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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

#211

Post by Toutouxc »

megaman821 wrote: post #101
Toutouxc wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of car do you drive that doesn't have one?

An EV with a heat pump. I know literally there is a heat exchange/radiator, but there is not a separate radiator system with its own fluids and pumps.

You don’t get to decide whether a radiator is a radiator just because the coolant can internally shuffle heat to the A/C. I’m assuming that you drive a Tesla, in which case your car still has a big fat low temperature radiator. If you’re driving virtually any other EV on the market, it still has a big fat low temperature radiator, or even multiple.

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

#212

Post by Toutouxc »

_se wrote: post #100
Toutouxc wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of car do you drive that doesn't have one?

Literally any ev?

No. My EV, for example literally has servo-controlled shutters that route fresh air to the radiator when needed.

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

#213

Post by englishspot »

chrysoprace wrote: post #181
englishspot wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

I review even before they implement. My typical workflow for anything major is to ask for a plan and an overview of the steps to execute. This way I can read the plan, mull over it, make a few changes myself. And then when I'm ready I go through the steps with claude code, usually in fresh sessions.

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

#214

Post by pepperball »

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.

[dead]

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

#215

Post by dwaltrip »

xXSLAYERXx wrote: post #87
hibikir wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd have to do even less copy-pasting. The switch to some agent that has access to your source code directory speed things up so much, the time spent pays for itself in the first day.

I have access to chatgpt codex since i'm on the premium plan. Seems like the lowest barrier to entry for me (cost, learning curve). I will truly have to give this a go. My neighbor is also a dev and he is flabbergasted that i have not at least integrated it into a side project.

Ya you gotta try it. Just download it and start typing into the terminal instead of the ChatGPT text box on the web.

You can also use cursor which is essentially vs code with these features baked in.

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

#216

Post by bigfishrunning »

direwolf20 wrote: post #154
bigfishrunning wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are either being disengenuous or you are horribly misinformed. The models that we currently call "AI" aren't intelligent in any sense -- they are statistical predictors of text. AGI is a replacement acronym used to refer to what we used to call AI -- a machine capable of thought.

Every time AI research achieves something, that thing is no longer called AI. AI research brought us recommendation engines, spelling correctors, OCR, voice recognition, voice synthesis, content recognition, and so on. Now that they exist in the present instead of the future, none of these are considered AI.

That's because once these things are achieved, they're not "Intelligent" -- usually it's some statistical or database management technique.

Lots of stuff was invented at NASA that is only tangentially related to spaceflight. These other bits of software are tangentially related to AI research, but until the machine is "thinking", we don't have AI. That doesn't mean all of these things invented by the AI research community aren't useful, or aren't achievements; they are. We still haven't created AGI (which we used to call AI before LLMs could pass the turing test).

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

#217

Post by penguin_booze »

> AI is expected to eliminate many repetitive, entry-level tasks, but that may allow engineering students trained on the latest tools to start in more senior positions.

"I watched someone lifting weights. Now I'm a Olympic-level heavyweight lifter".

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

#218

Post by drivebyhooting »

daxfohl wrote: post #185
drivebyhooting wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Seattl…

Expensive private schools, luxurious ski vacations, and exclusive neighborhoods existed long before the ascendance of software engineers. These had been the purview of investment bankers, high-powered, lawyers, realtors, etc..

For a brief time with big tech, it seemed like intellectual prowess could allow you to jump the social strata. But that arrangement need not exist. It’s perfectly possible, indeed likely that we will revert to the old aristocratic ways. The old boys’s network ways.

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

#219

Post by eZinc »

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…

This sounds good in theory, but have you hired someone in 2026?

Developers are really lazy in general and don't want to work. The more people you hire, the more you run into the chance of gumming up productivity with unproductive developers.

Even if they are productive, once you cross the threshold of 30 people even productive developers become lazy because of entitlement, bad resource distribution, or complexities from larger teams.

We don't even have to talk about teams of 1000+. Ownership is just dead at that point.

In 2026, having just 5 engineers with AI means you can cut through all the waste and get stuff done. If they start being weird, you can see it pretty easily vs. when engineers are being weird in a team of 50-1000+.

It's not rocket science to see leadership decide to cut down on teams to better manage weirdness in devs. More people doesn't mean more results unfortunately because of work culture nowadays.

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

#220

Post by vldx »

acuozzo wrote: post #198
toraway wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drives me absolutely crazy how lately any time I comment about my experience using LLMs for coding that isn’t gushing praise, I get the same predictable, condescending lecture about how I'm using it ever so slightly wrong (unlike them) which explains why I don't get perfect output literally 100% of the time. It’s like I need a sticky disclaimer: 1. No, I didn’t form an outdated impression based on GPT-4 that I never…

When I wrote my reply I was not familiar with the existing climate of LLM-advice-as-a-cudgel that you describe. > to invalidate your experience on the basis of “you’re holding it wrong” This was not my intent in replying to 9rx. I was just trying to help.

GP didn’t, but I’ve found the tips that you’ve shared helpful, so thank you for taking the time.
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