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AI is making junior devs useless

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Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#371

Post by eloisant »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #368
eloisant wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you shouldn't say "A junior developer just isn’t worth the investment" but "my company decided not to invest in people". That might not be YOUR choice, it's still a choice being made at the company you work for.

You’re mencing words for no reason. Companies don’t care about “people”. They care about allocating capital where they see the highest return. Investing in a junior developer who will do negative work instead of a mid level developer who will do positive work once they learn the business and processes is a better investment. You’re niavely making a moral argument as if anything about corporate America is moral. Can y…

It's not a moral argument, it's about having a short term vision or a long term vision. Most US companies typically just have a short term vision, but that's not the case of all companies.

Japanese companies for example usually care more about long term. This is why US car makers like GM fire workers when business goes down, then need to rehire and potentially re-train workers. Toyota on the other hand doesn't fire workers, instead use their time for training when the business goes down. Guess which company is struggling and which one is the world leader?

So to get back to your leadership: if they only care about the next quarter, then sure no number will convince them. The company might be dead in a few years but they don't care.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#372

Post by array_key_first »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #320
array_key_first wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A junior, they have no baggage. Most software is unbelievably bad - almost all those seniors are come from products and companies that are horribly mismanaged, just in different ways. Or, maybe, the same way.

Every developer from the beginning of time thinks that when they come into a new company that everyone who came before them were idiots. Eventually we mature beyond that. I worked for two companies as a lead and the first thing I did to make things better is - nothing. I asked questions and understand the why. But what company have you worked for that you only have to understand code? There is code, underlying archit…

I didn't say this company is good and the ones before were idiots - they're all idiots.

I also never said anything about only understanding code. I explicitly mentioned politics. But understanding your particular companies politics isn't necessarily helpful, probably because the politics are shit. So, if you go from one toxic company to another company, you might make it more toxic.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#373

Post by whattheheckheck »

slopinthebag wrote: post #226
whattheheckheck wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah read Software and Mind by Andrei Sorin

> The mechanistic myth is the belief that everything can be described as a neat hierarchical structure of things within things. And few of us realize that our entire culture is based on this fallacy. While the world consists of complex, interacting structures, we prefer to treat every phenomenon as a simple, isolated structure. > Through our software pursuits, the mechanistic myth has spread beyond its academic origi…

I wish he went on a podcast

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#374

Post by drcxd »

zenware wrote: post #356
nostrademons wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that the same dynamic is playing out on a much larger scale with children. A child is far more helpless than a junior engineer - at least a junior engineer can feed themselves, wipe their own butt, avoid destroying the room, and generally keep themselves alive. Everybody wants to offload the cost of raising children to parents, because the economic benefits aren't realized for 25+ years yet the costs…

That being said, a huge amount of the work being done (arguably all of it) is in support of humans. It would follow then that the more of us there are the more work is required, whereas if there were fewer of us less work is required. — I think the real concerns about birth-rate/population decline come from “borrowing against the future”, if that future never materializes then you cashed bad checks.

In my opinion, reproduction is based on the idea "borrowing against the future", or Ponzi Scheme, because reproduction is based on the idea that "we would have a better future", but in fact, we will not.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#375

Post by drcxd »

grigri907 wrote: post #318
ffsm8 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Birthrate dropping has multiple causes, none of them have any relation to the topic at hand It's a negative (from the perspective of reproduction) confluence of both social and economic developments. E.g. the death of the traditional gender roles has inevitably reduced birth rates - for multiple reasons to boot. Because on the one hand, the women has am easier time not to commit and just sleep around, consequentl…

You can't whitewash your statement by saying, "neither sex is responsible for this" after you've already twice accused women of "sleeping around."

