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AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected

semiengineering.com

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Re: AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected

#181

Post by chrysoprace »

englishspot wrote: post #8
Ancalagon wrote: post #4

I still feel like with all of these tools I as a senior engineer have to keep a close eye on what they're doing. Like an exuberant junior (myself 10 years ago), inevitably they still go off the rails and I need to reign them in. They still make the occasional security or performance flaw - often which can be resolved by pointing it out.

I keep hearing about how they're "really good" now, but my personal experience has been that I've always had to clear sessions and give them small "steps" to execute for them to work effectively. thankfully claude seems really good at creating "plans", though. so I just need claude code to walk through that plan in small chunks.

Setting small goals with quality gates is good. I'll usually write something like "once you've implemented this, I'll review before we continue".

Re: AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected

#182

Post by chii »

directevolve wrote: post #180
warmedcookie wrote: post #118

Let's presume / speculate for a moment that companies will only need 1 developer to do the job of 10 developers because of AI. That would also mean 10 developers can do the job of 100 developers. A company that cuts developers to save money whose moat is not big enough may quickly find themselves out-competed by a company that sees this as an opportunity to overtake their competitor. They will have to hire more devel…

Will the modal developer of 2030 be much like a dev today? Writing software was a craft. You learned to take a problem and turn it into precise, reliable rules in a special syntax. If AI takes off, we'll see a new field emerging of AI-oriented architecture and project management. The skills will be different. How do you deploy a massive compute budget effectively to steer software design when agents are writing the c…

> It might just be a very different skillset.

which is fine.

Blacksmiths back in the day had craft. But they're replaced with CNC and CAD specialists, and hardly anyone bets metal today.

Re: AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected

#183

Post by [deleted] »

torginus wrote: post #172
FloorEgg wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure it's class warfare? It may result in class warfare but I am skeptical that's the root cause. My guess is it has more to do with the education system, monetary policy and fiscal policy.

2 well identifiable classes in western societies are landlords vs renters, where the latter is paying a huge chunk of their income to be able to use an appreciating asset of the former. This class thing is especially identifiable in Europe, where assets such as real estate generally are not cheaper than in the US (with the exception of a few super expensive places), yet salaries are much lower. Taxes tend to be super…

[deleted]

Re: AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected

#184

Post by woooooo »

chii wrote: post #182
directevolve wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will the modal developer of 2030 be much like a dev today? Writing software was a craft. You learned to take a problem and turn it into precise, reliable rules in a special syntax. If AI takes off, we'll see a new field emerging of AI-oriented architecture and project management. The skills will be different. How do you deploy a massive compute budget effectively to steer software design when agents are writing the c…

> It might just be a very different skillset. which is fine. Blacksmiths back in the day had craft. But they're replaced with CNC and CAD specialists, and hardly anyone bets metal today.

Nitpick, blacksmiths typically did forging, which is hammering heated metal into shape with benefits for the strength of the hammered material. CNC is machining, cutting things into the shape you want at room temperature.

Forging is machine assisted now with tons of tools but its still somewhat of a craft, you can't just send a CAD file to a machine.

I think we're still figuring out where on that spectrum LLM coding will settle.

Re: AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected

#185

Post by daxfohl »

drivebyhooting wrote: post #165
daxfohl wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah for the better part of a generation, our best and brightest minds have been wasted on "increasing click count". If that can all be AI from here on out, then maybe we can get actual humans working on the real problems again.

The problem was always funding. All those bright minds went into ads because it paid well. Cancer research, space, propulsion, clean, energy, etc.. none of those paid particularly well. Nor would they have afforded a comfortable life with a house and family. The evisceration of SWE does not guarantee a flourishing in other fields. On the contrary, increased labor supply with further pressure, wages, downwards.

Agreed, though I think we all knew that the software industry payscales were out of whack to begin with. Fresh college grads that can barely do a fizzbuzz making twice as much as experienced doctors.

What I don't know is, say the industry normalizes to roughly what people make in other engineering fields. Then does everything else normalize around that? i.e. does cost of living go down proportionally in SF and Seattle? Or does all the tech money get further sucked up and consolidated into VC pockets and parked in vacant houses, while we and our trite "cancer research" and such get shepherded off to Doobersville?

Re: AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected

#186

Post by steve_adams_86 »

chii wrote: post #182
directevolve wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will the modal developer of 2030 be much like a dev today? Writing software was a craft. You learned to take a problem and turn it into precise, reliable rules in a special syntax. If AI takes off, we'll see a new field emerging of AI-oriented architecture and project management. The skills will be different. How do you deploy a massive compute budget effectively to steer software design when agents are writing the c…

> It might just be a very different skillset. which is fine. Blacksmiths back in the day had craft. But they're replaced with CNC and CAD specialists, and hardly anyone bets metal today.

Blacksmiths also spent a lot of their time repairing things, whereas modern replacements primarily produce more things. Kind of an interesting shift. Economies and jobs change in so many ways.

Re: AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected

#187

Post by steve_adams_86 »

perrygeo wrote: post #138
simonw wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right: these things amplify existing skills. The more skill you have, the bigger the effect after it gets amplified.

I jumped into a new-to-me Typescript application and asked Claude to build a thing, in vague terms matching my own uncertainty and unfamiliarity. The result was similarly vague garbage. Three shots and I threw them all away. Then I watched a someone familiar with the codebase ask Claude to build the thing, in precise terms matching their expertise and understanding of the code. It worked flawlessly the first time. Ne…

For sure, directing attention to valuable context and outlining problems to solve within it works way, way better than vague uncertainty.

Good LLMing seems to be about isolating the right information and instructing it correctly from there. Both the context and the prompt make a tremendous difference.

I've been finding recently that I can get significantly better results with fewer tokens by paying mind to this more often.

I'm definitely a casual though. There are probably plenty of nuances and tricks I'm unaware of.

Re: AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected

#188

Post by tills13 »

> there is a corresponding expectation that today’s engineering students will be trained using these tools so they can enter the workforce higher up the ladder

Either this won't happen, or there will be a corresponding decrease in salary for higher level positions.

That people think capitalistic organizations are going to accept new grads and pay them more _ever_ is a cruel or bad joke.

Re: AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected

#189

Post by tills13 »

Swizec wrote: post #9

The main thing to understand about the impact of AI tools: Somehow the more senior you are [in the field of use], the better results you get. You can run faster and get more done! If you're good, you get great results faster. If you're bad, you get bad results faster. You still gotta understand what you're doing. GeLLMan Amnesia is real.

Yeah. It's a force multiplier. And if you aren't careful, the force it multiplies can be dangerous or destructive.

Re: AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected

#190

Post by h4kunamata »

There are two types of engineers right now:

1. This category understands what they do and use AI to make their processes faster, in another world, less time spent with boring stuff and more time spent having fun.

2. This category fully replaced their work with AI, they just press a button and let AI do everything. A friend of mine is here, AI took full control of their environment, he just press a button, even his home cookware is using AI.

I know which engineer still learning and can join any company. I also know which engineer is so dependent on AI that he won't be able to do basic tasks without it.

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