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What's gonna happen to software engineers?

yakko.dev

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Re: What's gonna happen to software engineers?

#51

Post by gymbeaux »

Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #29
prplfsh wrote: post #3

I really love using AI to code but more and more I wonder ... Are things really that different? So I guess I'm the business as usual type. I think on the frontend side we're going to see a lot more scope for teams. On a backend infra side it seems as hard as ever. Still have to think really hard problems, think deeply about data structure and flow, and deal with second- and third-order effects. Or even harder because…

My feelings right now can be described as follows: If AI progress stalls now or grinds to a halt, we get to keep a lot of new jobs that are going to show up (it opens a lot of doors), while maintaining software devs as an interesting career. Egoistically, I would love that. If it keeps going and software devs get replaced, so many jobs are going to disappear.

Even though the synthetic benchmarks paint a picture of LLMs coming a long way since 2022, my practical experience has been that they aren’t tangibly better. No doubt someone reading this will chime in and say LLMs are way better at writing code or whatever, and maybe that’s true, but there’s no difference between ChatGPT 3.5 and Claude Opus 4.8 as far as my trusting the output. Opus 4.8 still messes up plenty. It’s particularly bad with identifying and fixing CI yaml, but it struggles in the usual areas too.

So I’m thinking we’ve just about reached apex with LLMs, and they have failed at replacing software engineers (companies can freeze hiring juniors at their own, future peril using any excuse they like).

Re: What's gonna happen to software engineers?

#52

Post by scorpioxy »

yakkomajuri wrote: post #42
fhub wrote: post #35

Four day working weeks would be nice.

OP here. So I've also been running a survey about how developers are feeling about AI (added a link to the post) and 60% of respondents said that using AI actively makes them more tired. Most also report being more productive with AI. One would think these two things combined make up for initiatives for shorter work weeks and the like, but from what I've seen, at least for now, the opposite seems to be happening. P.S…

Shorter work weeks don't mean less work though. Not from the point of view of management, at least. It just means that 5 days are now compressed to 4, probably making the problem much worse and burn out much more likely.

In my experience, this is what ended up happening.

Re: What's gonna happen to software engineers?

#53

Post by steve_adams_86 »

englishspot wrote: post #37
prplfsh wrote: post #3

I really love using AI to code but more and more I wonder ... Are things really that different? So I guess I'm the business as usual type. I think on the frontend side we're going to see a lot more scope for teams. On a backend infra side it seems as hard as ever. Still have to think really hard problems, think deeply about data structure and flow, and deal with second- and third-order effects. Or even harder because…

I work on backend infra. I touch a lot of things and have multiple instances of claude code running at once. I do feel like I'm doing more simultaneously. but that's still more that I have to keep track of and make sense of in my head. claude is making me way more productive, for sure, but at the same time I feel way more overwhelmed than I've ever been. idk how anyone else is doing it and managing all of this. suppo…

I’ve been finding I can mitigate the sense of being overwhelmed by trying to keep my tasks within the same domain or part of the code base. I know it’s not always an option, though.

I guess the goal is to stack context rather than spread it.

I find it incredibly exhausting otherwise. It’s a skill I don’t have in spades. I’ll have to develop it, though.

I don’t think the people trusting agents end to end are getting the quality they think they are. I’m bullish on AI as a permanent and genuinely useful tool in our kit, but I’m not seeing signs that you can actually let them loose at all. Looping on a very well defined problem, sure. But open-ended tasks across large infrastructures and complex domains, no, it’s going to be duct tape and sprawl as far as the IDE can see. It’s going to sprawl faster than context limits can grow, and the mess will only get worse.

From what I can tell, the solution is an ever-expanding roster of agents to make piece work of these immense tasks. The token expense for this approach is insane, though. I used deep-research in Claude Code today and it dispatched 103 agents and consumed something like 3.5MM tokens in ten minutes. That can’t be the future, can it?

Re: What's gonna happen to software engineers?

#54

Post by ChicagoDave »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #17
ChicagoDave wrote: post #4

I've been thinking about this since ChatGPT arrived. My thoughts are distilled in a single page: https://devarch.ai/trio-paradigm.html I doubt we will ever need a large team to build software again. PMs will be fractional. Product owners and subject matter experts will become more valuable. And engineers that have deep experience with things like Domain-Driven Design will thrive and vibe coders will eventually be shu…

> I doubt we will ever need a large team to build software again. but that seems to contradict what you say here: > vibe coders will eventually be shut out of bigger roles. Isn't vibe coding driving that greater productivity and negating the need for large teams to build software?

