AI reduces the time required to complete certain tasks, but that time is then re-allocated to additional validation than would not have been supposed necessary otherwise. It also increases the quantity and rapidity of output expected in a set amount of time and makes me ``lazier", i.e. I sit and watch the code get produced instead of divert my attention elsewhere.
Things that helped me get out of the AI 10x engineer imposter syndrome
301–310 of 675 posts
Re: Things that helped me get out of the AI 10x engineer imposter syndrome
#302I found myself agreeing with quite a lot of this article. I'm a pretty huge proponent for AI-assisted development, but I've never found those 10x claims convincing. I've estimated that LLMs make me 2-5x more productive on the parts of my job which involve typing code into a computer, which is itself a small portion of that I do as a software engineer. That's not too far from this article's assumptions. From the artic…
> but I've never found those 10x claims convincing Who's making these claims?
There was a YC video just a few months ago where a bunch of jergoffs sat in a circle and talked about engineers being 10 to 100x as effective as before. Im sure google will bring it up.
Re: Things that helped me get out of the AI 10x engineer imposter syndrome
#303I thought AI is making actual experienced developers 19% less productive?
https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-coding-tools-may-decrease...
Re: Things that helped me get out of the AI 10x engineer imposter syndrome
#304This was the best insight in the article: Do 10x engineers actually exist? "This debate isn't something I want to weigh in on but I might have to. My answer is sometimes, kinda. When I have had engineers who were 10x as valuable as others it was primarily due to their ability to prevent unnecessary work. Talking a PM down from a task that was never feasible. Getting another engineer to not build that unnecessary micr…
The way that I have seen 10x engineers in my career is as kind like this: Junior: 100 total lines of code a day Senior: 10,000 total lines of code a day Guru: -100 total lines of code a day
No one is writing 10,000 lines of code every day nor should they be.
Re: Things that helped me get out of the AI 10x engineer imposter syndrome
#305I don't believe that literal typing of code is the limiting factor in development work. There is the research and planning and figuring out what it is even you need to develop in the first place. By the time you know what questions to even ask an LLM you are not saving much time in my opinion. On top of that you introduce the risk of LLM hallucination when you could have looked it up from a normal web search yourself…
> There is the research and planning and figuring out what it is even you need to develop in the first place.
This is where I have found LLMs to be most useful. I have never been able to figure out how to get it to write code that isn't a complete unusable disaster zone. But if you throw your problem at it, it can offer great direction in plain English.
I have decades of research, planning, and figuring things out under my belt, though. That may give me an advantage in guiding it just the right way, whereas the junior might not be able to get anything practical from it, and thus that might explain their focus on code generation instead?
Re: Things that helped me get out of the AI 10x engineer imposter syndrome
#306> When I have had engineers who were 10x as valuable as others it was primarily due to their ability to prevent unnecessary work. Talking a PM down from a task that was never feasible. Getting another engineer to not build that unnecessary microservice. Making developer experience investments that save everyone just a bit of time on every task. Documenting your work so that every future engineer can jump in faster. T…
I'd call that "Making developer experience investments that save everyone just a bit of time on every task."
Re: Things that helped me get out of the AI 10x engineer imposter syndrome
#307I use AI all the time. Usually I'm a curmudgeon but I decided to go all in on LLM AI stuff and have used ChatGPT and other models extensively to write code. Having thought about it a lot, I think the magic here is that AI combines three things:
1. googling stuff about how APIs work 2. writing boilerplate 3. typing syntax correctly
These three things combined make up a huge amount of programming. But when real cognition is required I find I'm still thinking just as hard in basically the same ways I've always thought about programming: identifying appropriate abstractions, minimizing dependencies between things, pulling pieces together towards a long term goal. As far as I can tell, AI still isn't really capable of helping much with this. It can even get in the way, because writing a lot of code before key abstractions are clearly understood can be counterproductive and AI tends to have a monolithic rather than decoupled understanding of how to program. But if you use it right it can make certain tasks less boring and maybe a little faster.
Re: Things that helped me get out of the AI 10x engineer imposter syndrome
#308> When I have had engineers who were 10x as valuable as others it was primarily due to their ability to prevent unnecessary work. Talking a PM down from a task that was never feasible. Getting another engineer to not build that unnecessary microservice. Making developer experience investments that save everyone just a bit of time on every task. Documenting your work so that every future engineer can jump in faster. T…
I'd call that "Making developer experience investments that save everyone just a bit of time on every task."
Ah, I guess I missed your meaning, then.
Re: Things that helped me get out of the AI 10x engineer imposter syndrome
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do also believe that those who are often looked at or referred to as 10x engineers will maybe only see a marginal productivity increase. The smartest programmer I know is so impressive mainly for two reasons: first, he seems to have just an otherworldly memory and seems to kind of have absolutely every little feature and detail of the programming languages he uses memorized. Second, his real power is really in cogn…
I like the quip that AI raises the floor not the ceiling. I think it helps the bottom 20% perform more like the middle 50% but doesn't do much for people at the top.
I add to that analogy. AI raises the floor but some of the floor tiles fall away, unpredictably.
Re: Things that helped me get out of the AI 10x engineer imposter syndrome
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even saying it has a dozen PhDs belies the reality that these things have no relationship with the truth
I find statements like this kind of funny. If an AI assistant was the equivalent of “a dozen PhDs” at any of the places I’ve worked you would see an 80-95% productivity reduction by using it.
[deleted]