Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

franciscotrindade.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 151 posts

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

#81

Post by jtrn »

beej71 wrote: post #78
jtrn wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Obviously not. Abstraction levels in projects management would go from something like: lower, “what should we name individual tasks items” to higher “what personalities are best suited for incident response handling”, or agile vs waterfall.

While technology layers would go from “who has the best transistors tech” to “should we use windows or macOS?”

Edit insertion for clarification: The compiler, framework usage, AI usage, are all tools and patterns for generating code. And they all stay neatly inside the technology, and more specifically the dimention of "creating code".

Not relevant to the topic I was responding to tho. And project management is usually way harder than coding, with or without AI. At least if you measure it by how few people are able to do each well.

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

#82

Post by codegeek »

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…

"The worst part is that AI is covering up their deficiencies. They don’t know what skills they lack. They don’t even know what skills are required because they haven’t put the effort in."

This is the biggest issue with AI. It is incredible when in the right hands (Senior devs who know good fundamentals and know how to code) but really bad when in wrong hands (Juniors with no fundamentals but they are made to believe that they know what they are doing).

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

#83

Post by spike021 »

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…

>It used to be that they would have been forced to seek help from a senior engineer

You still have standups, right?

I'd be questioning why at the very least the team lead/manager isn't questioning the lack of progress during those meetings and immediately requesting a more senior engineer help out.

Even before AI this was how it worked. Unless the junior engineer is being purposely secretive about lack of progress, which would have happened back then too, then this isn't an AI problem, it's a team culture one.

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

#84

Post by joshmarlow »

throwatdem12311 wrote: post #8

> The junior engineer executes it, which nowadays means prompting it to an AI tool, and creating a pull request (PR). The PR receives feedback from more senior engineers. The junior engineer gets the feedback and takes it to the AI tool again, proposing changes. Yeah this part should not exist anymore. It doesn’t where I work. When I get a PR I just ask an agent to make the proposed changes. There is absolutely zero…

"End to end ownership is the job."

This is an incredibly good and concise articulation of where the role is going. Thank you.

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

#85

Post by 21asdffdsa12 »

codegeek wrote: post #82
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…

"The worst part is that AI is covering up their deficiencies. They don’t know what skills they lack. They don’t even know what skills are required because they haven’t put the effort in." This is the biggest issue with AI. It is incredible when in the right hands (Senior devs who know good fundamentals and know how to code) but really bad when in wrong hands (Juniors with no fundamentals but they are made to believe…

So how do you design a harness that tries to grow the user? As in quiz the prompter in a way that forces them to reflect and improve?

And if they can do that- could they do it to themselves- going from a junior to a pro conversation?

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

#86

Post by glouwbug »

jtrn wrote: post #59
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…

[flagged]

This analogy only works if you’re ready to commit _only prompts_ and have those prompts do a clean “compile” of your production runtime everytime you pull.

Are you ready to do that?

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

#87

Post by _the_inflator »

"They don’t know what skills they lack. They don’t even know what skills are required because they haven’t put the effort in."

This is it.

Evolving into a developer role was more or less directly proportional to the effort you put in. Before AI I used to ask applicants to the department I oversaw whether they have a GitHub Account with a project to show, and bonus, which they are immensely proud of, no matter what.

You had to grind and hustle, no shortcuts, and no amount of stackoverflow.com copy and paste could save you.

And that leads me to two problems for the disguise of one: effort. This not only means reading and redoing simple exercises to complex projects, but committing to it instead of doom scrolling or TikTok frenzy.

I reserved weekends for certain technical books and was frustrated, that there was so few time and so much book left.

AI gave instant gratification a new dimension. It is horrible until AI gets as good as a perfect project from a prompt or we need to abandon it.

Poor young guys, the joy of tuning out is over either by design or habit.

And make no mistake. I don't blame them. We are all victims and perpetrators at the same time but on a different level.

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

#88

Post by recursive »

stvltvs wrote: post #73
ModernMech wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Only if the owner thinks that's a viable strategy. Such an owner may not be employed long.

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

#89

Post by yifanl »

21asdffdsa12 wrote: post #85
codegeek wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The worst part is that AI is covering up their deficiencies. They don’t know what skills they lack. They don’t even know what skills are required because they haven’t put the effort in." This is the biggest issue with AI. It is incredible when in the right hands (Senior devs who know good fundamentals and know how to code) but really bad when in wrong hands (Juniors with no fundamentals but they are made to believe…

So how do you design a harness that tries to grow the user? As in quiz the prompter in a way that forces them to reflect and improve? And if they can do that- could they do it to themselves- going from a junior to a pro conversation?

You can't, as that removes the main value add of the AI.

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

#90

Post by adam_arthur »

I see the complete opposite becoming the case.

In a world where code can be generated rapidly, it's super critical that you have a core few set of people who really understand the macro design of the codebase and can continue to factor it well and iterate quickly.

Adding more people and contributors just increases the probability that nobody really understands the structure of the codebase, it degrades into DRY and unfactored slop.

The cost of reviewing other people's code is almost too high to be worthwhile now... It's much easier to just cut them out and do it yourself.

A core set of very skilled people can just implement whatever change you are doing, but better, cleaner and faster.

I built a fairly large and complex project with Codex and had to spend about 50% of the time factoring things down as I went into well contained modules, had a full understanding of the architecture at a high level. It would have been pretty difficult to do this if bringing in other contributors.

Too many people comment about AI from the perspective of throwing feature A or B over the wall at the workplace, but anybody who has built a huge project from scratch will see how important good design is in regard to iteration speed and result quality.

That being said, there are still areas where changes should be sized reasonably and human reviewed e.g. foundational or very mature software

Post reply on HN