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AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

blog.florianherrengt.com

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Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#931

Post by sleepycat801 »

ElProlactin wrote: post #590
jselysianeagle wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like what other profession markets themselves as "Hey, our job is so easy that any schmuck off the street can enter the career with 4 months of training." For one, the industry never did professionalize to begin with, certainly not in the way accountants, lawyers etc did. We never had any real body that could certify proficiency, which is what contributed to companies having to resort to leetcode and other such sty…

> For one, the industry never did professionalize to begin with, certainly not in the way accountants, lawyers etc did. "Professionalize" is an interesting way to frame this. As Milton Friedman argued, occupational licensure is almost always pursued by the practitioners rather than consumers. The licensing boards are mostly run by practicing lawyers and CPAs, so you have practicing lawyers and CPAs determining who ca…

Companies don't care about proficiency, the only qualities which matter are ambition, presentation, flexibility, and marketability. Customers and investors buy a good story, not a functional product.

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#932

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

Valakas_ wrote: post #778
eshack94 wrote: post #230

This blog post illustrates the importance of NEVER outsourcing your critical thinking or outsourcing decision-making to an LLM. And to never take shortcuts with learning. Learning is hard, but learning things properly allows you to understand what is happening and allows you to ask the right questions about whether the changes an agent wants to make are the changes that will best serve the goals of the project (witho…

"This blog post illustrates the importance of NEVER outsourcing your critical thinking or outsourcing decision-making to an LLM." This is a sentence that if written just 5 years ago would result in you being seen as crazy. "LLM capable of any sort of critical thinking? Haha. Not in 50 years." It never ceases to amaze me how people are stuck in the here in the now and just accept the new reality as if it had always be…

"This is the worst LLMs will ever be." does not logically preclude "This is the best LLMs will ever be." Telling people to count their chickens before they've hatched is the hallmark of the swindler.

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#933

Post by tombert »

WalterBright wrote: post #912
tombert wrote: post #763

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have given dozens of interviews at big companies and small companies and medium companies so I am not speaking out of my ass. These leetcode tests are not good filters, nothing is “surprising” me. Generally they are just wanky bullshit from some middle manager’s slightly-incorrect recollection of their first “data structures and algorithms” class, and the solution is almost invariably “use a hashmap” or “use a minh…

I haven't heard of any interview method that wasn't roundly condemned on HN. > the solution is almost invariably “use a hashmap” or “use a minheap” And you wouldn't be wasting your time on candidates who: 1. don't know what a hashmap or minheap is 2. didn't bother to study up before the interview

> I haven't heard of any interview method that wasn't roundly condemned on HN.

Sure, but none have been more thoroughly condemned (and correctly) than the idiotic leetcode whiteboard challenges.

> And you wouldn't be wasting your time on candidates who: 1. don't know what a hashmap or minheap is 2. didn't bother to study up before the interview

OR, and hear me out, you actively filter out people who know how stupid these problems are and know that big-O is misleading for a lot of these problems. You're selection-biasing towards people who are going to regurgitate bad answers, and the middle manager conducting the interviews is usually too incompetent to understand what a "constant factor" is.

I've been rejected for jobs specifically because I mention that using a hashmap for these things will likely be slower than a naive implementation, even when the I get the problem "right" in the way that they wanted it.

Now we could argue that I'm a bad candidate in general, but (at the risk of sounding cocky) I likely do understand data structures and algorithms better than most mediocre engineers conducting the interview, but because most engineers are pretty uninspired and have never asked "why" for anything in their lives, they will "correct" me. They will assume that me providing nuance is a lack of understanding on my end.

> A quick check shows that Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, Meta, Apple, Anthropic all do leetcode testing.

Yep, can confirm. I've worked at a FAANG, and they did indeed leetcode testing for the interview. It turns out that big corporations are fully capable of doing stupid things in perpetuity.

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#934

Post by edukite »

Manfrednotfunny wrote: post #810
edukite wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I don't think this will be a lot better. Newest Claude is barely better, same with the rest of the model. In the same time cost of training new models and running them is increasing so taking this in the account I don't think this'll even last 5y

Tokens get cheaper and smarter every day. This alone will lead to being able to run a fable class claude model 24/7 and potentially running something like this in parallel multiply times over.

Really? From what I see everyone are raising prices and even if tokens price is dropping price of running LLM is raising. LLM is highly subsidized and will never be cheaper than human

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#935

Post by Animats »

unified101 wrote: post #779
Animats wrote: post #730

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I'm getting at was covered in an article yesterday about the end of abstraction. There's an argument being made for layer-free software, where everything is one big blob of code, created and understood only by an LLM. The software is modified only by re-prompting. There are a lot of people edging around this concept, but it's not solid yet.

