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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

#481

Post by [deleted] »

kypro wrote: post #86
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.

Also, it's not necessarily true that there will be other great careers available. This seems to just be an assumption people are making. Of course, there are jobs that will still require human labour for some time yet, but in reality a lot jobs that require physical human labour are now done in other parts of the world where labour is cheaper. Those which cannot be exported like plumbing or waitressing only have limi…

[deleted]

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#482

Post by npodbielski »

pear01 wrote: post #440
ecocentrik wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The capacity of the person prompting it to understand is the threshold they won't cross. They can squeeze the gap as much as possible by dumbing down answers or slowly ramping up information complexity but there is a limit to comprehension.

This is an interesting answer for questions about human agency and accountability/personhood questions but I don't see how it leads to increased confidence in the role of human as SWE. If LLMs get good enough, one might be tempted to ask so what if most humans can't understand the output? Human civilization has by and large been a constant exercise in us collectively accomplishing more and more while individually com…

Do you really want to live in a world when nobody understand software that manages nuclear power plant? Or medical devices? Or financial software? Or radio transceivers firmware? Even something so boring like databases not understood could lead to disastrous effects if this would be the government database for managing people IDS. Hmm even if this would be working fine for years what would happen if bad actor would influence models to generate code if security issues? If nobody can comprehend the output how anybody would be able to think about the danger? This is even more grim then this https://www.citriniresearch.com/p/2028gic

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#483

Post by tuesdaynight »

giobox wrote: post #36

Anecdotally, it feels like something materially changed in the US software hiring market at the start of this year to me. It feels like more and more businesses are taking a wait and see approach to avoid over-investing in human capital in the next few years. It also feels like the hiring "signal", which was always weak before, is just completely gone now, when every job you do advertise receives over 500 LLM written…

Anecdotally as well, but I believe that US companies are hiring in big waves in India and other developing markets. I know people who went from zero contacts to daily messages from big tech recruiters in these countries. I've seen people saying that is the result of that specific US section that expired last year, but I'm a layman, so I don't have the knowledge to debate the reasons.

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#485

Post by borzi »

mbgerring wrote: post #455

I don’t understand why so many people are convinced that “this time is different.” New tools raise the ceiling of what’s possible. New jobs emerge at the limit of what’s possible with new tools. The jobs doing what we do today will disappear. New jobs with greater complexity and specialization will emerge. I have watched this happen in the software industry in my lifetime. I expect that it will continue to happen.

It's not different. If you haven't already, read "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds".

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#486

Post by Mezzie »

kypro wrote: post #86
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.

Also, it's not necessarily true that there will be other great careers available. This seems to just be an assumption people are making. Of course, there are jobs that will still require human labour for some time yet, but in reality a lot jobs that require physical human labour are now done in other parts of the world where labour is cheaper. Those which cannot be exported like plumbing or waitressing only have limi…

> Are we all going to be really well paid cleaners or something?

I work for a corporation that includes cleaning brands and I've got bad news...

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#487

Post by arcboii92 »

roncesvalles wrote: post #419
ecocentrik wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glib is called for. The amount of information asymmetry that's still on the table as vibe coders and vibe engineers and vibe doctors emerge is staggering. Professional experience is still incredibly valuable. Most software developers might spend more than 6% of their time coding but no senior developers are banging their heads for hours over typos. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xBilK3gT5e0

These days nobody bangs their heads over typos. LLMs evaporated 90% of the "moments of despair" when you have an error and googling it isn't helping, or googling it made you realize you have to read 30min of documentation. Coding is a joy now. LLMs shaved off all the rough edges.

LLMs moved the moments of despair to PR reviews for me. It used to be that you could check on a junior dev occassionally throughout the day to make sure they're on the right track. Now you step away for 2 hours and they're raising a PR of bad code smell spaghetti and moving on to repeat their AI slopfest on the next task.

It's getting hard to keep up with trying to teach new devs what bad code looks like. And I swear sometimes they just copy my PR comments into their AI tool to fix the mistakes without any of the learning.

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#488

Post by radiator »

ahartmetz wrote: post #62
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.

The second part seems obvious to me: the ones who are getting retrained. If it's some kind of formal education, depending where you are, maybe the state at least for part of it. Education in what, though? No idea. And if there was one answer, and it's true that there will be fewer software developers, you'd likely be competing with many people for few jobs.

Start with the basics, perhaps? Languages, Mathematics, Geography, Economy, History.

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#489

Post by pear01 »

npodbielski wrote: post #482
pear01 wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an interesting answer for questions about human agency and accountability/personhood questions but I don't see how it leads to increased confidence in the role of human as SWE. If LLMs get good enough, one might be tempted to ask so what if most humans can't understand the output? Human civilization has by and large been a constant exercise in us collectively accomplishing more and more while individually com…

Do you really want to live in a world when nobody understand software that manages nuclear power plant? Or medical devices? Or financial software? Or radio transceivers firmware? Even something so boring like databases not understood could lead to disastrous effects if this would be the government database for managing people IDS. Hmm even if this would be working fine for years what would happen if bad actor would i…

We live in a world with nuclear weapons. Somehow we all cope and get up every morning. I think you are missing the point - the world is already grim. It always has been. What about human affairs say in the last century alone makes you think human oversight is some panacea? The impetus for civilization was not some innate desire for financial systems or medicine. It was not having other humans murder you. The Leviathan is already here.

The article you shared has little to do with this. Questions of how to divide up gains technology creates are a separate question from that of the technology itself. Tbh I found what you shared so boring I could barely finish it. I already in this thread made an exhortation to support politicans who commit to erasing inequality. The idea that LLMs can only exist with inequality is nonsensical. The only thing grim about what you shared is the lack of political imagination. It's boring.

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#490

Post by malfist »

Animats wrote: post #448
malfist wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no shortcut to understanding. No one can understand things for you

They can make it unnecessary for you to understand. Consider hash tables. Nobody implements a hash table by hand any more. I've written some, but not in this century. Optimal hash table design is a specialist subject. Do you know about robin hood algorithms? Changing the random number generator's seed to discourage collision attacks? A basic hash table starts to slow down around 70% full. Modern hash tables can get a…

That's obviously not what I'm talking about. If you're asking an AI to write an optimal hash table algorithm, something is clearly wrong. I'm talking specifically about understanding the business domain and problem you are trying to solve.
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