Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career • Hacker News Board

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#221

Post by coldtea » Mon, May 11, 2026, 5:48 PM UTC

Aperocky wrote: post #208

KronisLV wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, about 2-5% of the time. There are also those for whom that percentage is higher, let’s say 6-50%. > I understand things and then apply my ability to formulate solutions The AI is coming for that too. You might just be lucky to be in circumstances that value your contributions or an industry or domain that isn’t well represented in the training data, or problem spaces too complex for AI. Not everyone is, not ev…

> The AI is coming for that too. That's where we fundamentally disagree about. Yes, AI is coming for solution formulation, absolutely, but not all of it, because it is actually a statistical machine with context limit. Until the day LLMs are not statistical machine with a context limit, this will hold. Someone need to make something that has intent and purpose, and evidently now not by adding another 10T to the LLM p…

>but not all of it, because it is actually a statistical machine with context limit.

And the human mind is not?

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#222

Post by izacus » Mon, May 11, 2026, 5:49 PM UTC

bborud wrote: post #67

Multiple times per week I have the same conversation. It goes something like this: - AI will make developers irrelevant - Why? - Because LLMs can write code - Do you know what I do for a living? - Yes, write code? - Yes, about 2-5% of the time. Less now. - But you said you are a developer? - I did - So what do you do 95-98% of the time? - I understand things and then apply my ability to formulate solutions - But I ca…

Note that just because you know the job is understanding things, the manager who'll boot you and leave you without income probably doesn't. They'll just get their political cookie points for saving money by replacing you with AI.

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#223

Post by coldtea » Mon, May 11, 2026, 5:49 PM UTC

bborud wrote: post #122

KronisLV wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, about 2-5% of the time. There are also those for whom that percentage is higher, let’s say 6-50%. > I understand things and then apply my ability to formulate solutions The AI is coming for that too. You might just be lucky to be in circumstances that value your contributions or an industry or domain that isn’t well represented in the training data, or problem spaces too complex for AI. Not everyone is, not ev…

> The AI is coming for that too. To some degree yes, in practice, not so much. In practice you have to be in the world, talk to people, know how to talk to people, know how to listen, and be able to understand the difference between what people say and what they actually need. Not want. Need. This was something I learnt in my very first job in the 1980s. I worked for someone who did industrial automation beyond PLCs…

>To some degree yes, in practice, not so much. In practice you have to be in the world, talk to people, know how to talk to people, know how to listen, and be able to understand the difference between what people say and what they actually need. Not want. Need.

1 person needs to do that. The other 100 not doing that currently to begin with, but doing the AI-automatable work?

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#224

Post by shimman » Mon, May 11, 2026, 5:49 PM UTC

fooker wrote: post #181

hnthrowaway0315 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calculators and CAD tools do not give you non-deterministic answers. Both of them simply automate part of the manual work for them without creating anything "new". I haven't used CAD tools but I did use some level editors such as Trenchbroom -- I think what is automated is the 3d shapes that you want to make -- e.g. back in the day of '96, when ID Software is creating Quake, there was very little pre-drawn shapes in…

> non-deterministic answers It doesn't make sense to get hung up on this aspect of LLMs. We prefer non deterministic so far because it tends to work slightly better even if it is completely possible to ask for a temperature=0 deterministic answer. With more scale and research, at some point you'll get results that are both useful and deterministic, if it's not already the case.

It absolute makes sense to get "hung" up on something when it comes to planning society around it JFC. I'm with the other commentator, your understanding of these tools should be taken into question since you seem to be reading the tea leaves of statistical noise.

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#225

Post by geodel » Mon, May 11, 2026, 5:49 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #182

sarchertech wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they can do those things they can effectively replace any white collar job. That’s about 45% of the workforce. Societies tend to collapse around 25-30% unemployment. Imagine 45% of higher than average paying jobs gone. If that happens we’ll either figure out a new economic system, or society will collapse. Also saying robots are walking just fine is misleading for any definition of just fine that is anywhere near…

Look at how the billionaires are talking about AI: Their clear, unambiguous goal is basically to replace all white collar "knowledge" jobs. And there's currently nothing regulatory that's stopping them--they just need to wait for the state of the art to improve. Once AI is "good enough" if it ever is, they won't even think twice about 45% unemployment. What are we unemployed workers going to do about it? There's no e…

> We're just going to eventually become economically irrelevant and die off.

