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The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

techtrenches.dev

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Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#91

Post by Tade0 »

whycombinetor wrote: post #8

>I read the Fogbank story and recognized it immediately. Not the nuclear material. The pattern. Build capability over decades. Find a cheaper substitute. Let the human pipeline atrophy. Enjoy the savings. Then watch it all collapse when a crisis demands what you optimized away. >In defense, the substitute was the peace dividend. In software, it’s AI. Before it was AI, the cheaper alternative was remote contract dev t…

Not sure why that was ever the plan, as there are clearly not enough people.

Also over here, east of 15°E we were fired all the same.

I believe the plan is to quite simply "do less overall unless it's about AI", but everyone was waiting for others to start layoffs first.

I spent six months working part time and the decision makers made it clear that this is preferable for them long term. Beats getting fired, but I couldn't sustain this lifestyle - I'm frugal but not that frugal.

Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#92

Post by zelphirkalt »

jdw64 wrote: post #17

The real issue, in my view, is not AI itself. The problem is a management pattern: removing people and organizational slack because they don’t generate immediate profit, and then expecting the knowledge to still be there when it’s needed. Short-term cost cutting leads to less junior hiring, and removes the slack that experienced engineers need in order to teach. As a result, tacit knowledge stops being transferred. W…

And the next level of this is, that even companies that realize this, mostly go ahead acting like this anyway, because they think someone else can train the juniors. Some other company will appear to do that, but nimby! Over time the lack of good judgement will lead to a decline in their products' quality, which will be difficult to recover from.

Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#93

Post by sofixa »

cladopa wrote: post #52

People are not perfect. I went to Ukraine just days before the invasion. Travel and Hotels in Kiev had become extremely cheap. You asked the Ukrainians about the possible invasion. "Not going to happen" everybody said."Russia talks always aggressively, but never does anything". They did not properly prepare and as a result lost 20% of its territory in days. Days after that I was back is Austria and could not stop thi…

> They did not properly prepare and as a result lost 20% of its territory in days.

They did though. While nobody actually believed Putin would be dumb enough, the Ukrainian army was still, just in case, extremely busy on preparing defences, organising stockpiles, preparing defensive tactics.

Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#94

Post by 8954789543547 »

roenxi wrote: post #51
collinfunk wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You see zero similarities between Hitler invading Poland and Putin invading Ukraine?

There are some pretty substantial differences. Russia is on the strategic back foot here trying to figure out a way to stop NATO's advance. They've only turned to violence after long attempts at resolving the tension diplomatically and the US has been implacable. Putin's actually been pretty hesitant in his escalations so far; he's 70 and has a long history of trying to avoid war. Hitler was more about wanting more l…

[flagged]

Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#95

Post by neonstatic »

simondotau wrote: post #86
Animats wrote: post #13

> They can’t tell you what the AI got wrong. AI code generators are trolls. They confidently plausible content which is partly wrong. Then humans try to find their errors. This is not fun. It has no flow.

I beg to differ, insofar as my own experience has been the exact opposite. I enjoy fixing other people's mistakes. And I especially enjoy outsmarting the LLMs. I find that I can obsessively breathe down the neck of an LLM for far longer than I could ever stay in the traditional flow state.

Perhaps you have the psychological make up to thrive in this new environment. Glad it is working for you.

Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#96

Post by wiseowise »

wg0 wrote: post #10

>The combination of technical skill and the judgment to know when the AI is wrong barely exists in the market anymore. I see a talent pipeline collapse in next 5 years. "Software engineering is over coding is a solved problem" as being chanted by semi literate media and the AI grifter's marketing departments would further scare away the allocation of human capital to software engineering easily commanding 3x rise in…

First it was “learn to code” and bazillion videos of TikTok schmucks showing off slacking at work, now everything is solved. The puzzle is complete.

Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#97

Post by vasco »

cladopa wrote: post #52

People are not perfect. I went to Ukraine just days before the invasion. Travel and Hotels in Kiev had become extremely cheap. You asked the Ukrainians about the possible invasion. "Not going to happen" everybody said."Russia talks always aggressively, but never does anything". They did not properly prepare and as a result lost 20% of its territory in days. Days after that I was back is Austria and could not stop thi…

> Since that I have also been in Dubai and Saudi Arabia as an entrepreneur and engineer.

Why would we listen to anything related to right or wrong from you then if you don't care?

Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#98

Post by jrflowers »

brrraaah wrote: post #76
stingraycharles wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A claim that fits every possible observation equally well isn’t an explanation. What does it help you predict, when everything falls under that label? How does it help you predict behavior of different institutions?

Given a sufficiently long timeline all predictions breakdown (see prior comment on attenuation and entropy and Nostradamus) And on shorter timescales you aren't really predicting anything of consequence. You're just assuring all that effort trying to predict Apple's next move (for example) keeps Apple itself alive in the public debate whether they do the thing or not; they'll have missteps but our 24/7 fetishizing of…

> just distracts us from our own lives and boosting the lives of the mega rich

So you’re saying we are being distracted from boosting the lives of the mega rich, which we should get back to doing

Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#99

Post by neonstatic »

whycombinetor wrote: post #8

>I read the Fogbank story and recognized it immediately. Not the nuclear material. The pattern. Build capability over decades. Find a cheaper substitute. Let the human pipeline atrophy. Enjoy the savings. Then watch it all collapse when a crisis demands what you optimized away. >In defense, the substitute was the peace dividend. In software, it’s AI. Before it was AI, the cheaper alternative was remote contract dev t…

It had to be H1B Indians and outsourcing to India. As a European, I have seen some "Eastern European devs" around, sure. But they were not present at every company I worked with. Indians were. Quality-wise, it was always the same story, but I'm not going to elaborate. Everyone who is ready to accept it, knows what I would be saying anyway.

Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#100

Post by rotis »

roenxi wrote: post #30

> Leadership qualities. Our last hiring round tells you how rare that is: 2,253 candidates, 2,069 disqualified, 4 hired. A 0.18% conversion rate. It's minor but this is just wrong. If you're going to hire 4 candidates, there could be 2,253 perfectly qualified candidates even if only 0.18% get hired. The conversion rate is meaningless; it just tells us how many jobs were on offer. There is no way that the skills this…

He writes 2,253 candidates and 2,069 were disqualified. 184 were qualified, so 1 in 12 was considered competent.
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