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

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

#221

Post by trumpdong »

t34t34r43 wrote: post #113
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…

Posting this under a burner so I don't dox myself: I work in FinTech on a regulated product. We have access to Mythos. Mythos identified part of our codebase that it confidently asserted was not complaint with a particular regulation and we were at grave risk by allowing it to operate the way it was. Except this was not the case, it had of course hallucinated what the regulation actually required (I know this because…

It was my impression that a whole lot of products are only pretending to be compliant, and that it's much more profitable to operate like that.

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

#223

Post by myfonj »

I think that the domain knowledge still matters: if for nothing else, then at least it can make the communication both with savvy AI tools and savvy humans more effective compared to "outsiders": acquired vocabulary, truly grokked concepts in the field of target expertise etc… -- that all seem like a huge competitive advantage over folks having to learn all that "on the go", constantly struggling to pick the right nomenclature or using wrong or vague terms. It's mostly that domain knowledge what makes experts understand problems faster or at all, even.

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

#225

Post by epolanski »

dakiol wrote: post #84
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…

> It's the expertise of engineers on the team that push it back on track. But how are you so sure your colleagues are not more "expert" than you? Prior LLMs there was room for very good engineers and mediocre engineers to work together in 99% of the companies out there. With LLMs, only the "best" engineers will survive, because nobody needs mediocre engineers anymore. This being HN, I imagine every engineer reading t…

Well almost 70% of the developers in the industry can't write a fizz buzz.

But, besides coding skills (which some possess), the engineering, social, and business ones are close to non existent.

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

#226

Post by snowe2010 »

Am I the only one that has noticed the massive increase in buggy software across almost every domain? Like, EVERYTHING has so many more bugs now. Things just break constantly. AI isn’t one shotting fixing bugs, it’s one shotting making hundreds of new ones every time it writes anything.

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

#227

Post by weatherlite »

skeledrew wrote: post #192

Yeah the writing is on the wall. Not just for knowledge work, but for jobs in general, as I've been saying in other comments. The era of wage labour, and this dominant economic system, is coming to an end. There's no way it can coexist with AI, but it also needs to continuously push for better AI, which means there's no stopping it. The only thing to do really is brace for the disruption - which will likely be pretty…

I agree but I think it would take awhile. Some of us here seem to believe 2026-2027 is the end of programming jobs. At least that's Amodei seemed to be saying but then changed his mind later on?

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

#228

Post by aogaili »

Software engineers with low self-esteem who built their entire identity as mechanical cognitive workers are having an identity crisis and spreading FUD.

Currently, LLMs are nothing more than amplification tools that require significant steering. If you think your job is mainly to take input from POs or managers, translate it into if/else statements and loops, and review PRs, then you never really understood your role. Software engineering—for those who went to university and studied it—is fundamentally about complexity management and cognitive automation. People in the field, or at least those with some math background who studied software engineering properly, understand that it's all about managing complexity; current tools are nowhere near replacing a software engineer. What they call "taste" is imagination, creativity, embodiment, a more intuitive understanding of context, and yes, superior intelligence compared to current AI. However, AI and LLMs are excellent at mechanical work and mimicking human intelligence, so use them for what they are, and stop whining.

Going forward, the world is ever-growing in complexity, and automation will become widespread everywhere. LLMs just unlocked another level. So basically, cognitive work will be automated—perhaps up to 90%—until the next breakthrough (if ever). You can sit and cry, or you can learn the tools and help shape the future.

Software engineers can automate the entire economy now, including the executives, yet they just sit there whining and crying. This is a self-esteem, confidence, and identity issue more than anything else.

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

#229

Post by hypfer »

gamegod wrote: post #213
hypfer wrote: post #203

This feels fake/engineered but regardless of that also redundant. It's the exact same story that we've heard countless times by now. Hosted on a blog with just a single post. Named in a way that suggests that said blog was created for this very single post. What is there to learn from this other than LLMs seem to be bad for some people's psyches and that AI companies need these very stories to not get their funding s…

It's 100% fake, and half the comments here are from 20 year olds working at AI companies.

I mean I kinda get that it sucks being a junior now, but otoh, it might also not?

It might be easier to adapt to this new tech when you're 19 compared to when you're 59.

But honestly, this discussion _also_ has happened ad-nauseam by now. Everything that was worth saying has been said. And then some.

People don't actually want to talk about LLMs. They want a hug. And that's fine, human and all.

But could you please just start asking for hugs instead of encoding that into vaguely profound sounding takes on AI? I'm tired of this play pretend.

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

#230

Post by rpicard »

trumpdong wrote: post #221
t34t34r43 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Posting this under a burner so I don't dox myself: I work in FinTech on a regulated product. We have access to Mythos. Mythos identified part of our codebase that it confidently asserted was not complaint with a particular regulation and we were at grave risk by allowing it to operate the way it was. Except this was not the case, it had of course hallucinated what the regulation actually required (I know this because…

It was my impression that a whole lot of products are only pretending to be compliant, and that it's much more profitable to operate like that.

In my experience this is not representative of most fintechs. Of course there are both cases of real intentional noncompliance, and accidental, but by and large it seems like everyone’s trying to innovate within the law.
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