If AI makes a programmer say 25% more productive. Then a team of 4 can do the workload of a team of 5.
Then that one programmer goes on a sick leave and all of the sudden you're missing the output of two people.
Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?
181–190 of 279 posts
Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?
#182> Devs spot and fix hallucinations immediately, dismissing incorrect autocomplete suggestions Bullshit. Spotting hallucinations requires expertise in the subject matter, and most devs wouldn't be using LLMs if they intimately knew the programming languages and APIs the LLM is generating. The reality is that spotting hallucinations often takes more effort than reading the source documentation and writing the code from…
This happened to me quite recently. I didn't spot the hallucination, trusted the LLM output and introduced a problem into the application I'd never introduce if I didn't use LLMs in the first place. Then my co-workers did the same thing because the LLM guided them in the same broken way as it guided me.
Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
That seems a little backwards. I'm not sure exactly what you mean with making bureaucracy less efficient, but form validation is an example of automated, technologically enforced bureaucracy - in some sense, it's a more efficient form of bureaucracy. It's certainly less flexible, but lack of flexibility is arguably the point of bureaucracy; less flexibility suggests more rather than less efficient bureaucracy.
Yes and no, form validation is a double edged sword: without it whoever receives the data may have to deal with inconsistencies, so removing that will increase efficiency. However, the flexibility and adaptability of human interaction is lost when an intermediate digital system enforces rules without exception, and that loss can absolutely result in inefficiencies because the world is always changing and your digital…
Thanks for the write up. I am having an emotional crisis having to defend bureaucrats against us. (I conveniently blame their systems not being FOSS, not us programmers blindly following orders. No... not our fault).
Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
I tend to agree with you, if only because the swing in Europe on the IT job market has had less amplitude and is more spread out, similar to the difference in stimulus policy.
Zurich IT market died after COVID. Not sure about other hubs.
Paris market is also dead, only Datadog (and few others) are still recruiting
Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?
#185The charts show software dev gaining more jobs under the COVID demand and stimulus swing, and then losing more as those went away and monetary policy got tighter than even it had been even before the COVID stimulus. The easiest explanation for the whole chart is "Software dev is more reactive to the monetary policy environment than most other industries, because more of it is funded by new capital investment -- wheth…
By the time our work hits stable/ongoing operations, it's well on the path to outsourcing
... to begin the loop again
Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
That seems a little backwards. I'm not sure exactly what you mean with making bureaucracy less efficient, but form validation is an example of automated, technologically enforced bureaucracy - in some sense, it's a more efficient form of bureaucracy. It's certainly less flexible, but lack of flexibility is arguably the point of bureaucracy; less flexibility suggests more rather than less efficient bureaucracy.
Yes and no, form validation is a double edged sword: without it whoever receives the data may have to deal with inconsistencies, so removing that will increase efficiency. However, the flexibility and adaptability of human interaction is lost when an intermediate digital system enforces rules without exception, and that loss can absolutely result in inefficiencies because the world is always changing and your digital…
Great points! To be clear, I was not trying to say that automated and strictly enforced bureaucracy is a good thing. The bureaucracy of the form is very efficiently implemented. That's mostly not a good thing (or at least it often has costly consequences), but it is an example of software creating more efficient bureaucracy - efficient as bureaucracy, but often not efficient in fulfilling its supposed goals.
Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?
#187If AI makes a programmer say 25% more productive. Then a team of 4 can do the workload of a team of 5.
And you will only get this advantage using senior programmers, all the more reason most juniors are fucked. Juniors need to learn by falling on their face a few times, if companies don't want to train them then they'll never become seniors. Lovely cycle
>Juniors need to learn by falling on their face a few times, if companies don't want to train them then they'll never become seniors.
It's rare that anyone gets trained by a company who doesn't already know something and is pivoting to a new role. It's unfortunate but that's just the way it's always been. Juniors have to be proactive and bust their ass to become mid level, usually by learning new stuff at home through building stuff on their own and reading obsessively. The hardest part for a junior to get is their first paid job, and more often than not, that first job will be at a shit hole. Juniors should take advantage of it and really bust their ass to impress them and improve themselves. Once they get a couple of strong learning years under their belts, it gets a bit easier.
If you are a junior and the company is paying you to learn stuff, consider yourself extremely lucky.
Companies are in desperate need of strong talent. To succeed, juniors need to force themselves to become strong talent.
Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?
#188The charts show software dev gaining more jobs under the COVID demand and stimulus swing, and then losing more as those went away and monetary policy got tighter than even it had been even before the COVID stimulus. The easiest explanation for the whole chart is "Software dev is more reactive to the monetary policy environment than most other industries, because more of it is funded by new capital investment -- wheth…
How are sec 175 changes in the US not also a top explanation? This has a massive cost to small businesses and startups trying to hire software engineers, and a big impact to any team trying to grow.
Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
I tend to agree with you, if only because the swing in Europe on the IT job market has had less amplitude and is more spread out, similar to the difference in stimulus policy.
Zurich IT market died after COVID. Not sure about other hubs.
It died after Google announced layoffs.
The local IT market is quite small and Google is a very large employer here.
Two things had happened then:
1. Other companies froze hiring, because they got scared of „what does FAANG know that we don’t that they’re reducing employment” - no other reason really
2. A few hundred of pretty good Google engineers flooded the small market.
2023 was very rough, things got much better since then though.
Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Felt like we got about what we paid for This is the usual ebb and flow of offshoring in the tech industry that's been going on since the 90s. There has never been a scalable arbitrage for tech talent by going over to another geo, and there won't be one in the foreseeable future. What US HCoL talent gets paid is unfortunately the fair and natural market rate for that caliber of talent, at least if you need to hire mo…
I can raise two points to disprove this - I'm East Euro, but have worked with people from all over the globe in all kinds of companies. First, my experience with devs at mid level companies is that the average dev ranges from competent (as in, can work within an existing framework to accomplish tasks), to incompetent (cannot do the same consistently), with there being a top 10-20% who are truly good (able to deliver…
[deleted]