Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

finalroundai.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

541–550 of 554 posts

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

#541

Post by switchbak »

bgwalter wrote: post #323
switchbak wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you're so out of touch as to not know who Kent Beck is, these questions hardly matter. The thrust of the issue is that: when used suitably, AI tools can increase the rate of learning such that it changes the economics of investments in juniour developers - in a good way, to the contrary of how these tools have been discussed in the mainstream. That is an interesting take, and worthy of discussion. Your appeal to…

I know who Kent Beck is and I'm not impressed by Agile and Extreme Programming. What I did not know and what the Wikipedia page revealed is that he worked for a YCombinator company. Thus the downvotes.

Why are you asking us what he's working on? Why not go find out yourself?

What does any of that have to do with having a valid opinion?

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

#542

Post by rafterydj »

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…

plugging your AI newsletter at the end of your comment comes off as an indicator you want to farm engagement, not genuinely stimulate conversation.

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

#543

Post by cakealert »

jraph wrote: post #538
cakealert wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I prefer my positions strong and based on reality, not based on lies (to myself included). Then you would be the exception, not the rule. And if you find yourself attached to any ideology, then you are also wrong about yourself. Subscribing to any ideology is by definition lying to yourself. Being able to place yourself into the shoes of others is something evolution spent 1000s of generations hardwiring into us, I…

> Subscribing to any ideology is by definition lying to yourself. What a bold claim. An ideology is a set of beliefs, principles or values. Having beliefs, principles or values is not lying to oneself. Keeping beliefs despite being confronted to pieces of evidence that negate them is. And yes, of course I'm attached to some ideologies. I assume everybody is, consciously or not. Also, you might want to double-check wh…

> Having beliefs, principles or values is not lying to oneself.

The lie is that you adopted "beliefs, principles or values" which cannot ever serve your interests, you have subsumed yourself into something that cannot ever reciprocate. Ideology by definition even alters your perceived interests, a more potent subversion cannot be had (up to now, with potential involuntary neural interfaces on the horizon).

> Citation needed

I will not be providing one, but that you believe one is required is telling. There is no further point to this discussion.

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

#544

Post by jraph »

cakealert wrote: post #543
jraph wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Subscribing to any ideology is by definition lying to yourself. What a bold claim. An ideology is a set of beliefs, principles or values. Having beliefs, principles or values is not lying to oneself. Keeping beliefs despite being confronted to pieces of evidence that negate them is. And yes, of course I'm attached to some ideologies. I assume everybody is, consciously or not. Also, you might want to double-check wh…

> Having beliefs, principles or values is not lying to oneself. The lie is that you adopted "beliefs, principles or values" which cannot ever serve your interests, you have subsumed yourself into something that cannot ever reciprocate. Ideology by definition even alters your perceived interests, a more potent subversion cannot be had (up to now, with potential involuntary neural interfaces on the horizon). > Citation…

I can't make any sense of your first paragraph. And again, please look up "by definition".

> I will not be providing one, but that you believe one is required is telling

Telling what? That you have the burden of proof?

Suit yourself though.

> There is no further point to this discussion.

I'm afraid I agree with you here. Good day / good night.

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

#545

Post by foobiekr »

awesome_dude wrote: post #383
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.

My Entire career "Why the f*ck are you asking, you should know this" or "Why the f*ck can you not look that up" edit: There's an entire chapter of the internet with "LMGTFY" responses because people ask questions. or "Isn't it f*cking obvious" or "Do I have to f*cking spell it out for you" There's a strong chance that I am autistic, which means, yes, I need people to be (more) explicit. AI has done a hell of a good j…

I am sorry that has been your experience. I have worked in a lot of "rough/gruff/hardcore" environments, almost all of my career, at companies that are widely recognized to be fairly political and antagonistic, and none of them have ever, ever been even remotely like this.

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

#546

Post by nathan_douglas »

GeoAtreides wrote: post #159
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...

When I first opened QBasic, years ago, when I was a wee lad, the online QBasic help didn't replace my trusty qbasic book (it supplemented it, maybe), nor did it write the programs for me. It was just there, doing nothing, waiting for me to press F1. AI, on the other hand...

