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The rise of judgement over technical skill

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Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#21

Post by aleph_minus_one »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #16
monero-xmr wrote: post #9

Nothing stopped anyone from hiring 10 to 100 offshore devs for every American software dev for the last 20 years. Yet Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and so on paid top dollar for the Americans. And American business still pays top dollar. Even more than before. The judgement was always the problem. If the issue was bodies in seats the problem was already solved. The #1 cause of layoffs in America is offshoring caused by…

The thing that stopped people from hiring 10-100 offshore devs per American dev lead/architect was communication primarily, with quality floor being an additional factor. Plenty of American companies have "hired 10-100 offshore devs" per American lead/architect, but they call it a foreign office, they solve the communication problem by having on-site managers that can serve as proxies, and they solve the quality floo…

> they solve the communication problem by having on-site managers that can serve as proxies, and they solve the quality floor problem by having the office in countries where the locals have strong expertise.

I think this problem goes deeper: there exist lots of countries where people are strong in programming, but from my work experience, the whole "programming culture" (how to approach problems; how to structure the program; ...) differs quite a bit between countries. So, from other countries you can get great programs, but the style can differ quite a bit from what you are used to.

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#23

Post by westcoast49 »

Music was never an issue of skill. You might have needed skill in order to get to the point where you could use your judgement, but skill was never the deciding factor. So, I don't agree with Brian Eno's point that there has been some kind of seismic shift when it comes to this. Rather, it's just a matter of a shift in the type of skill that you need to have. The same is probably true when it comes to AI tools within the field of programming.

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#25

Post by drewhk »

12112521312 wrote: post #19
bravesoul2 wrote: post #5

Does the technical skill give you better judgement though? Can a masterchef make better Star Trek replicator meals?

Yes, really good pianist often compose music that is interesting, that other composers don't make ( e.g. Listz, Alkan ). In jazz, nothing can replace practicing your improv skills.

Also, judgement alone might not be enough. Judgement can take you to "something is off", but not necessarily further. I mix music as a hobby and it takes a good amount of practice to step up from recognizing the presence of a problem to actually know where and how to fix it. If you don't know where you should look, you just aimlessly try various things, and it is not unusual to make the problem worse.

Eventually you learn to properly recognize the problems, not just their presence, but their actual nature and implications. But this takes practice.

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#26

Post by ben30 »

gherkinnn wrote: post #18
ben30 wrote: post #6

This echoes my experience with Claude Code. The bottleneck isn't the code generation itself—it's two critical judgment tasks: 1. Problem decomposition: Taking a vague idea and breaking it down into well-defined, context-bounded issues that I can effectively communicate to the AI 2. Code review: Carefully evaluating the generated code to ensure it meets quality standards and integrates properly Both of these require d…

That matches my experience. Decomposing a problem so that it is solvable with ease is what I enjoy most about programming and I am fine with no longer having to write as much code myself, but resent having to review so much more. Now, how do we solve the problem of people blindly accepting what an LLM spat out based on a bad prompt. This applies universally [0] and is not a technological problem. 0 - https://www.thev…

Agreed on the review burden being frustrating. Two strategies I've found helpful for managing the cognitive load:

1. Tight issue scoping: Making sure each issue is narrowly defined so the resulting PRs are small and focused. Easier to reason about a 50-line change than a 500-line one.

2. Parallel PR workflow: Using git worktrees to have multiple small PRs open simultaneously against the same repo. This lets me break work into digestible chunks while maintaining momentum across different features.

The key insight is that smaller, well-bounded changes are exponentially easier to review thoroughly. When each PR has a single, clear purpose, it's much easier to catch issues and verify correctness.

Im finding these workflow practices help because they force me to engage meaningfully with each small piece rather than rubber-stamping large, complex changes.

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#27

Post by Animats »

Fr3dd1 wrote: post #10

Today, if someone uses LLMs for code generation, he/she will probably question the generated code and will put his own judgement above it. I am curious how fast that will change, especially for juniors. When will they start to question their own judgement and just go with the generated code becuase its "more safe"?

Probably when the generated code is, on average, better than human-generated code. Somewhere between 1 and 10 years out.

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#28

Post by physicsguy »

A similar debate has happened in education where people seem to think that having ability to critically analyse texts is more important than knowledge. and to some degree that’s true but personally I think that without building on some decent level of foundational level of knowledge and having a mental model of a subject, you can’t tackle thorny questions because you don’t have enough to draw upon as examples and counterpoints about how to proceed.

My current employer is currently going on a top down driven “one tech” mission and trying to rationalise the technology stacks across diverse product lines. Which is all fine but the judgement is a poor one because the biggest developer bottleneck that comes up in internal developer surveys is the corporate mandated IT things and a relatively hostile setup without even local admin rights, which make sense for general office workers and don’t make sense at all for software developers.

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#29

Post by simianwords »

MangoToupe wrote: post #11
monero-xmr wrote: post #9

Nothing stopped anyone from hiring 10 to 100 offshore devs for every American software dev for the last 20 years. Yet Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and so on paid top dollar for the Americans. And American business still pays top dollar. Even more than before. The judgement was always the problem. If the issue was bodies in seats the problem was already solved. The #1 cause of layoffs in America is offshoring caused by…

> Pop music is mostly not about music quality - hits are always passable - but about celebrity. Interesting and bold statement. How do you distinguish the two?

Empirically: by randomly asking N participants to rate pop music made by a celeb and by an indie band and observing if these participants were able to identify the celeb statistically.

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#30

Post by drewcoo »

westcoast49 wrote: post #23

Music was never an issue of skill. You might have needed skill in order to get to the point where you could use your judgement, but skill was never the deciding factor. So, I don't agree with Brian Eno's point that there has been some kind of seismic shift when it comes to this. Rather, it's just a matter of a shift in the type of skill that you need to have. The same is probably true when it comes to AI tools within…

Getting a seat in a symphony involves skill. Brian Eno didn't just do rock.
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