Firing programmers for AI is a mistake • Hacker News Board

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#731

Post by jopsen » Tue, Feb 11, 2025, 10:32 PM UTC

NicuCalcea wrote: post #511

Workers in various industries have pled for their jobs and programmers said "no, my code can replace you". Now that automation is coming for them, it's suddenly "the dumbest mistake". Tech has "disrupted" many industries, leaving some better, but many worse. Now that "disruption" is pointed inwards. Programmers will have to adapt to the new market conditions like everyone else. There will either be fewer jobs to go a…

LLMs might enable us to build things we couldn't build before.

It's just as plausible that the market will simply grow.

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#732

Post by gitgud » Tue, Feb 11, 2025, 10:37 PM UTC

> The next generation of programmers will grow up expecting AI to do the hard parts for them.

This is the opposite of what I’ve seen. AI does the easy parts, only the hard parts are left…

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#733

Post by johnnyanmac » Tue, Feb 11, 2025, 10:38 PM UTC

falcor84 wrote: post #626

MyOutfitIsVague wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you really claiming that it's inherently wrong to argue against somebody who is rich?

No, not at all, it's absolutely cool to argue against specific decisions he made, but I just wanted to reject this attempt at sarcasm about his overall decision-making: >Zuckerberg, as always, is well known for making excellent business decisions that lead to greater sector buy in.

If we're being honest here. A lot of the current technocrats made one or two successful products or acquisitions, and more or less relied on those alone to power everything else. And they weren't necessarily the best, they were simple first. Everything else is incredibly hit or miss, so I wouldn't call them visionaries.

Apple was almost the one exception, but the post Jobs era definitely had that cultural branding stagnate at best.

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#734

Post by yojat661 » Tue, Feb 11, 2025, 10:39 PM UTC

mirsadm wrote: post #724

tmnvdb wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People somehow have expectations that are both too high and too low at the same time. They expect (demand) current language models completely replace a human engineer in any field without making mistakes (this is obviously way too optimistic) while at the same time they are ignoring how rapid the progress has been and how much these models can now do that seemed impossible just 2 years ago, delivering huge value when…

ChatGPT 4 was released 2 years ago. Personally I don't think things have moved on significantly since then.

Exactly. I have been waiting for gpt5 to see the delta, but after gpt4 things seemed to have stalled.

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#735

Post by aaroninsf » Tue, Feb 11, 2025, 10:43 PM UTC

I'd like to suggest caution wrt a sentiment in this thread, that actual phase change in the industry i.e. readers here losing their jobs and job prospectcs, "doesn't feel right around the corner."

In specific, most of you are familiar with human cognitive error when reasoning with non-linearities.

I'm going to assert and would cheerfully put money behind the prospect that this is exactly one of the domains within which nonlinear behavior is most evident and hence our intuitions are most wrong.

Could be a year, could be a few, but we're going to hit the 80% case being covered just find thank you by run of the mill automated tools, and then press on into asymptote.

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#736

Post by madrox » Tue, Feb 11, 2025, 10:48 PM UTC

I think anyone who is afraid of AI destroying our field just has to look at the history of DevOps. That was a massive shift in systems engineering and how production is maintained. It changed how people did their jobs, required people to learn new skills, and leaders to change how they thought about the business.

AI is going to change a lot about software, but AI code tools are coming for SWEs the way Kubernetes came for DevOps. AI completely replacing the job function is unsubstantiated.

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#737

Post by giancarlostoro » Tue, Feb 11, 2025, 10:50 PM UTC

moogly wrote: post #719

giancarlostoro wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They all sounds like crypto bros talking about AI. It's really frustrating to talk to them, just like crypto bros.

They're the same people in my experience.

Its the same energy for sure.

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#738

Post by gopher_space » Tue, Feb 11, 2025, 10:52 PM UTC

whynotminot wrote: post #328

SJC_Hacker wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that last 5% is what you're paying for

But not really. Looking around my shop, I’m probably the only one around who used to write a lot of C code. No one is coming to ask me about obscure memory bugs. I’m certainly not getting paid better than my peers. The knowledge I have is personally gratifying to me because I like having a deeper understanding of things. But I have to tell you I thought knowing more would give me a deeper advantage than it has in act…

You're providing value every time you kill a bad idea "because things don't actually work that way" or shave a loop, you're just not tracking the value and neither is your boss.

To your employer, hiring people who know things (i.e. you) has giving them a deeper advantage in actual practice.

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#739

Post by ImaCake » Tue, Feb 11, 2025, 10:54 PM UTC

markus_zhang wrote: post #164

pyrale wrote: post #11

We have fired all our programmers. However, the AI is hard to work with, it expects specific wording in order to program our code as expected. We have hired people with expertise in the specific language needed to transmit our specifications to the AI with more precision.

Actually I think that's the near future, or close to it. 1. Humans also need specific wording in order to program code that stakeholders expected. A lot of people are laughing at AI because they think getting requirements is a human privilege. 2. On the contrary, I don't think people need to hire AI interfacers. Instead, business stakeholders are way more interested to interface with AI simply because they just want…

Your argument depends on LLMs being able to handle the complexity that is currently the MBA -> dev interface. I suspect it won't really solve it, but its ability to facilitate and simplify that interface will be invaluable.

Im not convinced the people writing specs are capable of writing them well enough that an LLM can replace the human dev.

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#740

Post by fragmede » Tue, Feb 11, 2025, 10:55 PM UTC

madrox wrote: post #736

I think anyone who is afraid of AI destroying our field just has to look at the history of DevOps. That was a massive shift in systems engineering and how production is maintained. It changed how people did their jobs, required people to learn new skills, and leaders to change how they thought about the business. AI is going to change a lot about software, but AI code tools are coming for SWEs the way Kubernetes came…

If the job of SWEs after AI is to edit yaml, json, yaml templates, and yaml-templates-in-yaml-templates all day long, while waiting for ArgoCD, I quit.