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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

#41

Post by 9rx »

Swizec wrote: post #9

The main thing to understand about the impact of AI tools: Somehow the more senior you are [in the field of use], the better results you get. You can run faster and get more done! If you're good, you get great results faster. If you're bad, you get bad results faster. You still gotta understand what you're doing. GeLLMan Amnesia is real.

> You still gotta understand what you're doing.

Of course, but how do you begin to understand the "stochastic parrot"?

Yesterday I used LLMs all day long and everything worked perfectly. Productivity was great and I was happy. I was ready to embrace the future.

Now, today, no matter what I try, everything LLMs have produced has been a complete dumpster fire and waste of my time. Not even Opus will follow basic instructions. My day is practically over now and I haven't accomplished anything other than pointlessly fighting LLMs. Yesterday's productivity gains are now gone, I'm frustrated, exhausted, and wonder why I didn't just do it myself.

This is a recurring theme for me. Every time I think I've finally cracked the code, next time it is like I'm back using an LLM for the first time in my life. What is the formal approach that finds consistency?

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

#42

Post by volkk »

tracerbulletx wrote: post #6

I am very tired of seeing every random person's speculation (framed as real insight) on what's going to happen as they try to signify that they are super involved in AI and super on top of it and therefore still worthy of value and importance in the economy.

the wonderful modern world of "everyone must build their personal brand"

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

#43

Post by llmslave »

3vidence wrote: post #37
llmslave wrote: post #13

Its pretty clear that any white collar work where the outputs can be verified and tested in a reinforcement learning environment, will be automated

Ironically I feel like our QA team is busier than ever since most e2e user-ish tests require coordinating tools that is just beyond current LLM capabilities. We are pumping out features faster that require more QA to verify.

this is just an intermediate thing until the tooling and models catch up

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

#44

Post by Lramseyer »

tracerbulletx wrote: post #6

I am very tired of seeing every random person's speculation (framed as real insight) on what's going to happen as they try to signify that they are super involved in AI and super on top of it and therefore still worthy of value and importance in the economy.

You have to understand the people in the article are execs from the chip EDA (Electronic Design Automation) industry. It's full of dinosaurs who have resisted innovation for the past 30 years. Of course they're going to be blowing hot air about how they're "embracing AI". It's a threat to their business model.

I'm a little biased though since I work in chip design and I maintain an open source EDA project.

I agree with their take for the most part, but it's really nothing insightful or different than what people have been saying for a while now.

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

#45

Post by wallstbot »

xXSLAYERXx wrote: post #10

Senior dev here 15 years experience just turned 50 have family blah blah. I've been contracting for the last two years. The org is just starting to use Claude. I've been delegating - well copy pasting - into chatgpt which has to be the laziest way to leverage AI. I've been so successful (meaning haven't had to do anything really except argue with chatgpt when it goes off on some tangent) with this approach that I can…

That you started at around 35 is a salient point, no? What did you do before?

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

#46

Post by JasonSage »

ericmcer wrote: post #34

"in the 1920s and 1930s, to be able to drive a car you needed to understand things like spark advance, and you needed to know how to be able to refill the radiator halfway through your trip" A car still feels weirdly grounded in reality though, and the abstractions needed to understand it aren't too removed from nature (metal gets mined from rocks, forged into engine, engine blows up gasoline, radiator cools engine).…

Do you think nobody felt that way about cars?

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

#47

Post by pousada »

volkk wrote: post #42
tracerbulletx wrote: post #6

I am very tired of seeing every random person's speculation (framed as real insight) on what's going to happen as they try to signify that they are super involved in AI and super on top of it and therefore still worthy of value and importance in the economy.

the wonderful modern world of "everyone must build their personal brand"

The worst thing is that it works.

(As a musician) i never invested in a personal brand or taking part in the social media rat race and figured I concentrate on the art / craft over meaningless performance online.

Well guess who is getting 0 gigs now because “too few followers/visibility” (or maybe my music just sucks who knows …)

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

#49

Post by ares623 »

pousada wrote: post #47
volkk wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the wonderful modern world of "everyone must build their personal brand"

The worst thing is that it works. (As a musician) i never invested in a personal brand or taking part in the social media rat race and figured I concentrate on the art / craft over meaningless performance online. Well guess who is getting 0 gigs now because “too few followers/visibility” (or maybe my music just sucks who knows …)

Considering there are artists with a large following putting out atrocious work, I think we know.

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

#50

Post by dnw »

linuxftw wrote: post #40
SoftTalker wrote: post #33

"Most people who drive cars now couldn’t find the radiator cap if they were paid to, and that’s fine." That's not fine IMO. That is a basic bit of knowledge about a car and if you don't know where the radiator cap is you will eventually have to pay through the nose to someone who does know (and possibly be stranded somewhere). Knowing how to check and fill coolant isn't like knowing how to rebuild a transmission. It'…

Ironically, many cars don't have radiator caps, only reservoirs. Modern cars, for the most part, do not leak coolant unless there's a problem. They operate a high pressure. Most people, for their own safety, should not pop the hood of a car.

I have had this new car for 5 months. I haven't learned to turn on the headlights yet. It just turns itself on and adjusts the beams. Every now and then I think about where that switch might be but never get to it. I should probably know.
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