Vibe coding is the chaos version of using GenAI. Seven agents in parallel and the dev refuses to believe this will just be a circle jerk of hallucinations.

Planned, architected problems led by experienced dev/arch’s will be where success is measured.

Re: What's gonna happen to software engineers?

#55

Post by evilduck »

dktp wrote: post #26
ai_fry_ur_brain wrote: post #6

[flagged]

People take pride in wearing handmade watches As of today, I've never heard of anyone taking pride in using a SaaS or frequenting a website or an app because it was handcrafted. Maybe some day

Websites no, but there have been many Mac apps that I have paid for even though a lower quality free option existed.

Re: What's gonna happen to software engineers?

#56

Post by mikewarot »

Software Engineers, like all licensed professional Engineers will be just fine, as AI can't assume liability, nor be professionally licensed.

Programmers, on the other hand have a lot less leverage to bring to bear.

Of course, the above assumes that the job cuts are actually AI related, and not just cover for having to fire people because ZIRP (Zero Interest Rate Policy - aka free money) is over.

Re: What's gonna happen to software engineers?

#57

Post by bigstrat2003 »

gymbeaux wrote: post #51
Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My feelings right now can be described as follows: If AI progress stalls now or grinds to a halt, we get to keep a lot of new jobs that are going to show up (it opens a lot of doors), while maintaining software devs as an interesting career. Egoistically, I would love that. If it keeps going and software devs get replaced, so many jobs are going to disappear.

Even though the synthetic benchmarks paint a picture of LLMs coming a long way since 2022, my practical experience has been that they aren’t tangibly better. No doubt someone reading this will chime in and say LLMs are way better at writing code or whatever, and maybe that’s true, but there’s no difference between ChatGPT 3.5 and Claude Opus 4.8 as far as my trusting the output. Opus 4.8 still messes up plenty. It’s…

Yep, that has been my experience as well. There hasn't been any meaningful improvement in LLMs since ChatGPT first launched. They still fall over, in the same ways, and with more or less the same high rates.

Re: What's gonna happen to software engineers?

#58

Post by bigstrat2003 »

ryandvm wrote: post #7

I've definitely noticed a distinct lack of pride now that Claude Code is writing 90% of the code I'm delivering these days. For simple problems (which most are) it works well enough and you are definitely shipping code faster - and with actual test coverage to boot. But it just doesn't feel the same - there's little craftsmanship and honestly it's boring as fuck. You spend a lot of time setting up guardrails and havi…

> I've definitely noticed a distinct lack of pride now that Claude Code is writing 90% of the code I'm delivering these days.

Well, yeah. There's nothing to be proud of. When an LLM is doing the work, human expertise is relevant. My employer has been trying to tell us that our skills still matter and are needed, but that is very obviously bullshit they are saying to keep people placated while they try to line up AI replacements for everyone. You have my sympathies, brother.

Re: What's gonna happen to software engineers?

#59

Post by BobbyTables2 »

glouwbug wrote: post #38
hootz wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reversing to which direction? Because what I've always seen here is a pretty good mix of positive and negative sentiments. Usually we get a lot of AI related submissions, but with skeptics/opposers in the comments.

I’m not sure. I’ve been reading death-of-the-software engineer for years, but recently the -vibe- feels different. I don’t have anything anecdotal to back it up so take it with a grain of salt. I might be reading what I want to see

In my opinion, as AI was oversold for too long, it was was easy to dismiss it. Classical image processing was marketed as “AI”. Doomsday predictions about AI seemed laughable, just as SkyNet in the Terminator seemed unrealistic.

The early ChatGPT versions were also pretty silly and equally oversold.

At this point, the popular messaging of AI is still 90% fiction but the remaining real 10% is now a force to be reckoned with.

Companies laying off Indian call center employees to replace with AI is something I never would have dreamed of.

My experience of using AI as a search engine has surprised me. I never expected an overgrown pile of matrices to work that well.

Re: What's gonna happen to software engineers?

#60

Post by sublinear »

jeremyjh wrote: post #14

I've been both types on and off and on for my whole career. At times, very engrossed in the technology itself - but I got started because I needed tools for my job that didn't exist so I learned how to build them. I've also developed and maintained open source software - some of it very much for its own sake as a technology - some of it quite utilitarian. Understanding of product and business has always differentiate…

> people who can force themselves to really think through proposed designs...

You're describing experience, not "forcing themselves".

On the dev side, the differentiator is enough of this experience that using AI is actually significantly slower for everything but literally typing the code.

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