You miss read. The parent thread said: > the women has am easier time not to commit and just sleep around That's for women. The second time they mentioned sleep round: > Dating apps are available, statistically women all try to get into a relationship with the same 1% of men - who sleep around and cause toxicity all around. They mean the 1% of men are the ones who sleep around. Also, I think it is better to interpret "sleep around" as the state of having non-committed sex relationship with non-marital partner. It is a description of a fact rather than an accusation. Though the words may sound harsh.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#376

Post by adamtaylor_13 »

srfn wrote: post #238
adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #13

I can't seem to get the article to load, but I think I get the gist from the title. I hired a junior "dev" who literally hadn't even completed an HTML course. Before AI I could not have hired them because they literally did not know how to dev. After AI, anyone with a little grit can push themselves into the field pretty easily. As with everything in life: you can choose to hard route or you can choose the easy route…

Adam, can you please share, how in the world, this junior dev got hired with you? I'm self-taught dev with multiple years of experience. I choose the hard route, even after AI. For me, programming is theory building, so I always choose understanding above all else. Rock solid understanding of TypeScript, frontend and backed. I have sent 100s of CVs. For Juniors, Mids and Seniors. Not even a single interview. I will b…

Man, I'm sorry to hear that. It's definitely a rough market out there right now and unfortunately my answer won't be helpful: it's my brother.

I wanted to help him transition into a new industry and had the capital and time to let him get up to speed.

That being said, perhaps there is a nugget there: networking with people you know is always, always, 1000% always more effective than firing CVs off. Not to say CVs don't work, but I hired my brother despite it not being in MY best interest. That's the power of relationships.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#377

Post by adamtaylor_13 »

risyachka wrote: post #18
adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #13

I can't seem to get the article to load, but I think I get the gist from the title. I hired a junior "dev" who literally hadn't even completed an HTML course. Before AI I could not have hired them because they literally did not know how to dev. After AI, anyone with a little grit can push themselves into the field pretty easily. As with everything in life: you can choose to hard route or you can choose the easy route…

>> who literally hadn't even completed an HTML course. so what is their value? proxy your requests to ai?

Their value is it's my brother and I need a human brain to be able to slowly morph into a developer over time.

So I suppose, sorta, yes. The expectation is to proxy AI requests while building a mental framework for how software is built.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#378

Post by adamtaylor_13 »

idontwantthis wrote: post #107
adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #13

I can't seem to get the article to load, but I think I get the gist from the title. I hired a junior "dev" who literally hadn't even completed an HTML course. Before AI I could not have hired them because they literally did not know how to dev. After AI, anyone with a little grit can push themselves into the field pretty easily. As with everything in life: you can choose to hard route or you can choose the easy route…

Why are you paying them instead of running the AI yourself?

My brain can only scale so far. We're not yet at the place where AI removes all humans, so in the meantime it pays to have human brains continuing to learn how software is built.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#379

Post by adamtaylor_13 »

rsynnott wrote: post #145
adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #13

I can't seem to get the article to load, but I think I get the gist from the title. I hired a junior "dev" who literally hadn't even completed an HTML course. Before AI I could not have hired them because they literally did not know how to dev. After AI, anyone with a little grit can push themselves into the field pretty easily. As with everything in life: you can choose to hard route or you can choose the easy route…

> I hired a junior "dev" who literally hadn't even completed an HTML course. I mean, I'm a fairly senior dev, and have literally never completed, or indeed really heard of, a html course. Is that, eh, part of your average CS degree these days?

Ha. Yeah, that's a sloppy example. My point was that he wasn't even a "junior" insofar as he didn't even really know what development looks like.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#380

Post by BobbyJo »

watwut wrote: post #340
BobbyJo wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bummer. I was lucky enough to be that junior engineer for the first few years of my career.

I mean, our juniors were useful. Sometimes they got easier tasks, sometimes they got tasks on non-core parts of the project where the stakes were lower. I think that when they are truly just useless, they are either on the wrong project or company do something wrong. I was useful as a junior too.

I did things, some of which were pretty useful or clever, but between telling me what to do, coaching me how to do it, reviewing what I did, and telling me what to change, I probably cost more time than I saved the first few years of my career.

I almost certainly took more time from my seniors than I saved them, and the juniors I've mentored have mostly done the same for me.

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