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IBM tripling entry-level jobs after finding the limits of AI adoption

fortune.com

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Re: IBM tripling entry-level jobs after finding the limits of AI adoption

#221

Post by Bombthecat »

pickettd wrote: post #136
Morromist wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this every day, and I'm sure its true sometimes, but where is the tsunami of amazing software LLM users are producing? Where are the games that make the old games look like things from a bygone era? Where are the updates to the software that I currently use that greatly increase it capabilities? I have seen none of this. I get that it takes a long time to make software, but people were making big promises a ye…

Reddit and GitHub are littered with people launching new projects and appear to be way more feature-rich than new tool/app launches from previous years. I think it is a lot harder to get noticed with a new tool/app new because of this increase in volume of launches. Also weekend hackathon events have completely/drastically changed as an experience in the last 2-3 years (expectations and also feature-set/polish of wor…

Or just don't publish them, because they don't want to deal with uses.

I wrote a python DHCP server which connects with proxmox server to hand out stable IPs as long as the VM / container exists in proxmox.

Not via MAC but basically via VM ID ( or name)

Re: IBM tripling entry-level jobs after finding the limits of AI adoption

#222

Post by Bombthecat »

sarchertech wrote: post #146
milchek wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think for a lot of folks it basically comes down to just using AI to make the tasks they have to do easier and to free up time for themselves. I’d argue the majority use AI this way. The minority “10x” workers who are using it to churn through more tasks are the motivated ones driving real business value being added - but let’s be honest, in a soulless enterprise 9-5 these folks are few and far between.

Sure but why haven’t you seen a drastic increase in single person startups. Why are there fewer games launched in steam this January than last?

Huh? Less games launched on steam? First time I hear that. Any source?

But my guess would be: games are closed sourced and need physics. Which AI is bad at.

Re: IBM tripling entry-level jobs after finding the limits of AI adoption

#223

Post by nunez »

chasd00 wrote: post #170
culi wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More interesting imo would be a measure of maintainability. I've heard that code that's largely written by AI is rarely remembered by the engineer that submitted even a week after merging You're almost "locked in" to using more AI on top of it then. It may also make it harder to give estimates to non-technical staff on how long it'd take to make a change or implement a new feature

I don’t know how to measure maintainability but the AI generated code I’ve seen in my projects is pretty plain vanilla standard patterns with comments. So less of a headache than a LOT of human code I’ve seen. Also, one thing the agents are good at, at least in my experience so far, is documenting existing code. This goes a long ways in maintenance, it’s not always perfect but as the saying goes documentation is like…

I find it funny that we, collectively, are now okay with comments in the code.

I remember the general consensus on this _not even two years ago_ being that the code should speak for itself and that comments harm more than help.

This matters less when agentic tools are doing the maintenance, I suppose, but the backslide in this practice is interesting.

Re: IBM tripling entry-level jobs after finding the limits of AI adoption

#224

Post by [deleted] »

halamadrid wrote: post #150

I pay $20 for OpenAI and codex makes me incredibly productive. With very careful prompts aimed at tiny tasks, I can review, fix and get a lot of things done. I’ll happily pay up to $2k/month for it if I was left with no choice, but I don’t think it will ever get that expensive since you can run models locally and it could have the same result. That being said, my outputs are similarish in the big picture. When I get…

[deleted]

Re: IBM tripling entry-level jobs after finding the limits of AI adoption

#225

Post by nunez »

vidarh wrote: post #214
hackingonempty wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to look at what you consider to be good prompts if you could provide a link.

You'd be surprised how low the bar is. What I'm seeing is down to the level of people not writing complete sentences. There doesn't need to be any "magic" there. Just clearly state your requirements. And start by asking the model to plan out the changes and write a markdown file with a plan first (I prefer this over e.g. Claude Code's plan mode, because I like to keep that artefact), including planning out tests. If…

Not surprising. Many folks struggle with writing (hence why ChatGPT is so popular for writing stuff), so people struggling to coherently express what they want and how makes sense.