Can you point to any place/post making this argument? I'm an active lurker here, and have not seen anyone arguing for layer-free/blob-of-code type of workflow. The fact that some teams find themselves there is simply a realization of what I stated - inactive maintainership by not taking code reviews seriously.

I saw that go by on YC two days ago, and it scrolled off fast enough I can't find it. They were talking specifically about AI tools, as in avoiding harnesses and letting the LLM do more of the job.

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#936

Post by zzrrt »

WalterBright wrote: post #923
rightbyte wrote: post #782

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such recruiting selects for KPI hunters. It is probably bad for an org to select for people that game it rather than doing "what is right". A dice throw and some chitchat would be better recruiting.

These arguments all sound familiar to the "high stakes testing" debate about the SATs. The tests were unfair, did not measure college readiness, could be gamed, etc. Then universities dropped the SAT requirements. Even MIT was suckered into dropping them. It was a disaster. It turns out the SATs were a very strong predictor of college success. MIT and others reinstated the SATs.

Ways SAT is more reasonable than typical leetcode interview:

  - you can take it ~3 times and most colleges will give you the best score without penalty
  - you can use your result to apply as many times as you want
  - if you feel stuck you can still get a good score by moving on to the other problems
  - it's administered uniformly across the world
  - you don't need to narrate your thinking while you're still processing information
  - you get an objective score instead of a pass/fail that may be subjective

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#937

Post by WalterBright »

zzrrt wrote: post #936
WalterBright wrote: post #923

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These arguments all sound familiar to the "high stakes testing" debate about the SATs. The tests were unfair, did not measure college readiness, could be gamed, etc. Then universities dropped the SAT requirements. Even MIT was suckered into dropping them. It was a disaster. It turns out the SATs were a very strong predictor of college success. MIT and others reinstated the SATs.

Ways SAT is more reasonable than typical leetcode interview: - you can take it ~3 times and most colleges will give you the best score without penalty - you can use your result to apply as many times as you want - if you feel stuck you can still get a good score by moving on to the other problems - it's administered uniformly across the world - you don't need to narrate your thinking while you're still processing inf…

All true, but still the arguments presented here sound the same as the arguments against SATs and "high stakes testing". I checked a bunch of major software companies, and all of them used leetcode as a screening device. (Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, Meta, Apple, Anthropic)

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#938

Post by prima-facie »

> "Didn't you build this like... last week?"

This captures the essence of AI generated work Vs your own work. AI generated work just doesn't seem to persist in my memory.

If I design the application model myself then I can play around with it in my head even when I'm not at my desk. I know it inside-out.

If the LLM generated it then I very likely forget it the minute I stepped out of the office.

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#939

Post by ychnd »

rayiner wrote: post #151

Technology has been doing this for decades. I think a lot of our "K shaped economy" discourse is about the bifurcation of the upper middle class creating downwardly mobile educated young people. Nobody in my wife's immediate family finished college. She and all of her cousins are quite indisputably better off than their parents. My father in law drove a forklift at a soup factory. My sister in law is studying to be a…

I think you agree with Marx ;)

> The petite bourgeoise sink[s] gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialized skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production.

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#940

Post by WalterBright »

tombert wrote: post #933
WalterBright wrote: post #912

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't heard of any interview method that wasn't roundly condemned on HN. > the solution is almost invariably “use a hashmap” or “use a minheap” And you wouldn't be wasting your time on candidates who: 1. don't know what a hashmap or minheap is 2. didn't bother to study up before the interview

> I haven't heard of any interview method that wasn't roundly condemned on HN. Sure, but none have been more thoroughly condemned (and correctly) than the idiotic leetcode whiteboard challenges. > And you wouldn't be wasting your time on candidates who: 1. don't know what a hashmap or minheap is 2. didn't bother to study up before the interview OR, and hear me out, you actively filter out people who know how stupid t…

I appreciate that, but my whole life I've heard again and again and again that "high stakes testing" does not work. I've heard all the arguments. But the bottom line is the testing is an effective filter.

After all, would you get on a jetliner piloted by a handsome fellow with a firm handshake who failed to pass all the written tests, but really knows how to fly?

It's not that hard to study the leetcode books. Doesn't the prize of a top shelf salary make it worthwhile? It's a good investment in your career.

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