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The rise of judgement over technical skill

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Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#141

Post by lolinder »

PeterStuer wrote: post #132
lolinder wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but OTOH "never improve much" seems unrealistic, given the insane progress of the field in the last 3ish years The point is that no one should hire an intern or a junior because they think it will improve their team's productivity. You hire interns and juniors because there's a causal link between "I hired an intern and spent money training them" and "they joined my company full time and a year later are now produc…

"hired an intern and spent money training them" and "they joined my company full time and a year later are now productive" Why would I do that if I can have sombody else pay for the training then poach them when they are ready?

Which is exactly why no one's hiring juniors anymore. It made sense back when the market for hiring engineers was super competitive and it was easier to gamble on being able to keep a junior than it was to try to snag a senior. But now that there are seniors galore on the market who would bother with a junior?

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#143

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #126
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to do a good job on small stuff. It works nicely for me, but doesn't really bring accolades (but a hell of a lot of folks actually rely on stuff I authored; they just don't know it, or care -which is just fine).

We cannot build great things on poor foundations If your small stuff contributes to a strong foundation for other people, then they should care It's a shame people lose sight of the ground beneath their feet when reaching to the sky I'm very guilty of this too, partly because any time I try to look down the people I work with rush in to discourage me from doing that - it's not part of the sprint, after all Anyways, I…

No problem!

You can always check my HN account page, for more info. I deliberately tend to be a bit shy about discussing some of that stuff in public forums.

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#144

Post by davnn »

ben30 wrote: post #26
gherkinnn wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That matches my experience. Decomposing a problem so that it is solvable with ease is what I enjoy most about programming and I am fine with no longer having to write as much code myself, but resent having to review so much more. Now, how do we solve the problem of people blindly accepting what an LLM spat out based on a bad prompt. This applies universally [0] and is not a technological problem. 0 - https://www.thev…

Agreed on the review burden being frustrating. Two strategies I've found helpful for managing the cognitive load: 1. Tight issue scoping : Making sure each issue is narrowly defined so the resulting PRs are small and focused. Easier to reason about a 50-line change than a 500-line one. 2. Parallel PR workflow : Using git worktrees to have multiple small PRs open simultaneously against the same repo. This lets me brea…

> The key insight is that smaller, well-bounded changes are exponentially easier to review thoroughly.

I am not sure if that is the real insight. It appears to me that most people prefer small, well-bounded changes, but it's quite tricky to break down large tasks into small but meaningful changes, isn't it? To me, that appears to be the key.

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#145

Post by prmph »

prmph wrote: post #60
ben30 wrote: post #6

This echoes my experience with Claude Code. The bottleneck isn't the code generation itself—it's two critical judgment tasks: 1. Problem decomposition: Taking a vague idea and breaking it down into well-defined, context-bounded issues that I can effectively communicate to the AI 2. Code review: Carefully evaluating the generated code to ensure it meets quality standards and integrates properly Both of these require d…

What the heck, the code generation _is_ absolutely still a bottle-neck. I dare anyone who making these arguments that LLMs have removed the need for actual programming skill, for example, to share in a virtual pair programming session with me, and I will demonstrate their basic inability to do _any_ moderately complex coding in short order. Yes, I think that's the only way to resolve this controversy. If they have so…

Edit for the parent comment:

> in the end it just could NOT solve the challenge I gave it.

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#146

Post by analog31 »

gavmor wrote: post #104
tingle wrote: post #94

Chap. CCCLXIV. — On the Judgment of Painters. When the work is equal to the knowledge and judgment of the painter, it is a bad sign; and when it surpasses the judgment, it is still worse, as is the case with those who wonder at having succeeded so well. But when the judgment surpasses the work, it is a perfectly good sign ; and the young painter who possesses that rare disposition, will, no doubt, arrive at great per…

> Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot…

>>> But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you.

This is why it's so hard for good classical musicians to learn jazz improvisation, even if they love jazz.