But the big models have come a long way in this regard. Claude + Opus especially. You can build something with a super small prompt and keep hammering it with fix prompts until you get what you want. It's not efficient, but it's doable, and it's much better than having to write a full spec not half a year ago.

Re: IBM tripling entry-level jobs after finding the limits of AI adoption

#226

Post by palmotea »

nunez wrote: post #223
chasd00 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know how to measure maintainability but the AI generated code I’ve seen in my projects is pretty plain vanilla standard patterns with comments. So less of a headache than a LOT of human code I’ve seen. Also, one thing the agents are good at, at least in my experience so far, is documenting existing code. This goes a long ways in maintenance, it’s not always perfect but as the saying goes documentation is like…

I find it funny that we, collectively, are now okay with comments in the code. I remember the general consensus on this _not even two years ago_ being that the code should speak for itself and that comments harm more than help. This matters less when agentic tools are doing the maintenance, I suppose, but the backslide in this practice is interesting.

> I remember the general consensus on this _not even two years ago_ being that the code should speak for itself and that comments harm more than help.

If that was the consensus, it was wrong. There are valuable kinds of comments (whys, warnings, etc) that code can never say.

Re: IBM tripling entry-level jobs after finding the limits of AI adoption

#227

Post by palmotea »

giantg2 wrote: post #77
_heimdall wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least today, I expect this will fail horribly. The challenge today isn't AI literacy in my experience, its domain knowledge required to keep LLMs on the rails.

People literate in AI, but inexperienced in all other facts. What could go wrong!

> People literate in AI, but inexperienced in all other facts. What could go wrong!

It sounds like it's appeal to MBAs, who are people literate in management, but inexperienced in all other areas.

Re: IBM tripling entry-level jobs after finding the limits of AI adoption

#228

Post by twelve40 »

nunez wrote: post #223
chasd00 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know how to measure maintainability but the AI generated code I’ve seen in my projects is pretty plain vanilla standard patterns with comments. So less of a headache than a LOT of human code I’ve seen. Also, one thing the agents are good at, at least in my experience so far, is documenting existing code. This goes a long ways in maintenance, it’s not always perfect but as the saying goes documentation is like…

I find it funny that we, collectively, are now okay with comments in the code. I remember the general consensus on this _not even two years ago_ being that the code should speak for itself and that comments harm more than help. This matters less when agentic tools are doing the maintenance, I suppose, but the backslide in this practice is interesting.

yeah that was weird, it was like a cult and some coworkers of mine were religiously hunting down every comment in other people's MR's, just kinda assumed that "no comments" is a hard rule. Very strange, i had to fight many battles for my sanity. There are many cases where you may want to explain why this is coded the way this is coded, not just how.

Re: IBM tripling entry-level jobs after finding the limits of AI adoption

#229

Post by dgxyz »

joquarky wrote: post #206
dgxyz wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It certainly feels that way. I was there. Fortunately had just waltzed into the tech side of things and scurried off back to my professional career for a couple of years. I watched a lot of stuff burn. It was horrifying. We are nearly there again.

For a time, there was a lot of good deals on nice used office furniture.

Yeah got a nice desk and a trinitron out of it. Covid got me an Aeron :)

Re: IBM tripling entry-level jobs after finding the limits of AI adoption

#230

Post by johnnyanmac »

whstl wrote: post #97
johnnyanmac wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad you dealt with some good customers. I can't agree in my experience, though.

It's not luck. Customers want to save money and see projects finished. That anyone can reason with. Someone inside the company trying to climb the corporate ladder? Different story.

Okay. I'm glad you're privileged enough to where you can choose your customers. Customers that aren't abusive or otherwise out of their league thinking they know everything just because they have money.

Otherwise, you never feeelanced on the cheap.

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