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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

#611

Post by mschuster91 »

Verdex wrote: post #445
mschuster91 wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Overall society feels more turbulent, but this is otherwise all the same song and dance all over again. The thing is... everything you mentioned had only brought the need to retrain. This new hotness AI? It's bringing actual layoffs, and not just of the boom bust cycle kind, but permanent, industrial-revolution kind that lasts for decades.

It is? Covid overhiring, no more 0% interest rates, that one accounting change, and companies needing a "growth" sounding way to announce layoffs. Maybe that's bringing actual layoffs in the name of AI?

> Covid overhiring, no more 0% interest rates, that one accounting change, and companies needing a "growth" sounding way to announce layoffs.

That is only compounding the problem, because with each year, IT still gets a truckload of new bootcamp or "academia" graduates that hit the pool of the unemployed.

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

#612

Post by pantafive »

dasil003 wrote: post #283

It's odd to me how quickly the author devalues their own experience just because AI can do certain things well. There's a huge chasm between what AI can do when prompted by an expert software engineer vs a non-technical person. Sure the models and the tooling will get better, but it still needs to be driven by someone with an intuition for how software works and able to dig in when necessary to unpack and correct the…

[flagged]

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

#613

Post by newaccountman2 »

monegator wrote: post #461
GuB-42 wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

re: SUNO i actually was discussing that with a guy i met the other day, an old school producer, did succesful stuff 30 years ago. He used SUNO to reinterpret old and ideas of his, in his judgement it did an excellent job and lets him create many songs daily if he want. Sounds familliar? the good old "let AI be steered by experienced X and boost productivity". All in all, gun to the head, i think i am so critical beca…

I think the general local models are better than you are giving them credit for--I have heard/read good things, at least.

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

#614

Post by mschuster91 »

goodrun wrote: post #201
xyzal wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which other profession has the same amount of training data freely available for the taking?

Don't need much training data for bank/insurance/retail analyst work - it's just basic reasoning and data retrieval. If AI could crack the programming nut - one of the most intellectually challenging professions - it can handle the rest with ease. The only human role will be high level monitoring - and even this will be largely automated so fewer will be required.

> Don't need much training data for bank/insurance/retail analyst work - it's just basic reasoning and data retrieval.

For insurances... there's a reason why the three bullets of the plumber's brother were labelled "delay, deny and depose". You don't need a grunt to compose a denial order. Just let AI default-deny everything, most people won't have the energy left to battle the system or they'll die anyway before the claim finally sees an independent judge.

And as long as insurances aren't severely punished for denying claims that are found out to be valid later on, this dynamic will just continue as-is.

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

#615

Post by DaSHacka »

vor_ wrote: post #601
ilaksh wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3 years max. Maybe 5 if you are lucky.The models will continue to improve. The exponential gains in compute efficiency that have been ongoing for 70+ years will continue and that will result in even smarter models. There are dramatic hardware changes in the pipeline. But really that particular issue could have been solved by literally just telling it in a markdown file or instructions something like "verify all facts…

> 3 years max. Maybe 5 if you are lucky.The models will continue to improve. The exponential gains in compute efficiency that have been ongoing for 70+ years will continue and that will result in even smarter models. There are dramatic hardware changes in the pipeline. I remember hearing that 10 years ago about self-driving.

"Just 2 more weeks guys, and AI will be able to do everything!"

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

#616

Post by raducu »

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…

> is regularly wrong, frequently myopic, and just outright dumb constantly.

I give LLMs snippets of text messages exchanges with my wife and I can't believe how dumb the LLMs are of getting basic facts right let alone nuance.

I'm 100% not one those "LLMs are just stochastic parrots" people, but coding and coding-like activities are extraordinarily well fit for LLMs, but for things that there's less training data, LLMs probably do a lot worse

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

#617

Post by george_max »

I see many comments saying, "AI can't do X with 80-100% accuracy; therefore our professions are in good hands."

While I don't want to sound overly pessimistic, the models are improving at a rapid rate. If asked ~3 years ago where the state of the models are today, it would sound like sci-fi if answered, "the models are creating full MVP apps in ~30 minutes with one prompt".

The hurdles the models are facing now, like reducing hallucination rates, ensuring compliance, and keeping a clean codebase, do not seem far away from being resolved IMO. Fetching specific information is already partially done with various MCP servers / RAG.

I am, of course, a bit worried about the future of software engineers. If these quirks are resolved, where do their professions fit in the industry? Delegating tasks to the AI model? Unfortunately, this does not require years of expertise, which is a double-edged sword. Reviewing AI's output? Ask it to explain each line not understood.

I think we will see more waves of larger layoffs, similar to how human computers were replaced by digital computers. To some, doing complex mathematical calculations mentally is a fun task / challenge, but it is ultimately significantly slower and more error-prone than calculating with a computer. In the same way, I think hand-crafting code will be seen as a fun "challenge" and AI will be seen as the "modern-day calculator".

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

#618

Post by lowbloodsugar »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #376
trumpdong wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've worked in fintech for 30 years. I've never seen a product that was intentionally "only pretending to be compliant" with laws. I've seen accidental non-compliance. I've seen what I would call negligent compliance, where a company attempted to be compliant but didn't meet full, correct compliance (one example I've seen is that a company assigned resources to compliance and forgot to increase resources as workload…

Never seen one or never worked at one? Because gestures broadly

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

#619

Post by Reason077 »

> ”If you don't steer them, they'll hit a circular dependency issue sooner than you think. Will duplicate code. Add unnecessary comments. Mix up pure functions and side-effects. Disregard the principles of SOLID.”

This is one thing I worry about with AI-driven development on large projects. Every time someone comes along to add a feature it’s likely to lead to wheel-reinvention: dropping in a new bunch of AI-generated code rather than specialising, refining, and reusing some existing code. As the years go by this is going to lead to complex, hugely bloated code bases that are only maintainable by AI tools…

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

#620

Post by oblio »

vor_ wrote: post #601
ilaksh wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3 years max. Maybe 5 if you are lucky.The models will continue to improve. The exponential gains in compute efficiency that have been ongoing for 70+ years will continue and that will result in even smarter models. There are dramatic hardware changes in the pipeline. But really that particular issue could have been solved by literally just telling it in a markdown file or instructions something like "verify all facts…

> 3 years max. Maybe 5 if you are lucky.The models will continue to improve. The exponential gains in compute efficiency that have been ongoing for 70+ years will continue and that will result in even smarter models. There are dramatic hardware changes in the pipeline. I remember hearing that 10 years ago about self-driving.

60 years ago about flying cars, 40 years ago about cold fusion, the list is long.

We need a lot more basic research into LLMs and also a lot cheaper hardware.

The current batch of LLMs will turn a lot of fields upside down, but not to the tune of $3tn or whatever crazy amounts are being invested right now.

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