Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career
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Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career
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Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career
#2> The career of a pro athlete has a maximum lifespan of around fifteen years. You have the opportunity to make a lot of money until around your mid-thirties, at which point your body just can’t keep up with it.
If you believe this about your software career, how do you think your going to switch into another career as a junior and keep up?
Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career
#3Are people seriously thinking that you can make yourself dumber by using a chat UI?
If talking to an AI makes me dumber and a limited career, then all the customer support people that ever existed were in the same or worse position talking to dumb humans on chat all day answering tickets always about the same topics and linking the same docs over and over. This makes no sense.
Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career
#4The differentiator is augmenting reasoning with AI versus replacing reasoning with AI. But those who choose to replace their reasoning with AI probably weren't good at it to begin with; cause if they were, they'd choose to not replace it. Exception is that AI can actually replace reasoning (which it can't, yet) - then it's game over with a career in software engineering anyway.
Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career
#5> The career of a pro athlete has a maximum lifespan of around fifteen years. You have the opportunity to make a lot of money until around your mid-thirties, at which point your body just can’t keep up with it. If you believe this about your software career, how do you think your going to switch into another career as a junior and keep up?
Easy, I made the switch in my 30s, now I manage software engineers :)
Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career
#6It will be for those fixing AI slop software. (In fact, they might need several lifetimes.)
Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career
#7Are people seriously thinking that you can make yourself dumber by using a chat UI? If talking to an AI makes me dumber and a limited career, then all the customer support people that ever existed were in the same or worse position talking to dumb humans on chat all day answering tickets always about the same topics and linking the same docs over and over. This makes no sense.
I think you need to read the studies linked in the footnotes. This is a well-studied issued.
Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career
#8Are people seriously thinking that you can make yourself dumber by using a chat UI? If talking to an AI makes me dumber and a limited career, then all the customer support people that ever existed were in the same or worse position talking to dumb humans on chat all day answering tickets always about the same topics and linking the same docs over and over. This makes no sense.
You're misrepresenting the potential problem. It's more along the lines of using AI stops you exercising the cognitive processes you would doing things yourself and those encompass skills, knowledge and brain function that can atrophy. For an extreme example you can look at cognitive decline in the elderly which can be mitigated by taking part in activities that are cognitively stimulating.
Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career
#9Was it ever? It's always seemed weird to me that people even think 'software engineering' is a career.
It's a tool for knowledge work.
No carpenter is a specialist in drills.
It seems to me that the best way to navigate a long term career is to have another specialty and use software engineering as a tool within that specialty.
Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career
#10Are people seriously thinking that you can make yourself dumber by using a chat UI? If talking to an AI makes me dumber and a limited career, then all the customer support people that ever existed were in the same or worse position talking to dumb humans on chat all day answering tickets always about the same topics and linking the same docs over and over. This makes no sense.
Pretty much every study says so, so I guess?