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Jobs and Software Is Fucked

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Re: Jobs and Software Is Fucked

#251

Post by jazzyjackson »

Ralo wrote: post #241
AngryData wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrenching is a better than the average trade, but you will accumulate damage in your hands and shoulders from it. The vibration of impact guns do considerable damage to your hands over a decade or two of work along with the tight squeezing of tools. Thick padded hand grips might be a good idea even if impact guns don't feel like it hurts right now. Heavy wrenching can do a number on shoulders too but shoulder sockets…

Absolutely. It's not perfect but safety is in your control, and all up to you. I accept the trade off, as the alternative is going back to linkedin and begging for a job all day. This is why I try to hoard all my money. I don't want to do this when I'm 50. I've always thought about doing this for 10-15 years and then building a semi and doing some owner operator long haul trucking. I could easily fix anything on the…

Besides, sitting in a chair all day isn’t great for your body either

Re: Jobs and Software Is Fucked

#252

Post by h4kunamata »

YuechenLi wrote: post #133

The industry will realize that while getting LLMs to write code is easy, getting LLMs to write good, production ready code is a skill all on its own, which simply must be done by a human and is not automatable to an LLM in any sense effectively. That will be the differentiating factor software engineering in the future, I think. If I'm being blunt, if you are in the game industry, you probably have nothing to worry a…

>The industry will realize that while getting LLMs to write code is easy, getting LLMs to write good, production ready code is a skill all on its own, which simply must be done by a human and is not automatable to an LLM in any sense effectively. That will be the differentiating factor software engineering in the future, I think.

Not many people understand that, including some reply to your comment.

AI loves to do enshitification, it adds code that is not required at all, broken logic, sure it might work but it might not be best practice.

People forget that AI as it exists atm isn't Artifical Inteligence but machine learning, it is as good as the model it was trained on. If the model is good, that agentic will be good, if the model is bad, the agentic will be so so.

Companies are making that same mistake.

I wrote a skill for Claude to talk with a MCP server using API, it uses far less token, ~700 instead of ~2k tokens to perform the same task so cheaper and a lot faster too, seconds instead of minutes.

Which again, goes back to what I said, an agentic AI is only as good as the model it was trained on, vibe coding without adding vulnerabilities is a whole another level.

Re: Jobs and Software Is Fucked

#253

Post by linzhangrun »

dogwalker5000 wrote: post #205
Ralo wrote: post #85

After 5+ years of actively trying to get into the field (pre AI), I left. I threw my degree in the toilet, I closed my linkedin, and I went to go work in the trades as a diesel mechanic. Greatest choice I've ever made. The pay is great, the work is steady, the coworkers are relaxed and not trying to one up each other. I'm now being paid to go to school, and get raises every year until I'm fully ticketed (way more tha…

Until AI comes for your mechanics job too, https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intell... I feel we are getting the worse of “both worlds”. Fiction has sold AI in the form of Data from Star Trek. A robot with perfect recall of information over a wide range of topics and flawless reasoning. Today’s AI is nothing like Data with its hallucinations but are taking jobs anyway because it’s “good enough” fo…

That kind of work needs robots in the loop. There is very little training data, most of it is private or opaque, and a lot of the know-how was never written down. It should hold out at least 20 years longer than programming, where basically the whole job happens inside the computer, and where the best references, examples, and source code are public to a degree unimaginable in most other industries.

Re: Jobs and Software Is Fucked

#255

Post by h4kunamata »

semiquaver wrote: post #31

> I've seen people supposedly smarter than I advocate for just giving in, conceding to AI coding as it's the future. But doing so means tossing out my friends who make art or the people who work their asses off to properly test and review code or the writers pouring all of their energy into even mundane dialogue. It means throwing out my dignity Conflating things in this inflammatory way is a big mistake. Using a tec…

As a gamer, if a game has mention of AI in any way or form, that equals to slope.

And it is always the case, bugs, broken arts, you name it, so no, I disagree with you and agree with OP.

By using AI for gaming development, you are taking away job from real people to replace it with AI slope.

Re: Jobs and Software Is Fucked

#256

Post by em-bee »

lylejantzi3rd wrote: post #232
em-bee wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

most of those who might hire someone because they don't know how to do it are now using AI instead. so that market is shrinking too.

That market is growing because of AI. Everybody I've seen use AI gets to a certain point where it breaks and they don't know how to fix it. They have a choice to make, then: ditch it and pay for real software that works, or pay somebody to fix it. Hopefully, they've used that AI generated software to create enough cash flow to afford somebody to fix it.

everyone talking about this topic (me included) assumes that this is the case. i have yet to find anyone who is actually hiring people to fix problems the AI created. so far the solution to AI problems seems to be more AI.

