Jobs have always been a bad deal, especially for most people. Very unfair. Less unfair is entrepreneurship. LLMs (VLMs) etc. should make that more feasible for a broader range of people.
LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do
481–490 of 1001 posts
Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do
#482[flagged]
Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do
#483Software 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…
It doesn't matter to your boss. He will still fire you and replace you with a slop machine. Then you will not be able to get a job again and you will have low self-esteem.
That is limited thinking. People are replacing their bosses, and your boss will be bossing what exactly? Right now LLMs cant' replace the entire spectrum of human intelligence. But if your entire work is just translating your boss ask to for-loops & if-statements, the I guess yes, I would be worried.
Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do
#484I 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…
I guess we have very different ideas around what makes good music. Every single Suno produced song sounds like a 60kbps extremely compressed mp3 while also having extremely generic, uninspiring structures and complete lack of interesting sonic/instrumental layers.
It's great that people find joy in it, but as someone that is critical of both music production and fidelity, the current offerings fall incredibly short of anything I would ever want to listen to.
Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do
#485Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do
#486Software 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…
It doesn't matter to your boss. He will still fire you and replace you with a slop machine. Then you will not be able to get a job again and you will have low self-esteem.
If you really think those layoffs are due to AI, then you haven't worked in corporations long enough. If companies are not hiring, and are firing, then what do we need middle managers for? In fact, if an engineer is really smart and masters the tools, what do you need POs, managers, executives, and even sales for? If you stretch things to the max, those who master the tools are positioned to automate everyone aside from the capitalist, as they are protected legally
Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do
#487Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Domain knowledge can be learnt much quicker than how to apply good engineering principles. There was an entire thread a week ago about how domain expertise has always been the real moat: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48340411
And I'd still question it. The experience of just… knowing how a good architecture looks like without being able to really put it in words is what makes a good engineer to me. These people can pick up relevant regulations or industry terms and deliver value quickly enough.
[dead]
Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do
#488Earlier quoted context omitted.
The corporations and executives are already winning if you swallowed the concept of 'rockstar' engineer. Sure there are more and less experienced engineers, but even interns can and often do provide good input and spot mistakes made by seniors. The 'rockstar' engineer at most tech companies simply equates to the somewhat autistic guy with a brown nose who's working 15 hour days for a pat on the head from management (…
For the most part there aren’t 10x engineers But there are certainly 0.1x engineers
and -10x
Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do
#489If corporations really thought LLMs were a great cost-savings tool, then the obvious target for replacement are not the lower-paid staff, but the higher-paid staff - the ‘product managers and stakeholders’. That justifies token burn, replacing the 7- and 8-figure people, right? But that’s not the real goal, is it? The goal is to inflate the stock value, take the cream off the top, and dump the whole business on the p…
I agree, we are still waiting to see the billion dollar valuation startup that fully vibe-coded their product
Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do
#490I don't know how else to say this but LLMs are just word calculators. They are becoming better for sure but at this point even Claude 4.8 is absolute shit at any complex task in a not so common field. I have been working on terrain contour matching algorithms for the last few days and, oh boy are the predictions about AI taking over the world wrong. Its the highest level of bullshit I have ever come across in my life. I ended up writing 100% of the actual algorithm myself. It's a productivity mess.