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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

#661

Post by tlogan »

At the end of the day, coding with AI is still coding.

LLMs need to get better at it - more precision, less hallucination, larger context windows, and stricter reasoning. We also need a clearer and more domain-specific vocabulary when working with them.

In short LLM will end up as one more programming language - but one that’s easier for humans to understand, since it operates using the terminology of the problem domain.

But humans will still need to do the thinking: the what-ifs, the abstractions, the reasoning.

That’s where AI becomes unsettling - too many people have been trained not to think at all.

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

#662

Post by AlexandrB »

bumby wrote: post #632
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 would be crazy if in an auto factory people were measuring to make sure every angle is correct To someone who used to automate assembly plants, sounds to me as a rationalization of someone who has never worked in manufacturing. Quality people rightly obsess over whether or not the machine is making “every angle” correct. Imagine trying to make a car where parts don’t fit together well. Software tends to have eve…

> Imagine trying to make a car where parts don’t fit together well.

Don't have to imagine, just walk over to your local Tesla dealership.

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

#664

Post by Hilift »

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…

> That just strikes me as an odd thing to say.

Is it though? It could be interpreted as an acknowledgement. Five years from now, testing will be further improved, yet the same people will be able to take over your iPhone by sending you a text message that you don't have to read. It's like expecting AI to solve the spam email problem, only to learn that it does not.

It's possible to say "we take the security and privacy of our customers seriously" without knowing how the code works. That's the beauty of AI. It legitimizes and normalizes stupid humans without measurably changing the level of human stupidity or the quality or efficiency of the product.

Sold! Sold! Sold!

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

#665

Post by game_the0ry »

vijucat wrote: post #659

Not directly related, but an anecdote: well before AI, I was talking to a Portfolio Solutions Manager or something from JP Morgan. He was an MD at the firm and very full of himself. He told me, "You guys, your job is....you just Google search your problem and copy paste a solution, right?". What I found hilarious is that he also told me, "The quants, I hate that they keep their C++ code secret. I opened up the execut…

> Lesson: people with grave incompetence at programming feel completely competent to judge what programming is and should be.

As an employee at a company with a similar attitude, I cannot agree more with this.

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

#666

Post by rco8786 »

close04 wrote: post #602
alpaca128 wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They took their time precisely specifying the robot movements so they're always repeatable. Almost like...some sort of carefully crafted code.

You misconstrue the analogy. The robot isn’t equivalent to the code in this analogy. It’s the thing that generates the code. The robot operates deterministically, it has a fixed input and a fixed output. This is what makes it reliable. Your “AI coder” is nothing like that. It’s non deterministic on its best day, and it gets everything thrown at it so even more of a coin toss. This seriously undermines any expectation…

> The robot isn’t equivalent to the code in this analogy. It’s the thing that generates the code.

I think this inversion is what a lot of people are missing, or just don't understand (because they don't understand what code is or how it works).

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

#667

Post by bugtodiffer »

0xEF wrote: post #657
RossBencina wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole auto factory thing sounds completely misinformed to me. Just because a machine made it does not mean the output isn't checked in a multitude of ways. Any manufacturing process is subject to quality controls. Machines are maintained. Machine parts are swapped out long before they lead to out-of-tolerance work. Process outputs are statistically characterised, measured and monitored. Measurement equipment is r…

> Any manufacturing process is subject to quality controls. A few things on this illusion: * Any manufacturer will do everything in their power to avoid meeting anything but the barest minimums of standards due to budget concerns * QA workers are often pressured to let small things fly and cave easily because they simply do not get paid enough to care and know they won't win that fight unless their employer's product…

> * Any manufacturer will do everything in their power to avoid meeting anything but the barest minimums of standards due to budget concerns

in capitalistic countries, yes

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

#668

Post by JKCalhoun »

vijucat wrote: post #659

Not directly related, but an anecdote: well before AI, I was talking to a Portfolio Solutions Manager or something from JP Morgan. He was an MD at the firm and very full of himself. He told me, "You guys, your job is....you just Google search your problem and copy paste a solution, right?". What I found hilarious is that he also told me, "The quants, I hate that they keep their C++ code secret. I opened up the execut…

My own tangential gripe (a bit related to yours though): the factory work began when Agile crept into the workplace. Additionally, lint, unit tests, code reviews... all this crap just piled on making programming worse still.

It stopped being fun to code around that point. Too many i's to dot to make management happy.

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

#669

Post by idiotsecant »

0xEF wrote: post #657
RossBencina wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole auto factory thing sounds completely misinformed to me. Just because a machine made it does not mean the output isn't checked in a multitude of ways. Any manufacturing process is subject to quality controls. Machines are maintained. Machine parts are swapped out long before they lead to out-of-tolerance work. Process outputs are statistically characterised, measured and monitored. Measurement equipment is r…

> Any manufacturing process is subject to quality controls. A few things on this illusion: * Any manufacturer will do everything in their power to avoid meeting anything but the barest minimums of standards due to budget concerns * QA workers are often pressured to let small things fly and cave easily because they simply do not get paid enough to care and know they won't win that fight unless their employer's product…

You don't work in a job with real QC. Do some pharma work and then get back to me.

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

#670

Post by lyu07282 »

sham1 wrote: post #616
Ray20 wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but at some point you'd think people would learn instead of being mesmerized by the promise of slightly better treatment They have already learned, fortunately the entire 20th century was devoted to this. That is why any worker with even a little bit of brain and ability to learn perceives socialists as the main threat to his well-being.

Well given that you're the first in this subthread to even mention socialism, that lesson of the 20th century would probably ring true, yes. Although I must admit that talking about classes like that probably did help conjure that idea. Of course, it's not like one needs to be a Marxist or even any other sort of a socialist to see the whole "employers are screwing their employees", since I do doubt that many employee…

> fairly popular position even outside of traditionally leftist politics

Only leftist politics will actually be able to address the issues. Of course people will just mindlessly scream "sOcIaLiSm!" at anything and everyone, but it ultimately doesn't matter. We still have to be optimistic, once enough people have the vocabulary to think about their increasingly parlous circumstance, things will change in our direction inevitably.

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