Re: Jobs and Software Is Fucked

#257

Post by bb88 »

Ralo wrote: post #241
AngryData wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrenching is a better than the average trade, but you will accumulate damage in your hands and shoulders from it. The vibration of impact guns do considerable damage to your hands over a decade or two of work along with the tight squeezing of tools. Thick padded hand grips might be a good idea even if impact guns don't feel like it hurts right now. Heavy wrenching can do a number on shoulders too but shoulder sockets…

Absolutely. It's not perfect but safety is in your control, and all up to you. I accept the trade off, as the alternative is going back to linkedin and begging for a job all day. This is why I try to hoard all my money. I don't want to do this when I'm 50. I've always thought about doing this for 10-15 years and then building a semi and doing some owner operator long haul trucking. I could easily fix anything on the…

Have you thought of opening your own truck repair shop? Often there are places where trucks break down and the solutions are slim to None. A good repair shop in the right place might make decent money.

Re: Jobs and Software Is Fucked

#258

Post by h4kunamata »

tern wrote: post #7

Curious about the perspective from anyone who has a skill set / reputation where finding jobs is easy right now. I imagine people in ML or who've found a good way to demonstrate prowess with agentic systems may be highly in demand right now(?)

>Curious about the perspective from anyone who has a skill set / reputation where finding jobs is easy right now.

There is no such thing as easy right now!!

Engineers with years of experience are being dismissed from interviews, and they are solid candidates. I speak with recruiters since I am looking for job atm and it is a horror movie atm.

Companies literally have no idea what they want, they lost the touch with reality. There was a twitter post from a developer who released a tool being used left and right, then a role AD asking for more years of experience for that tool than the tool exists.

You need a miracle right now to find a job, also, you need to know the recruiter who knows the hiring manager to get you in.

Nothing is easy anymore, and won't be anytime soon although the AI bubble started to pop and companies are waking up to the huge mistake they made.

Re: Jobs and Software Is Fucked

#259

Post by sublinear »

hintymad wrote: post #234
Ralo wrote: post #85

After 5+ years of actively trying to get into the field (pre AI), I left. I threw my degree in the toilet, I closed my linkedin, and I went to go work in the trades as a diesel mechanic. Greatest choice I've ever made. The pay is great, the work is steady, the coworkers are relaxed and not trying to one up each other. I'm now being paid to go to school, and get raises every year until I'm fully ticketed (way more tha…

> I'm now being paid to go to school, and get raises every year until I'm fully ticketed (way more than I ever made in the entry tech positions). This. People tend to underestimate the joy that steady progress brings. A quick peak usually just leads to a long, depressing decline. Many people would rather take a career that grows a few percent every year for four decades over one that spikes and crashes any day. It’s…

> Many people would rather take a career that grows a few percent every year for four decades

That's exactly what the corporate IT world has always been once you leave SV.

Paying about 10M/yr for a team of 50 people makes perfect sense. It doesn't really make a dent in payroll to keep daily operations going while their people get paid competitively to work from home in an affordable suburb.

In this world, AI is not a threat. It just auto-transcribes meeting notes and sucks at code review. There's very little to delegate to AI because everyone is maintaining services that have to stay in prod for years if not decades. You wouldn't replace them in the same way you wouldn't replace your lawyers and accountants.

Re: Jobs and Software Is Fucked

#260

Post by bb88 »

Ralo wrote: post #233
IshKebab wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm unconvinced that car mechanic pay is anywhere near programming but either way I'd say you have a pretty select and valuable skill set if you know cars and computers, given how computerised modern cars are.

Maybe 10 years ago. Now you have to fight 300 other applicants for an entry position that pays $50k in NYC. The biggest thing for me that pushed me over the edge was thinking, how will I get a mortgage? All this applying, 100s of applications, even if I land a job it's not stable. Maybe it pays more, but I'll be laid off in a year or 2. Then back to 100s of applications while my mortgage is ticking away. I have a fri…

Honestly, I think the biggest enjoyment I got from this thread is that programming culture is often toxic in ways that people aren't really ready to admit on this site which is dedicated to computers and programming.

I can hear them now: "Surely, you can't be happy with your decision, Mr. Ralo. You're leaving so much money on the table!"

And you're saying calmly: "Yes, yes I am."

Best of luck to you and your efforts.

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