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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'

#451

Post by lanstin »

iwontberude wrote: post #236
47928485 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My recommendation to mid-level, senior, and staff engineers is to keep questioning decisions and create a culture where that’s encouraged. Tell me you've never worked at FAANG without telling me you've never worked at FAANG...

Usually the people who question decisions are shot down because they don’t have a wholistic understanding of the decision and (respectfully) don’t have good arguments. This is only because they are focused on some narrow aspect of the business which distorts or reduces their visibility and understanding.

This thinking pattern exactly illustrates how a group of very intelligent people can make disasterously bad decisions without anyone challenging them. Don't look for holes in the the arguments of people saying you are making a bad decision, look for the information they have that you do not have or have not explicitly analyzed. If you think you have all the information that the org possesses, go right ahead and make your choices without others; you might be lucky and be Steve Jobs post 2000.

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

#452

Post by shakna »

rukuu001 wrote: post #299
rsanek wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"without losing face"? What culture are you referring to? The Western companies I have worked at do not discourage such questions -- in fact, it's often the sign of someone very senior when they ask a seemingly 'dumb' question that others have taken for granted.

Think of highly competitive environments where looking foolish can be weaponised against you. They definitely exist here (my experience in UK and Australia)

IBM Aus discouraged it, Accenture, Concentrix, EY, CommBank, ANZ, and others all encouraged it, for myself.

I wouldn't say discouraging it will be the norm across most places in Australia.

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

#453

Post by ehnto »

lokar wrote: post #371
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)

Just curious, are you mostly FE? I could see this there (but there is still a lot of browser esoteria, etc) Doing backend and large distributed systems it (seems to me), much deeper. Types of consistency and their tradeoffs in practice, details like implementing and correctly using lamport clocks, good API design, endless details about reworking, on and on. And then for both, a learned sense of what approaches to sys…

I still agree more or less that the best way for a junior to succeed is to jump in the deep end, not without guidance though. Mentorship is really important in distributed systems where the inner machinations can be quite obtuse. But I find you can't just explain it all and expect it to stick, mentoring someone through a task is the best way.

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

#454

Post by lanstin »

ebiester wrote: post #231
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…

So, I think there are two models. One is a "one junior per team" model. I endorse this for exactly the reasons you speak. Another, as I recently saw, was a 70/30 model of juniors to seniors. You make your seniors as task delegators and put all implementation on the junior developers. This puts an "up or out" pressure and gives very little mentorship opportunities. if 70% of your engineers are under 4 years of experie…

My first big job was the 1 junior per team; those years were extremely good for learning how to design and write high performance services. Since then, I've mostly been at the 70/30 places where I'm considered senior. Occasionally I just sit down and blast out a big software project, just to feel I am still able, but mostly I tend the garden hoping that a few of the fragile stems will survive and grow into mighty oaks.

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

#455

Post by ehnto »

ekkeke wrote: post #117
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)

You can't give a junior tasks that require experience and nuance that have been acquired over years of development. If you babysit them, then perhaps but then what is the point? By it's nature "nuance" is something hard to describe concretely but as someone who has mentored a fair few juniors most of them don't have it. AI generally doesn't have it either. Juniors need tasks at the boundary of their capability, but n…

> If you babysit them, then perhaps but then what is the point

In a long term enterprise the point is building up a long term skillset into the community. Bolstering your teams hive mind on a smaller scale also.

But work has evolved and the economy has become increasingly hostile to long term building, making it difficult to get buy in for efforts that don't immediately get work done or make money.

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

#456

Post by sharkweek »

rsanek wrote: post #226
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…

"without losing face"? What culture are you referring to? The Western companies I have worked at do not discourage such questions -- in fact, it's often the sign of someone very senior when they ask a seemingly 'dumb' question that others have taken for granted.

Best VP I’ve ever had would stop meetings with regular frequency and say, “maybe I’m the dumbest person here, but I don’t understand [insert something being discussed], can you help me get a better understanding?”

It was anybody’s guess if they really didn’t understand the topic or if they were reading the room, but it was always appreciated.

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

#457

Post by 627467 »

deepsquirrelnet wrote: post #450
chaos_emergent wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

It’s an interesting question isn’t it? There are obvious qualities about being able to find information quickly and precisely. However, the search becomes much narrower, and what must inevitably result is a homogeneity of outcomes. Eventually we will have to somehow convince AI of new and better ways of doing things. It’ll be propaganda campaigns waged by humans to convince God to deploy new instructions to her child…

> inevitably result is a homogeneity of outcomes

And this outcome will be obvious very quickly for most observers won't it? So, the magic will occur by pushing AI beyond another limit or just have people go back to specialize on what eventually will becoming boring and procedural until AI catches up

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

#458

Post by mmh0000 »

awesome_dude wrote: post #404
jamblewamble wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asking questions is a good thing but that doesnt mean ALL questions. It doesnt include questions you could answer with a google search or by reading documentation, obviously.

Got it - ask questions, but not ones that you already know where the answer is. edit: well, except when you search the documentation and get (literally) 70+ results because you don't know the exact phrasing used in the self hosted wiki... Or, when it's a question that is domain specific (meaning that the SME is supposed to know it, which you only know if you are... an SME...) etc

Provide context when asking.

: “hey bob, I looked here and here and here and didn’t find the correct information. Can you show me where to look or tell me the answer so I can document it”

Because most people don’t bother doing the tiniest amount of their own research before asking dumb questions it becomes a huge headache to answer the same thing a million times.

However, if you can show that you did put in the effort to look up the answer first people will be much more willing to help.

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

#459

Post by MrChoke »

47928485 wrote: post #211
tyre wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really good and under appreciated point. My recommendation to mid-level, senior, and staff engineers is to keep questioning decisions and create a culture where that’s encouraged. Junior devs do that naturally (if you have the culture) because they don’t know anything already. It’s great

> My recommendation to mid-level, senior, and staff engineers is to keep questioning decisions and create a culture where that’s encouraged. Tell me you've never worked at FAANG without telling me you've never worked at FAANG...

Most of us haven't, good for you

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

#460

Post by byzantinegene »

neilv wrote: post #388

> “Number one, my experience is that many of the most junior folks are actually the most experienced with the AI tools. So they're actually most able to get the most out of them.” Would that experience be from cheating on their homework? Are you sure that's the skill you want to prioritize? > “Number two, they're usually the least expensive because they're right out of college, and they generally make less. So if you…

if it isn't obvious already, his plan is to get other companies to train juniors so AWS can poach them when they become seniors
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