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AI is making junior devs useless

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Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#281

Post by orangecoffee »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #246
bluefirebrand wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has been a much higher demand for software developers over the past 10-15 years than there are people who are obsessed with computers and programming If you look at the general topic shift on HN over the years it's obvious most people are getting into tech because they want power and money, not for love of tech

> If you look at the general topic shift on HN over the years it's obvious most people are getting into tech because they want power and money, not for love of tech I think that is a bit presumptuous, even if there is a hint of truth there. Just because a kid didn't grow up around computers and programming shouldn't exclude them from the tech path or mark them as imposters/pretenders.

It does not exclude. But the expectation of larger money has to go. They're literally competing with 100 dollars a month.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#282

Post by qball »

nostrademons wrote: post #130
BobbyJo wrote: post #45

Junior devs have always been useless. You used to give them tasks that take them a week or two even though a senior engineer could do it in a couple hours, not because you wanted them to contribute, but because you wanted them to learn to contribute. The same ethos makes sense with AI, it's just that every company is trying to avoid paying that training tax. Why turn a junior into a senior yourself if you can get the…

It's interesting that the same dynamic is playing out on a much larger scale with children. A child is far more helpless than a junior engineer - at least a junior engineer can feed themselves, wipe their own butt, avoid destroying the room, and generally keep themselves alive. Everybody wants to offload the cost of raising children to parents, because the economic benefits aren't realized for 25+ years yet the costs…

>Prospective parents are saying "fuck that shit" and simply choosing not to have children.

Or in other words, they've been priced out of the market.

If there will be no sociofinancial niche for their children to inhabit this is in fact the rational course of action. See also: South Korean current birth rates.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#283

Post by fooker »

The use of junior devs is to slowly evolve into senior devs, managers, and founders.

We were just pretending otherwise, now it is explicit.

I bet the number of successful junior devs is going to keep going up while the number of people coasting slowly tends to zero.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#284

Post by fdgg »

sunir wrote: post #57
BobbyJo wrote: post #45

Junior devs have always been useless. You used to give them tasks that take them a week or two even though a senior engineer could do it in a couple hours, not because you wanted them to contribute, but because you wanted them to learn to contribute. The same ethos makes sense with AI, it's just that every company is trying to avoid paying that training tax. Why turn a junior into a senior yourself if you can get the…

Agreed. We are still in a capital crunch so overhiring is out of fashion. People don’t remember the early 90s or the dot.bust when the same things were said. Kraft 1977 Programmers and Managers talked about this if I recall. Still the best alternate take on our industry I have ever read.

The most likely explanation for "AI layoffs" is not that AI has caused a dramatic jump in productivity - its more that managers are running out of creativity in relation to revenue-generating and cost-reducing projects and henceforth have no use for the surplus of labour. Its much easier to maximize the stock price in the short-term by riding the 'AI' wave.

There seems to be some nonsensical belief that there exists this endless stream of positive NPV projects to take. No... reality is not like that.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#285

Post by move-on-by »

sotix wrote: post #274

AI has made senior engineers useless to me. I have purposefully asked senior engineers specific questions to get their insight on a matter only to have them tell me, "here's what our internal AI tool said". This has occurred countless times. I find that staff and principal engineers have remained extraordinarily valuable as teachers. Our junior devs have been exceptional and are eager to learn. Our seniors have becom…

I’ve seen this too, but mostly with the ‘team lead’ seniors- the ones interested in the management track.

On the other hand, a SE2 was asking me for help with something that was way off track from what they should have been doing. This isn’t a new SE2, but someone who seems the have topped out as an SE2. Anyways, they were not understanding anything I was pointing them towards, so I got frustrated and just gave them the exact prompt to feed into their AI. The AI fixed it for them. They were amazed by the result, but should have been horrified by their uselessness instead.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#286

Post by fdgg »

pluc wrote: post #26

I can't wait until the AI people realize that without developers' original ideas, AI has nothing new to steal from. We don't create, AI will spit out the same old concepts. What, you're gonna create the next generation of AI by training it on what the very same AI has already produced? C'mon now. You don't get technical creativity reflexes by using AI. This is technical stagnation in the making. By cannibalizing its…

Hey man is there a private space where thinkers like you hang? Would like to join :)

I wrote a similar post in this thread.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#287

Post by skydhash »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #275
skydhash wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one reason I can't care about these kind of arguments is that you're describing the solution, not the problem. Based on my career (maybe shorter than yours), usually you put juniors on projects of low complexity and low impact while you play the mentor role. It's not about them being a productive worker or a menial helper, it's for them to train using practical projects. Your problems don't look like suitable pro…

First let’s define roles. I am not just pulling them out of thin air. https://www.levels.fyi/blog/swe-level-framework.html Junior - everything is spelled out in excruciating detail, the what and the how. They are going to be slow, not know best practices, constantly bug other developers and you srs going to have to correct them a lot. Mid level developer - little ambiguity on the business case or their role in it. Th…

From the article

  As an Entry Level Engineer, you’ll be expected to develop and maintain lower complexity components under the guidance and tutelage of more experienced team members.
That does not really contradict my point.

> If I have to define everything in great detail anyway, why not just use AI?

You don't have to define everything. And to do so is detrimental to their growth. If you're their mentor, you're supposed to give them problems, not recipes. And guidance may be as little as an hint or pointing them to some resource, not giving them the solution outright. The goal is not to get a problem solved (that's just a nice-to have), the goal is to nuture a future colleague.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#288

Post by fdgg »

skeledrew wrote: post #101
somenameforme wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this can be falsified by just considering the history of humanity. It wasn't that long ago that human language literally did not even exist. And our collective knowledge wasn't all that much more than 'poke him with the pointy end'. Somehow we went from that to putting a man on the Moon, unlocking the secrets of the atom, and more. And if you consider how awful we are at retaining/sharing information and just…

All that humanity has achieved happened due to the simple loop of identifying a desire/need and finding a way to satisfy it. Also known as reinforcement learning. The only thing that really differentiates humans from machines is... history. We've been learning and passing on our knowledge to successive generations over millennia. Nothing really special there; give the machines a few years to learn and see what happen…

What a ridiculous take lmao.

What are your contributions again?

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#289

Post by fdgg »

rhubarbtree wrote: post #256

I don’t know if this is related, but the standards of CS university courses in the UK are objectively way below what they were 25 years ago. You can compare two syllabuses from the same course and the difference is shocking. It may be AI has raised the bar, but also that junior devs out of uni are just much worse than they used to be.

Youre not wrong.

Theres been a lot stuff going in the UK that goes back to high-school level stuff. Grade inflation etc.

Its a disaster.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#290

Post by skeledrew »

freejazz wrote: post #164
skeledrew wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All that humanity has achieved happened due to the simple loop of identifying a desire/need and finding a way to satisfy it. Also known as reinforcement learning. The only thing that really differentiates humans from machines is... history. We've been learning and passing on our knowledge to successive generations over millennia. Nothing really special there; give the machines a few years to learn and see what happen…

What needs do machines have? What desires do they have?

None, yet. But you can be 100% sure it's something we'll eventually succeed in adding, as it's through the guidance of desires and needs that intelligence really expresses.
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