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AI didn't erase the junior engineer's value, it increased it it

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Re: AI didn't erase the junior engineer's value, it increased it it

#71

Post by andersmurphy »

lelanthran wrote: post #9

> If the assumption is that AI is going to radically simplify the technical portion of the role, then the people who have started their careers with AI will be in the best spot once they have acquired the experience. This doesn't make sense - AI is to allow unskilled people to produce what was previously only produced by skilled people. IOW, how does having 2 years of experience using an LLM to generate code beat hav…

The paradox of AI. The better it is the less benefit there is to being an early adopter.

Re: AI didn't erase the junior engineer's value, it increased it it

#72

Post by unified101 »

throwatdem12311 wrote: post #66
unified101 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is. It'll write a better doc at any level for any task you may do. If you're not able to see that, you just don't know how to give the context right.

Claude writes technical word salad that people hate reading. It’s writing docs nobody looks at and nobody cares about. Technical writing is a skill just like any other form of writing and if you’re bad at it that’s on you. People despise AI slop novels and they also despise AI slop technical documents.

And even with that fable would be more capable than you. You just don't know how to harness it with the right context maybe.

Re: AI didn't erase the junior engineer's value, it increased it it

#73

Post by stvltvs »

ModernMech wrote: post #56
conradfr wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ownership of what then?

Ownership of the delivered code. This takes authorship out of the equation -- doesn't matter who wrote it, only matters who owns it and can be blamed for it. Not having written it doesn't absolve blame when something goes bad.

Ideally, but we know that LLMs will get the blame because of course they will.

Re: AI didn't erase the junior engineer's value, it increased it it

#75

Post by VCFundedGenYer »

unified101 wrote: post #72
throwatdem12311 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claude writes technical word salad that people hate reading. It’s writing docs nobody looks at and nobody cares about. Technical writing is a skill just like any other form of writing and if you’re bad at it that’s on you. People despise AI slop novels and they also despise AI slop technical documents.

And even with that fable would be more capable than you. You just don't know how to harness it with the right context maybe.

You need to take a step back from the "it's always better than you" because you're making objectively false statements based on delusion.

Re: AI didn't erase the junior engineer's value, it increased it it

#76

Post by dataviz1000 »

WhyIsItAlwaysHN wrote: post #63
dataviz1000 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no product! Yesterday claude code built a console that steps through algorithms: one shot. There was a bug with a value being incorrect. I thought this would be a great way to automated visualizing and stepping through code during a PR review. I'm sitting in a room with a computer by myself where I was thinking yesterday about a way that AI can add value to junior engineers. I see a post and discussion about…

I think this is good in general for being able to see what happens in the code of a PR, but probably more so to seniors. If anything will be missing from juniors it will be the ability to run code in their heads if they've only written code via AI.

I'm having a hard time justifying writing any code today.

In a fraction of time it takes me to solve any 20 - 40 line code problem, a coding agent can solve it 10 different ways in python and in TypeScript, inject performance logging, run each in 1,000,000 iterations with as many permutations as inputs, write comments at a 10th grade reading level so I understand what each does quickly, make a clean table with pros / cons and performance results, and I after considering the options choose one.

The problem is that the coding agents are not dependable -- they are reliably incorrect.

In the United States decades ago, a phone utility company was sued because they didn't allow women to be linemen working in the field. They lost and what they did was make changes like using lighter aluminum ladders getting rid of the heavy wooden ones, they replaced the wrenches with ones with longer handles so they had much more leverage, and many other things to make the work less physically punishing. A reporter asked some of the veteran linemen how they feel about working with the changes. The reply was, "why didn't we make these changes sooner?" None of them lost their job and their job got a whole lot easier.

The problem is verifying code quality. The coding agents can't reliably do it. But they as tools, can help both juniors and seniors make their job a whole lot easier.

Re: AI didn't erase the junior engineer's value, it increased it it

#77

Post by [deleted] »

VCFundedGenYer wrote: post #75
unified101 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And even with that fable would be more capable than you. You just don't know how to harness it with the right context maybe.

You need to take a step back from the "it's always better than you" because you're making objectively false statements based on delusion.

[deleted]

Re: AI didn't erase the junior engineer's value, it increased it it

#78

Post by beej71 »

jtrn wrote: post #69
kibwen wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs are not even remotely comparable to compilers. This attempt at analogy is neither humorous nor insightful.

It depends on the level of analysis. Both change the abstraction level one works at. So if you can't decode the message, I can do it for you. People believed that something important was lost by moving up one abstraction layer, because knowing the lower-level details was important, more so than having the possibility of doing more because complexities have been abstracted away for you. And almost every time in histor…

Do you feel that layers of abstraction in project management and layers of abstraction in the technology being managed are the same thing?

Re: AI didn't erase the junior engineer's value, it increased it it

#79

Post by xtiansimon »

olsondv wrote: post #36

It largely depends on the person. We have several junior engineers who cannot solve a problem without AI. When AI can’t solve it, they just keep trying and failing. And I mean weeks to months late. Then rinse and repeat on the next task. It used to be that they would have been forced to seek help from a senior engineer. Combine the teaching with a real struggle is what makes them better. As it is now, they aren’t bei…

> “…they aren’t being taught and they’re not learning from what the AI is producing because they don’t understand it. […] the ones who still interact with seniors to get help and actually learn.”

You’re describing a gap between those who would otherwise fail in their jobs sooner, and those who already know what to do. Sounds like there is a new paradigm for management, too.

Re: AI didn't erase the junior engineer's value, it increased it it

#80

Post by beej71 »

treyd wrote: post #40

I couldn't disagree more. Juniors have very poor design sense and can't guide the AI to land in the right spot. Consistently on my team the developers who are the most reliant on AI are causing me the most trouble. They produce a lot of code but constantly make the same mistakes and can't seem to learn and improve their own design skills, or are doing it at a snail's pace.

This seems to point to a future crash where we run out of people with the skills to do the work.
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