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I'm worried it might get bad

danielmiessler.com

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Re: I'm worried it might get bad

#151

Post by ncr100 »

aaomidi wrote: post #33
andyfilms1 wrote: post #14

I've said this before, but the only thing that will convince me that these companies are actually laying people off due to AI will be when they start replacing their leadership staff with it. Until that happens--IMO it's just an excuse to reduce the overhired workforce without tanking their stock.

Why would leadership replace themselves?

Would they replace themselves in countries (e.g. Germany, France) where they have more of a civil responsibility, beyond countries like USA where they have a stock-holder responsibility?

- corporate social responsibility (CSR)

Does this mandate self-termination when financially reasonable?

Re: I'm worried it might get bad

#152

Post by fusslo »

ponector wrote: post #141
fusslo wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thinking about this lately. While we engineers understand how to judge and evaluate AI solutions, I am not sure Business Owners (BO) care. BO's are ok with a certain percentage of bugs/rework/inefficiency/instability. And the tradeoff of eliminating (or marginalizing) Engineering may be worth the increased percentage of unfavorable outcomes.

>>While we engineers understand how to judge and evaluate AI solutions Usually no one really care. Target is to close a ticket, not to make a good software. "Works fine on my machine" - heard this many times. But user don't have a beefy m4 pro machine with ultra fast fiber. No one care.

Yeah but the ‘works fine on my machine’ is usually said by jr/inept devs

I havent heard that around serious engineers

Re: I'm worried it might get bad

#154

Post by ponector »

edoceo wrote: post #64
JKCalhoun wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never been a fan of UBI (and I'm often downvoted for that, ha ha). I like the idea of mandating an 18 hour work week or similar though. It still keeps the incentive to work — still rewards those who want to achieve more. One wonders though what impact that will have on society — so much additional free time. More television binging? I hope not.

Why do folk "need" to work? To justify their existence? Don't we have a duty of care for fellow humans?

That is an American mindset: your job makes who you are. Like you have no identity without a job. Mainly because without a job you loose health insurance, housing, everything.

Re: I'm worried it might get bad

#155

Post by ponector »

fusslo wrote: post #152
ponector wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>While we engineers understand how to judge and evaluate AI solutions Usually no one really care. Target is to close a ticket, not to make a good software. "Works fine on my machine" - heard this many times. But user don't have a beefy m4 pro machine with ultra fast fiber. No one care.

Yeah but the ‘works fine on my machine’ is usually said by jr/inept devs I havent heard that around serious engineers

Their title and salary are serious, though.

Re: I'm worried it might get bad

#156

Post by guywithahat »

AstroBen wrote: post #69
mholt wrote: post #23

Don't worry -- soon after that, there will be high demand for human coders as companies scramble to hire to rewrite all the buggy and vuln-ridden AI-hallucinated software. We're on the verge of two revolutions in tech, not one.

I shared your view a year ago. Hell half my posts here on HN are arguing against the annoying hype. Today I make heavy use of AI and my code quality has gone up, not down. It's better tested, better factored, with better error handling covering more edge cases AI code is only buggy if no-one is guiding or reviewing it I'm not sure how long we'll need someone in the middle to actually review the code

It makes me wonder if at some point people will regard writing code the same way they regard writing assembly

Re: I'm worried it might get bad

#157

Post by Sebb767 »

righthand wrote: post #117
AstroBen wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I shared your view a year ago. Hell half my posts here on HN are arguing against the annoying hype. Today I make heavy use of AI and my code quality has gone up, not down. It's better tested, better factored, with better error handling covering more edge cases AI code is only buggy if no-one is guiding or reviewing it I'm not sure how long we'll need someone in the middle to actually review the code

I am senior developer and have easily and successfully avoided using Llm development these last few years. Nothing has changed for me and my team mates who do use it are slower than me and often don’t know what the Pr actually does. You chose to invest in the downward career slope. That’s why your opinion has changed. If you continued to resist it you wouldn’t be looking to remove yourself from the auditing/coding po…

> and successfully avoided using Llm development these last few years.

I'm not sure that's much of an achievement, to be honest. If you tried it and it turned out to be not useful for you, fine, I'm on your side. But refusing to try for the sake of it seems backwards. I mean, then why use CI, version control and those fancy IDEs anyway? Notepad is a perfectly cromulent text editor (and what is code, if not text, anyway?) and my local build.bat and deploy.bat do their job nicely and quickly.

Re: I'm worried it might get bad

#158

Post by ffsm8 »

WaltPurvis wrote: post #97
AstroBen wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I shared your view a year ago. Hell half my posts here on HN are arguing against the annoying hype. Today I make heavy use of AI and my code quality has gone up, not down. It's better tested, better factored, with better error handling covering more edge cases AI code is only buggy if no-one is guiding or reviewing it I'm not sure how long we'll need someone in the middle to actually review the code

>someone in the middle In the middle between AI and what?

The requirements.

He's essentially saying that it's a complete guess how long the job of a programmer exists, and when it will change over to essentially product manager, of which you'll need a lot less.

It could be decades... Or next month.

Re: I'm worried it might get bad

#159

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

ponector wrote: post #96
vishvananda wrote: post #63

I share the concern based on the current productivity expectations but I did stumble across something recently which makes me feel a lot better. There was a change in the tax code that coincides with the beginning of the post-pandemic layoffs[1]. This was changed back last month by the BBB which likely means a bunch of new R&D spend for big tech. I think this is why we are seeing intense M&A activity and if we can ke…

I don't think this tax change had huge impact. Two reasons: 1. Layoffs and slowdown are global, not only in US. 2. Expenses are still deductable, but over longer period. It makes no difference for big corporations.

> 1. Layoffs and slowdown are global, not only in US.

Dunno about that. I've moved twice since 2022 (in Ireland), and the market is definitely less crazy but there's still (apparently) lots of work about. To be fair, I interview well and am pushing 15 years experience with a bunch of "prestigious" companies.

Definitely seemed like it much worse in the US. Then again, it was never as insane as the 2010's seemed for the US so maybe there was less over-hiring.

> 2. Expenses are still deductable, but over longer period. It makes no difference for big corporations.

The rate of change between full and 20% deduction definitely had a big impact on smaller companies hiring of software/data people. If you were a megacorp it mattered less but still not trivial.

Re: I'm worried it might get bad

#160

Post by ffsm8 »

yegle wrote: post #144
thisisit wrote: post #139

There has been convergence of many events: 1. The tax deduction change where costs couldn't be classified as an expense. 2. The saturation in people joining coding. At one point in time everyone wanted to be part of a bootcamp to earn that sweet coding salary. 3. Rising interest rates means the era of borrowing at low costs is over. etc. AI is last on my list for the reasons that people are being laid off. And its no…

AFAIKT 1. was reverted in the OBBB. And I suspect my recent influx of recruiter outreaching email is related to that. Give it 3 more months and things may trend upward.

Tbf, tfa only gave it an even chance. He's not saying things are gonna turn bad, he merely observes multiple issues which could create an anti-synergy which would likely end badly if realized.
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