Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do

human-in-the-loop.bearblog.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 1001 posts

Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do

#61

Post by mrkeen »

Hamuko wrote: post #45
jalev wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately every software related industry is embracing LLM/Codegen. Your banks, fintechs, insurance. Everyone. Your concerns are the same I'm having, yet it's regularly dismissed or hand-waved away as "don't worry about it the delivery velocity/ROI is worth it"

Are banks that concerned about velocity? Because moving fast and breaking things in the banking sector can get extremely expensive. It's also not a who-gives-a-shit industry like operating a taxi service or hosting images, but a very tightly regulated sector.

'Keeping up with regulations' may as well be a separate field from the core stuff. It has the same pressures as any other development effort. Managers will want the integration to the KYC service LLM'd as quickly as possible.

Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do

#62

Post by simon84 »

jalev wrote: post #41
iandanforth wrote: post #18

Wut? I pilot LLMs all day but there's no way in hell I'd agree to be at the helm of a finance product. That first pillar is still there. Maybe the author isn't aware of the impact they have, but I know, with the evidence of reverted PRs, that when I step outside my area of deep knowledge I can no longer call BS on the agents. Our most capable agent, with access to the same kind of distributed systems the author talks…

Unfortunately every software related industry is embracing LLM/Codegen. Your banks, fintechs, insurance. Everyone. Your concerns are the same I'm having, yet it's regularly dismissed or hand-waved away as "don't worry about it the delivery velocity/ROI is worth it"

It's not so much about velocity or quality, both of which LLM do (or will) provide.

The real question is about accountability and liability.

When a major data leak is going to happen, who will they sue or fire ? That is the value engineers provide. They understand, confirm, and take ownership.

Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do

#63

Post by smetj »

> I'm just another off-the-shelf engineer now

You're wrong there. You are capable of judging the outcome of the llm.

> But I don't know what to think about the long-term.

Don't you think it all has taken long enough. When I look back at the beginning of my career and compare what we do now ... I cannot shake the feeling we're essentially still solving he same problems and we have accepted that as being normal. Complexity skyrocketed, (abstraction) layers got added but the needle didn't move exponentially together with that. I think the IT industry as a whole gets what it deserves, thinking that we would remain the maze masters of the mazes we create.

> Maybe I should consider transforming my woodworking hobby into a profession...

I'm looking for 8 (affordable) oak panel doors with the exact same measurements as my current doors so I can replace them. That shouldn't be too hard to find you'd think right?

Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do

#64

Post by dgan »

dominotw wrote: post #51
keyle wrote: post #34

I sympathise with the author being in the same boat, largely. I just want to emphasise a point... Calculators give 100% correct answers and yet we still hire accountants; for the simple fact that we don't want all to be accountants. People will hire software engineers for the simple fact that they do not want to be software engineers.

funny i was able to do all my taxes this year with ai help and not needing accountant.

Lol thats brave on your part, given that a mistake can cost thousands and you have no accountability (punch!) from an LLM

Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do

#65

Post by bigthymer »

Hamuko wrote: post #45
jalev wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately every software related industry is embracing LLM/Codegen. Your banks, fintechs, insurance. Everyone. Your concerns are the same I'm having, yet it's regularly dismissed or hand-waved away as "don't worry about it the delivery velocity/ROI is worth it"

Are banks that concerned about velocity? Because moving fast and breaking things in the banking sector can get extremely expensive. It's also not a who-gives-a-shit industry like operating a taxi service or hosting images, but a very tightly regulated sector.

> Are banks that concerned about velocity?

Yes

Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do

#66

Post by dukeofdoom »

So instead of a programmer, you become a software designer. I recently came across the idea of building fantasy for the player (in context of games), but now that I think more about it. Onlyfans, is just that. Advertising, Beauty products, novels, games, TV shows, and so on. You're really just creating / selling a fantasy for vast majority of people. Most people will never lose that 30 lbs, but you can sell them all kinds of products to fuel the fantasy of them losing that weight, being beautiful, rich, healthy and so on. So an LLM replacing the need for you to write every piece of code, is actually kind of freeing. You as a a former programmer, should embrace your new creative role. Writing code, at least for me was always slow and tedious. I just want to be able to express the ideas I have, so LLMs just make it possible to build things I never could otherwise.

Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do

#67

Post by senectus1 »

snarfy wrote: post #19

The direction I'm given is to take humans out of the loop. As much as possible. Everything AI. Automate everything. If you are in the loop you are overhead.

this is the exact WRONG approach. AI is a power tool not a fucking human replacement.

Though I doubt I'm telling you anything YOU didnt know...

Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do

#68

Post by dmos62 »

What work remains valuable when implementation becomes cheap? How about moving closer to ownership?

I think that in a product-centric or mission-centric perspective, effective automation is good, because it frees you up to do other important things. E.g., in gardening, time spent weeding, is time not spent surviving slug armageddon.

Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do

#70

Post by misswaterfairy »

jmyeet wrote: post #44
cassianoleal wrote: post #15

> The company is now hiring again for a few roles and domain familiarity is not a strong differentiator anymore. We used to list "Software Engineer - Area". Now it's just "Software Engineer" and the team assignment comes after the offer is accepted. > Of course, this is good for brilliant engineers that never had the chance to get deep into the domain and now have better chances at getting a job, but it's also sad to…

That's an extraordinarily rosy view of the future. I'm old enough to remember the dot-com crash, specifically the years afterwards. In 2002-2003, the unemployment rate of software engineers was something like 40%. In fact, the only reason it wasn't higher was because of the number of people who had permanently left the field to become plumbers (or other trades). I think this is going to be worse. In the dot-com crash…

> I think people are being naive here thinking this can't or won't happen in tech.

What would this future look like? Software developer salaries burrowing into the ground?

Post reply on HN