I couldn't make head nor tails of the QBasic help back in the day. I wanted to. I remember reading the sections about integers and booleans and trying to make sense out of them. I think I did manage to figure out how to use subroutines eventually, but it took quite a lot of time and frustration. I wish I'd had a book... or a deeper programming class. The one I had never went further than loops. No arrays, etc.

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

#547

Post by shakna »

fuzztester wrote: post #536
shakna wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Somewhat, but not exactly the reverse, is Tall poppy syndrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome I had read it about AU and JP and had read about the Jante thing, but the article says it is there in some other countries too. Probably exists everywhere in some form. I wonder if people here have experienced anything like that. My guess is yes.

That, I have certainly seen.

But that is about attacking success stories, not about attacking you for not knowing something. I know you said reverse, just spelling out they're different.

Win an award? Get a callout for effort? Rest of the office will probably dunk on you. Varying in scale from a day or two of jokes to career ruining.

But... Ask the meaning of an acronym in a meeting, or say you don't know how to do something, and you'll probably just be given a name to ask.

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

#548

Post by oytis »

weakfish wrote: post #182
calepayson wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as a junior, I’m happy to do this on my own (and do!). Conversations like this are always well intentioned and friction truly is super useful to learning. But the ‘…’ in these conversations seems to always be implicating that we should inject friction. There’s no need. I have peers who aren’t interested in learning at all. Adding friction to their process doesn’t force them to learn. Meanwhile adding frictio…

I’ll also make the observation that the extra time spent is very valuable if your objective solely is learning, but often the Business™ needs require something working ASAP

It's not that friction is always good for learning either though. If you ever prepared course materials, you know that it's important to reduce friction in the irrelevant parts, so that students don't get distracted and demotivated and time and energy is spent on what they need to learn.

So in principle Gen AI could accelerate learning with deliberate use, but it's hard for the instructor to guide that, especially for less motivated students

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

#549

Post by tech_tuna »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #167
orliesaurus wrote: post #37

Interesting take... I'm seeing a pattern... People think AI can do it all... BUT I see juniors often are the ones who actually understand AI tools better than seniors... That's what AWS CEO points out... He said juniors are usually the most experienced with AI tools, so cutting them makes no sense... He also mentioned they are usually the least expensive, so there's little cost saving... AND he warned that without a…

> I'm seeing a pattern... Me too. Fire your senior devs. (Ha ha, not ha ha.)

I love that the dominant narrative with modern AI is "figure out who we can fire" pronto. I don't see a clear pattnern with juniors and seniors and AI. I know some younger engineers who are not embracing AI tools at all.

I'd say that AI tools make good engineers better and more productive and makes bad engineers appear to be more productive but ultimately makes them shoot themselves in the foot more thoroughly and quickly, while also piling up more work for everyone else.

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

#550

Post by fuzztester »

shakna wrote: post #547
fuzztester wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhat, but not exactly the reverse, is Tall poppy syndrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome I had read it about AU and JP and had read about the Jante thing, but the article says it is there in some other countries too. Probably exists everywhere in some form. I wonder if people here have experienced anything like that. My guess is yes.

That, I have certainly seen. But that is about attacking success stories, not about attacking you for not knowing something. I know you said reverse, just spelling out they're different. Win an award? Get a callout for effort? Rest of the office will probably dunk on you. Varying in scale from a day or two of jokes to career ruining. But... Ask the meaning of an acronym in a meeting, or say you don't know how to do s…

>I know you said reverse, just spelling out they're different.

Hey. Sup. :)

I didn't say reverse.

I said:

>Somewhat, but not exactly the reverse, is Tall poppy syndrome.

Next time, and forever after, check points better before commenting, including the point that is right above the comment that you replied to, aka mine.

Pinky promise? :)

Welcome to the AI (r)age, where people comment without thinking or reading.

Oops, mea culpa.

Entschulding!

It was happening much before that, and not only on HN.

In fact, it has been happening forever, and anyone who doesn't know it is a rotten egg.

Post reply on HN