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#147

Post by ironman1478 »

PeterStuer wrote: post #132
lolinder wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but OTOH "never improve much" seems unrealistic, given the insane progress of the field in the last 3ish years The point is that no one should hire an intern or a junior because they think it will improve their team's productivity. You hire interns and juniors because there's a causal link between "I hired an intern and spent money training them" and "they joined my company full time and a year later are now produc…

"hired an intern and spent money training them" and "they joined my company full time and a year later are now productive" Why would I do that if I can have sombody else pay for the training then poach them when they are ready?

What are you doing to actually keep them at your company? I left a company after they invested a lot in training me. They gave me very little raises and already paid poorly, no guaranteed bonus, bad vacation hours, and no opportunities for promotion. They were shocked when I left, even though I had asked for very modest raises and was way more productive than the "seniors" at the company.

Most companies outside of FAANGs treat their talented juniors like crap, so of course they'll leave.

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#148

Post by wvoch235 »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #102
ben30 wrote: post #6

This echoes my experience with Claude Code. The bottleneck isn't the code generation itself—it's two critical judgment tasks: 1. Problem decomposition: Taking a vague idea and breaking it down into well-defined, context-bounded issues that I can effectively communicate to the AI 2. Code review: Carefully evaluating the generated code to ensure it meets quality standards and integrates properly Both of these require d…

This would be at least the third time in history we've tried to shunt writing code to low paid labor. We'll see if it's successful this time. The problem tends to be that small details affect large details which affect small details. If you aren't good at both you're usually shit at both.

IMO attempts to make it low paid work will fail, just like almost every STEM profession. But... the number of engineers that we need who operate as "power multipliers" on team will continue to decrease. Many startup and corporate teams already aren't needing junior/mid level engineers any longer.

They just need "drivers", senior/lead/staff engineers that can run independent tracks. AI becomes the "power multiplier" in the teams who amplify the effects of the "driver".

Many people pretend that 10x engineers don't exist. But anyone who has worked on an adequately high performing team at a large (or small) company knows that skill, and quite frankly intelligence, operate on power laws.

The bottom 3 quartiles will be virtually unemployable. Talent in the top quartile will be impossible to find because they're all employed. Not all that unlike today, though which quartile you fall into is largely going to depend on how "great" of an engineer you are AND how effectively you use AI.

As this happens, the tap of new engineers who are learning how to make it into the top quartile, will cutoff for everyone except for those who are passionate/sadistic enough to programming without AI, then learn to program WITH AI.

Meanwhile the number of startups disrupting corporate monopolies will increase as the cost of labor goes down due to lower headcount requirements. Lower head counts will lead to better team communication and in general business efficiency.

At some point the upper quartile will get automated too. And with that, corporate moats evaporate to solo-entrepreneurs and startups. The ship is sinking, but the ocean is about to boil too. When economic formulas start dividing by zero, we can be pretty sure that we can't predict the impact.

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#149

Post by nomel »

tingle wrote: post #94

Chap. CCCLXIV. — On the Judgment of Painters. When the work is equal to the knowledge and judgment of the painter, it is a bad sign; and when it surpasses the judgment, it is still worse, as is the case with those who wonder at having succeeded so well. But when the judgment surpasses the work, it is a perfectly good sign ; and the young painter who possesses that rare disposition, will, no doubt, arrive at great per…

To put it simply, "it's easy to do well with tasks that are easy for you."

This is how you make sure to produce good work while simultaneously halting the development of your skills.

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#150

Post by Suppafly »

gavmor wrote: post #104
tingle wrote: post #94

Chap. CCCLXIV. — On the Judgment of Painters. When the work is equal to the knowledge and judgment of the painter, it is a bad sign; and when it surpasses the judgment, it is still worse, as is the case with those who wonder at having succeeded so well. But when the judgment surpasses the work, it is a perfectly good sign ; and the young painter who possesses that rare disposition, will, no doubt, arrive at great per…

> Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot…

>For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good.

Sadly, that's why I don't start a lot of things that would interest me. You need to get into things when you're a kid and don't realize how junk your work is, because as an adult you just don't have time to dedicate to producing a lot of junk to get good at something. The are shortcuts and more directed learning you can do in a lot of areas to reduce some of the undirected learning you do as a child, but it's till time consuming when time is a rare commodity.

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