a couple months ago. Prior to Elon's political shenanigans of the last few months consumers were remarkably tolerant of Tesla's QC issues.

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

#557

Post by littlecranky67 »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #490
mji wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you say some filler to get someone incapable of understanding what it is that you're doing off your back for 24 more hours has consistently been one of the most useless and unpleasant parts of the job This sucks for the 50% or so who are like you, but there's another 50% who won't really get much done otherwise, either because they don't know what to do and aren't self-motivated or capable enough to figure it out (…

> there's another 50% who won't really get much done otherwise, either because they don't know what to do and aren't self-motivated or capable enough to figure it out (common) or because they're actively cheating you and barely working (less common) Idk I barely ever work with people who are like this, and if people become like this, it's usually obvious to everyone that it's happened and they get a talking to in the…

I assume you are in a country with fire-at-will policies. In Germany you have a job security, you can't just fire people without a reason. The difficulty is actually proving their incompetence or unwillingness to work. Thus in my experience (working a self-employed contractor in Germany) this group is far larger than 50%. Also one of my reasons why no good software comes out of germany (and this includes SAP, as long as you show me a single end-user that is happy with working with SAP software).

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

#558

Post by Krei-se »

pbw wrote: post #170
vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #60

With all the changes coming up, I am happy that I am retiring soon. Since I started in the 90s, SW dev has become more and more tightly controlled and feels more like an assembly line. When I started, you could work for weeks and months without much interruption. You had plenty of time for experimentation and creativity. Now everything is ticked based and you constantly have to report status and justify what you are…

I also started in the 1990’s and agree the evolution has been as you describe it. It does highly depend on where you work, but the tightly managed JIRA-driven development seems awfully popular. But I fall short of declaring the 1990s or 2000s or 2010s were the glory days and now things suck. I think part of it is nostalgia bias. I can think of a job I spent 4 years and list all the good parts of the experience. But I…

Thanks for pointing out JIRA. I think the problem comes from needing to keep the codebase running next month while trying to up scalars / numbers, not thinking years ahead or how to improve both inside culture and outside image of a company which are more complex structures with lots of little metrics and interdependent components than a win/loss output or an issue tracker that ignores the fact issues solved != issues prevented.

I guess these strategies boil down to having some MBA on top or an engineer that has no board of MBAs to bow down to. I strive to stay with private owned companies for this reason but ofc these are less loud on the internet, so you can easily miss them while jobhunting.

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

#559

Post by otikik »

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…

Let them do it. It will naturally explode on their faces. Let Amazon be the early adopters of this trend.

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

#560

Post by dominicrose »

vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #60

With all the changes coming up, I am happy that I am retiring soon. Since I started in the 90s, SW dev has become more and more tightly controlled and feels more like an assembly line. When I started, you could work for weeks and months without much interruption. You had plenty of time for experimentation and creativity. Now everything is ticked based and you constantly have to report status and justify what you are…

From what I've seen, devs though that COVID = full remote forever. It's no wonder there's more control now. So it started before AI IMO.
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