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AWS CEO says replacing junior devs with AI is 'one of the dumbest ideas'

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Re: AWS CEO says replacing junior devs with AI is 'one of the dumbest ideas'

#311

Post by mplewis »

chaos_emergent wrote: post #137
beAbU wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the struggling with docs and learning how and where to find the answers part of the learning process? I would argue a machine that short circuits the process of getting stuck in obtuse documentation is actually harmful long term...

Isn't the struggle of sifting through a labyrinth of physical books and learning how and where to find the right answers part of the learning process? I would argue a machine that short-circuits the process of getting stuck in obtuse books is actually harmful long term...

You posted this in jest but it's literally true. You need to read the whole book to get the context. You SHOULD be reading the manuals and the docs. They weren't written because they're fun.

Re: AWS CEO says replacing junior devs with AI is 'one of the dumbest ideas'

#312

Post by bdangubic »

Aperocky wrote: post #161
bdangubic wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what is a larger issue ? lacking domain knowledge? or lacking deeper understanding of years of shit in the codebase that seniors may have better understanding? where I work, there is no issue that it "too large" for a junior to take on, it is the only way that "junior" becomes "non-junior" - by doing, not by delegating to so-called seniors (I am one of them)

Unnecessary complexity, completely arbitrary one off designs, over emphasis on one part of the behavior while ignoring others. Using design patterns where they shouldn't be used, code once and forget operations exist, using languages and framework that are familiar but unfit for that purpose. The list goes on and I see it happen all the time, AI only makes it worse because it tend to verify all of these with "You're…

this can only happen in a shitty places with incompetent team

Re: AWS CEO says replacing junior devs with AI is 'one of the dumbest ideas'

#314

Post by cloudfudge »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #243
alexgotoi wrote: post #192

The thing people miss in these “replace juniors with AI” takes is that juniors were never mainly about cheap hands on keyboards. They’re the only people in the org who are still allowed to ask “dumb” questions without losing face, and those questions are often the only signal you get that your abstractions are nonsense. What AI does is remove a bunch of the humiliating, boring parts of being junior: hunting for the r…

> They’re the only people in the org who are still allowed to ask “dumb” questions without losing face I strongly disagree, a Senior who cannot ask a "dumb question" is a useless developer to me. Ask away, we want to figure things out, we're not mind readers. Every good senior developer I know asks questions and admits when they don't know things. This is humility and in my eyes is a strong market for a good Senior D…

You're making the same point as the person you're responding to. They're saying seniors are allowed to ask dumb questions. It's junior who are often afraid to do so.

Re: AWS CEO says replacing junior devs with AI is 'one of the dumbest ideas'

#315

Post by PaulStatezny »

dejj wrote: post #267
alexgotoi wrote: post #192

The thing people miss in these “replace juniors with AI” takes is that juniors were never mainly about cheap hands on keyboards. They’re the only people in the org who are still allowed to ask “dumb” questions without losing face, and those questions are often the only signal you get that your abstractions are nonsense. What AI does is remove a bunch of the humiliating, boring parts of being junior: hunting for the r…

Agree. > cargo-culting Stack Overflow What do you mean by this? I understand “cargo-culting” as building false idols, e.g. wooden headphones and runways to attract airplanes that never come.

I think the idea is copy-pasting code snippets from StackOverflow without comprehension of whether (and how) the code fixes the problem.

Re: AWS CEO says replacing junior devs with AI is 'one of the dumbest ideas'

#316

Post by bespokedevelopr »

Some of my friends who are senior/staff engs at various fang companies are basically convinced their jobs are at risk over the next few years due to how good the llms have gotten this year.

I switched over to consulting/contracting so I don’t have the visibility like they do, but my work is heavily dependent on llms. However I don’t see it wiping out the industry but rather making people more efficient.

They have much more robust tooling though around their llms and internal products that have automated much of their workflows which is I believe where the concern is coming from. They can see first hand how much of their job has turned into reviewing outputs and feeding outputs into other tools. A shift in skills but not fully automated solution yet.

It’s hard to gauge where things are going and where we’ll be in 5 years. If we only get incremental improvements there’s still huge gains to be made in building out tooling ecosystems to make this all better.

What does that look like for new college grads though? How much of this is really computer science if you are only an llm consumer?

Re: AWS CEO says replacing junior devs with AI is 'one of the dumbest ideas'

#317

Post by PaulStatezny »

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #222
pnathan wrote: post #101

I - senior - can patch an application in an unknown language and framework with the AI. I know enough to tell it to stop the wildly stupid ideas. But I don't learn. That's not what I'm trying to do- I'm trying to fix the bug. Hmm. I'm pretty sure AI is going to lead us to a deskilling crash. Food for thought.

On the other hand, if it's a one-off, you'll have forgotten what you learned by the time you'd need to use that skill again.

But without AI, there are neural connections formed while determining the correct one-off solution.

The neural connections (or lack of them) have longer term comprehension-building implications.

Re: AWS CEO says replacing junior devs with AI is 'one of the dumbest ideas'

#318

Post by [deleted] »

alexgotoi wrote: post #192

The thing people miss in these “replace juniors with AI” takes is that juniors were never mainly about cheap hands on keyboards. They’re the only people in the org who are still allowed to ask “dumb” questions without losing face, and those questions are often the only signal you get that your abstractions are nonsense. What AI does is remove a bunch of the humiliating, boring parts of being junior: hunting for the r…

[deleted]

Re: AWS CEO says replacing junior devs with AI is 'one of the dumbest ideas'

#319

Post by klipklop »

stockresearcher wrote: post #190
klipklop wrote: post #158

I believe the idea is to not stop hiring juniors. Instead it's to replace anybody that commands a high salary with a team of cheaper juniors armed with LLM's. The idea is more about dragging down average pay than never hiring anybody. At least for now.

And then all those unemployed seniors with extensive domain knowledge use AI to speedrun the creation of competition and you need to spend $$$$ to buy them out and shut them down. Solid idea.

They have lawyers, patents, non-competes, collusion and regulatory capture to prevent this from happening.

We can also assume once these coding models get good enough they will not be shared with the general public or competitors.

Re: AWS CEO says replacing junior devs with AI is 'one of the dumbest ideas'

#320

Post by harshaw »

Full disclosure: I am pretty sour on the current Amazon/AWS leadership as I think, well, they couldn't lead a company out of a paper bag (former manager at AWS). Is there data that Amazon/AWS is still hiring junior devs? I've heard it's very hard to get into student programs these days but I don't have the data. My grumpy position would be Garmin saying one thing and doing another.
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