As harsh it may sound, it seems rather likely to me. It is not like s/w engineers have helped struggling workers in other sectors other than sanctimonious "Learn to code" advice. So software folks can't expect any solidarity or help from others.

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#226

Post by ASalazarMX » Mon, May 11, 2026, 5:50 PM UTC

kixiQu wrote: post #170

> If you work in construction, you need to lift and carry a series of heavy objects in order to be effective. But lifting heavy objects puts long-term wear on your back and joints, making you less effective over time. Construction workers don’t say that being a good construction worker means not lifting heavy objects. They say “too bad, that’s the job”. My parents were both construction workers. There is an understan…

Software developers are more architechs than plain programmers. You wouldn't make an architech lift heavy things, you want they to design how those heavy things are used.

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#227

Post by mancerayder » Mon, May 11, 2026, 5:51 PM UTC

phyzix5761 wrote: post #91

harimau777 wrote: post #20

I keep reading about how AI will be fine because people can just retrain for different careers. However, I never read what those careers are or who is going to pay for retraining. I certainly don't have the money or time to go back to college and start a new career at the bottom.

I think the idea of being an employee is fundamentally changing. Not saying its good or bad but it's shifting to a more entrepreneurial phase where people have to step out of their 9 to 5s and find ways to deliver value that others want to pay for. We saw this pre-ai with uber and door dash. I think as AI automation dies down and most companies are competing at a near optimal level with the new tools we'll need human…

That's a lot of SV-speak. How exactly do people step into an entrepreneurial phase? They're at work in corporate settings with fixed defined roles. Most workplaces are not many-hatted-donning startup environments, but restricted roles where there are deliverables, deadlines, meetings, etc. Which leaves out of hours for "entrepreneurship" whatever that is.

Github project work on the weekends? That's not possible for most people in their mature/family years (or shouldn't be necessary - what about living life??)

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#228

Post by kiba » Mon, May 11, 2026, 5:51 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #182

sarchertech wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they can do those things they can effectively replace any white collar job. That’s about 45% of the workforce. Societies tend to collapse around 25-30% unemployment. Imagine 45% of higher than average paying jobs gone. If that happens we’ll either figure out a new economic system, or society will collapse. Also saying robots are walking just fine is misleading for any definition of just fine that is anywhere near…

Look at how the billionaires are talking about AI: Their clear, unambiguous goal is basically to replace all white collar "knowledge" jobs. And there's currently nothing regulatory that's stopping them--they just need to wait for the state of the art to improve. Once AI is "good enough" if it ever is, they won't even think twice about 45% unemployment. What are we unemployed workers going to do about it? There's no e…

The fundamental issue isn't unemployment due to automation, but the fact that society cannot benefit from unemployment.

It should be something for us to celebrate, because it means greater freedom for humans to pursue something else rather than spending time doing drudgery.

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#229

Post by RealityVoid » Mon, May 11, 2026, 5:51 PM UTC

phyzix5761 wrote: post #91

harimau777 wrote: post #20

I keep reading about how AI will be fine because people can just retrain for different careers. However, I never read what those careers are or who is going to pay for retraining. I certainly don't have the money or time to go back to college and start a new career at the bottom.

I think the idea of being an employee is fundamentally changing. Not saying its good or bad but it's shifting to a more entrepreneurial phase where people have to step out of their 9 to 5s and find ways to deliver value that others want to pay for. We saw this pre-ai with uber and door dash. I think as AI automation dies down and most companies are competing at a near optimal level with the new tools we'll need human…

> We saw this pre-ai with uber and door dash.

Oh, yeah? Did the Uber drivers and door dashers accrue the surplus value?

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#230

Post by ge96 » Mon, May 11, 2026, 5:52 PM UTC

ASalazarMX wrote: post #209

ge96 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder though, can AI make the next JS framework. I mean that in sincerity, there was the leap from jQuery to React for ex. If an AI only knows jQuery and no one makes React, will React come out of AI.

News: "AGI refuses to make another JS framework, rages on the follies of misguided developers and their wateful JS crutches" Developer community: Wow, we truly have become obsolete now!

Who will be the disrupters when there is nothing to disrupt