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

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

#411

Post by solenoid0937 » Sun, Jun 07, 2026, 4:18 PM UTC

oceanplexian wrote: post #282

rvz wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%. Unfortunately those not in the depths of mission critical systems or regulated products will continue to believe that producing tons of code quickly using LLMs without humans in these systems is acceptable. Here's an example of what we will continue to see with folks fully immersed in gen AI psychosis: "The creator of claude code said that he no longer writes code for about 6 months and now has Claude doing all…

Why is it such a dramatic statement for Boris to claim that he no longer writes code? Are people on HN still typing out functions by hand one character at a time? It would be like a developer in 2020 claiming that he only writes assembly because compilers can’t be trusted. No one is taking that person seriously. If you chose a career in tech you made a decision to work in one of the fastest moving fields in human his…

It is because HN is contrarian and behind the times.

I work at a big tech company and I don't know a single person that still hand writes code. Most people haven't hand written code for at least half a year now.

I do wonder what sort of bug is making its rounds on HN that people here find this so shocking and unbelievable.

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

#412

Post by bobkb » Sun, Jun 07, 2026, 4:18 PM UTC

franze wrote: post #184

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…

what am i missing? you take a spec and create tests, every little thing you use another ai to verify these tests against the spec you review the tests vs the spec (at one point human review) you put the tests off limits to change / wall them. you let the ai write the software that fulfills the tests. there will be some gaps where you repeat the cycle above if the tests fulfill the spec, the code will fulfill the spec

It’s impossible to write a spec that’s not ambiguous , complete and correct in natural languages. Thus prompts will always generate unreliable software.

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

#413

Post by skeledrew » Sun, Jun 07, 2026, 4:18 PM UTC

weatherlite wrote: post #227

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?

Well given the pace of improvement so far, it's possible - though not given, IMO - that before 2028 we'll have models that make programming jobs fully obsolete. But that doesn't mean jobs will suddenly disappear; many places, especially in 3rd world countries, will continue to have humans programming for a while yet. Just that the available positions will slowly taper out over several more years, until only the most critical systems are maintained by a few humans, and programming - and other knowledge work - becomes purely hobby. Manual work will follow the same trajectory as AI also accelerates innovation in robotics.

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

#414

Post by Loic » Sun, Jun 07, 2026, 4:18 PM UTC

solenoid0937 wrote: post #399

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…

I use Opus 4.8 and GPT 5.5 and haven't suffered from hallucinations in months. But we also put a lot of effort into our harness.

Sometimes the harness can only be a human.

And this is fine. Developing new software with a really smart intern is the same, you, as an expert, need to bring your experience/expertise on the table to have everything right. Because experience needs time.

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

#415

Post by tpoacher » Sun, Jun 07, 2026, 4:19 PM UTC

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…

In some sense, you should still act on this, since if an external auditor relies on the same stack, it'll still cause you headaches.

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

#416

Post by jadbox » Sun, Jun 07, 2026, 4:19 PM UTC

odeono wrote: post #392

ericmcer wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dynamic of agent codes human reviews does seem like the only sane one for the foreseeable future. Even Anthropic themselves still fall back to this. The problem is that sucks, even if all software engineers keep their jobs and salaries, the floor is still pulled out from under us. Imagine if a surgeons job was to supervise robot surgeons from a remote computer, or a woodworker just signs off on work before the ma…

"Soul and humanity" is doing a lot of work here. Does the woodworker who shape using a handsaw use less "soul" than the one who uses a machine? Does the musician who use a DAW and VSTs instead of analogue tape recorders create music with less "soul"? Does the painter who buys acryllic paint instead of synthesizing their own dye from plants use less "soul"? As technological innovation progresses, the barrier to creati…

Not _my_ opinion, but I just wanted to share that many people (in the Midwest) do believe that anything synthetic that it not readily made from simple materials has "less soul". It's a sorta test of "if I dropped you off in the jungle, can you still produce works of soul? Or are you just another cog in the machine.".

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

#417

Post by fzeroracer » Sun, Jun 07, 2026, 4:19 PM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #347

mariopt wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the core issue is not AI itself, it's people. Right now non-tech people just think AI will do anything they want and are the one in charge of hiring/firing, managing, etc. It's horrible to be a software dev right now, you've to deal with AI and lunatics. Of course Domain Knowledge is important but, right now it's very hard to have reasonable conversation because... you know... AI this, AI that. I had a custom…

There's no point debating people who are in a blind mania. Sometimes it's better to just keep your head down and focus on what you can control while "mistakes are made". You will be infinitely more appreciated once they acknowledge that help is needed.

Sadly while I agree with this attitude, from experience they will ever get to the point of acknowledging help is needed. Eventually they'll find a way to blame the workers again to justify laying them off and double downing on doing things the stupid way.

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

#418

Post by PeterStuer » Sun, Jun 07, 2026, 4:21 PM UTC

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…

I have worked on highly regulated areas in finance (risk). Compliance is a highly creative art, often requiring lots of out-of-the-box thinking and non-obvious solutions. The people I found worst at this were IT. They tend to over-interpret regulation, and super-restrict beyond what is needed for actual de-facto compliance.

My guess is the model makes the same mistakes as the programmers: taking 'rules' literally, unaware of sectoral joint understanding, validated interpretations and habits. (btw. this is often on the non-tech side also a difference between regulatory and legal. The former are much more result oriented while the latter are primarily risk averse.

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

#419

Post by gedy » Sun, Jun 07, 2026, 4:21 PM UTC

GuB-42 wrote: post #333

hmokiguess wrote: post #259

I always remember of the infamous Steve Jobs quote "Ideas are cheap". If execution is everything, and frontier LLMs solve execution, then ideas are the gateway to abundance now, but abundance alone does not guarantee "stickiness". What I think is often overlooked is the human "Willingness" and "Care" of staying with the thing for the lack of a better term. What I mean by that is that a lot of people just don't care e…

> Suno, the AI Music thing. I don't know if y'all have tried it, but it now produces really good stuff I played with it a bit, and no, it doesn't! And I am talking as someone with limited music culture, musicians are likely to be even more critical. For the first few tries, it sounds impressive and the tunes are catchy. It used to sound wrong in the background but they mostly (but not completely) fixed that. However,…

> But as always, further working on it proved extremely difficult, as it always tried to go back to making generic stuff, ignoring the details you give it.

It's like any LLM, it's not a tool for if you know exactly what you want with all these knobs and fine grained controls.

> The most interesting result I had was actually when I managed to get it off rails, a bug more or less. I asked it to mix two very different genres together, and it made something unsettling in a way I don't remember hearing before.

I don't think that's a bug or unexpected, it's what AI is good for. I do these (very) old Blues covers of modern songs and it's terrific at that sort of conversion thing.

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

#420

Post by odeono » Sun, Jun 07, 2026, 4:21 PM UTC

torben-friis wrote: post #56

My career path is suprisingly similar to the author's. Weirdly enough, what he takes as the first pillar to fall is the one I see most undamaged currently. LLMs routinely fail at our business specifics: Local tax regulations, particularities of the accounting process, specifics of our ledger implementations. They're great at refactoring, translating between languages, tracing bugs on existing code even, but there is…

This. Once you're building something that genuinely hasn't been built before, LLMs cannot be trusted with any architectural decisions. I'm building a product based around various physics simulations, so it's purely first principles, but without active research, thinking, and challenging, it produces computational code literally hundreds of orders of magnitude slower WHILE implementing absurd fallbacks and shortcuts that effectively result in a useless calculation.

This is the case perhaps 95% of the time.

Oversight is very important, and architectural thinking cannot yet be outsourced, only execution.