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Understanding is the new bottleneck

geoffreylitt.com

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Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#131

Post by taneq »

361994752 wrote: post #117
madrox wrote: post #82

I think it funny how much average engineers are beginning to discover the challenges of engineering leadership and program management. This has always been the bottleneck. It's why managers and PMs want to be in standup. It's why slack exists and engineers are constantly being poked on it. It's why execs always talk about not getting too far away from the work. It's how seagull management happens. It's why program ma…

I’ve worked on both sides, so I know they’re actually very different. As a manager, the first thing you do is get to know your people. Some of them will be very strong and trustworthy. You give them the hardest work, and you ask them the least. That’s how you scale your team’s scope without getting overburdened. And that’s why teams have key people. But when you work with LLMs, you still need to understand most of th…

You’re still responsible for what you and the team ship if the team is human. Trusting your people just means you’re willing to take the fall if they mess up.

Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#132

Post by throwaway27448 »

intrasight wrote: post #126
epistasis wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until an AI does that, it won't be able to pass a Turing test.

So many people I know believe that AI has already passed the Turing test. What's weird is that a lot of them are managers and should understand that never getting an "I don't know" means something ain't right.

There is no single or standard turing test. You could say it's been continually passing more of them over the decades.

These days, I find it difficult to believe there's a human who couldn't be fooled with the right prompt.

Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#133

Post by leptons »

johnfn wrote: post #106
madrox wrote: post #82

I think it funny how much average engineers are beginning to discover the challenges of engineering leadership and program management. This has always been the bottleneck. It's why managers and PMs want to be in standup. It's why slack exists and engineers are constantly being poked on it. It's why execs always talk about not getting too far away from the work. It's how seagull management happens. It's why program ma…

I remember when I raised this point like a year or two ago -- in response to someone saying that coding AI made all their work trivial I said something like "if you have multiple agents the work changes and becomes more managerial - don't you think that managers contribute value" and I got a bunch of downvotes and all the responses were like "no manager has ever contributed value." Ahh, good times.

"Managers" don't contribute much if any value. Someone with creative vision contributes value. That cam be a PM, or the right engineer, and sometimes both if you're lucky. Most of us aren't lucky like that.

Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#134

Post by 361994752 »

taneq wrote: post #131
361994752 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve worked on both sides, so I know they’re actually very different. As a manager, the first thing you do is get to know your people. Some of them will be very strong and trustworthy. You give them the hardest work, and you ask them the least. That’s how you scale your team’s scope without getting overburdened. And that’s why teams have key people. But when you work with LLMs, you still need to understand most of th…

You’re still responsible for what you and the team ship if the team is human. Trusting your people just means you’re willing to take the fall if they mess up.

Yes. That is what trust means. And being able to trust the right folks makes a good manager.

Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#135

Post by maxnevermind »

a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #36

Understanding was always the bottleneck. The way LLMs speed up your work is by letting you get code without taking the time to understand it. If you want to understand your code, LLMs are a net loss. If you want to move faster with LLMs, you need to act like a manager and stop caring about what the LLM did. You just need to do the manual testing and make sure it works.

> If you want to move faster with LLMs, you need to act like a manager and stop caring about what the LLM did. You just need to do the manual testing and make sure it works.

Are you aware of any mid-large projects that went that path? That sound like an irreversible one way decision, codebase will be not suitable for humans pretty soon after which means from now one you at the mercy of LLMs.

Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#137

Post by leptons »

alecbz wrote: post #16
dylan604 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are these generated descriptions of LLM submitted changes or of human changes? If a human, shouldn't they be putting the motivation into the PR?

LLM-generated (or at least LLM-assisted), but a human's still the one submitting the PR for review.

>but a human's still the one submitting the PR for review

Where I work, the LLM writes the ticket and does all the coding. As soon as the LLM feels like it's done, it automatically submits and reviews the PR itself. The humans blindly click "approve" without reading the PR. And when the required number of humans have blindly clicked approve, a human blindly presses another button that merges the code. All the text in the ticket, the code, the PR and review is far too voluminous and verbose to easily read, so nobody does. These humans didn't start out as vibe coders, they used to be engineers.

How do you think this will work out for us?

Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#138

Post by maxnevermind »

MinimalAction wrote: post #91

I am surprised by the title and the story. Understanding has always been the bottleneck; there is nothing new about it. The argument goes like we humans should understand so we can verify and participate. How bold! Maybe we should have been doing that all along...?

Given it is from "AI Engineer conference" that is expected, it is like TED talks of LLMs.

Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#139

Post by nunez »

Sorry but actually what.

Flash cards? Games with micro worlds? To understand ones own codebase???

We figured this out 10, 20, 30 years ago. Small, atomic commits. Small PRs. Lots of manually written tests. Documentation, ideally with the PR.

There is no "understanding" 60k loc highlander PRs. That's an entire feature.

We had it so good once.

Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#140

Post by trial3 »

leptons wrote: post #133
johnfn wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when I raised this point like a year or two ago -- in response to someone saying that coding AI made all their work trivial I said something like "if you have multiple agents the work changes and becomes more managerial - don't you think that managers contribute value" and I got a bunch of downvotes and all the responses were like "no manager has ever contributed value." Ahh, good times.

"Managers" don't contribute much if any value. Someone with creative vision contributes value. That cam be a PM, or the right engineer, and sometimes both if you're lucky. Most of us aren't lucky like that.

i can’t believe you’re True Scotsmaning all of the people who you have reported to
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