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AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

blog.florianherrengt.com

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Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#841

Post by sscaryterry »

WalterBright wrote: post #745
zzrrt wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't this imply that, had your friend not taken your advice, he would have failed and thus been an "obvious fraud", but a mere 3 weeks transformed him from fraud to competent programmer?

The leetcode test is just a screening device. Passing it means you then go through the real interviews. Also, if someone is unwilling to do the work to pass the leetcode test, they likely don't have the ambition to get the high pressure jobs.

> they likely don't have the ambition to get the high pressure jobs.

What absolute drivel. I've done plenty of leetcodes. I don't care about writing a qsort algorithm, I know the trade-offs, unless you're working for a FAANG or FAANG-adjacent company, the need to write your own sorting algorithm implementation is probably zero or near zero.

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#842

Post by ATMLOTTOBEER »

palmotea wrote: post #784
Valakas_ wrote: post #778

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This blog post illustrates the importance of NEVER outsourcing your critical thinking or outsourcing decision-making to an LLM." This is a sentence that if written just 5 years ago would result in you being seen as crazy. "LLM capable of any sort of critical thinking? Haha. Not in 50 years." It never ceases to amaze me how people are stuck in the here in the now and just accept the new reality as if it had always be…

> This is the worst LLMs will ever be. Not outsourcing critical thinking to LLM will be seen as a liability in the not so distant future. Just a year or two ago almost no one even took LLM seriously for coding. Now the status quo has moved for also critical thinking, and we hear comments like this. LLM's chances of making a mistake will be orders of magnitude lowers than humans. Slowly learn to let the wheel go. AI w…

You need to git good

The fact that you’re nervous means you will be the first to be replaced!

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#843

Post by dijit »

ElProlactin wrote: post #755
joshdavham wrote: post #752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's equally dubious to believe that some sort of body (ostensibly run by practicing software developers) would be able to come up with a means to certify proficiency. I very much mostly agree with you, but I did take the Google Cloud Associate exam a year and a half ago and honestly it felt like a pretty rigorous exam. I definitely could not have passed that exam if I was incompetent in my knowledge of cloud and I…

The question is whether you then want there to be a legal licensing requirement that requires an individual to hold certification to work as a software developer.

Maybe treat it like other professions and have a specific title be protected?

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#845

Post by edot »

DC-3 wrote: post #815
edot wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding of manual machining in the modern day is that only really big or really specialty jobs (as in, just a weird process that there isn’t a good CNC machine for) are done manually anymore. But specialty and low volume, which is exactly where LLMs are nice because I can spec it exactly how I want. I wonder what the software equivalent of “big” is. Like, you need a part made on a lathe with a 3 foot diamete…

The equivalent is probably weird, proprietary DSLs / standard libraries that AI has not been able to ingest so it performs poorly on. But maybe these days LLMs don't even really struggle with these sorts of domains.

Yeah I’d have to imagine that as long as you have the same fundamental ideas (variables, functions, loops, arrays, etc.) the syntax doesn’t matter at all. Plus it can just try, see and error, and read the error. I doubt there’s a language out there that they haven’t a) ingested and b) can’t handle.

I think perhaps the equivalent would be “this environment quite literally can’t support having an LLM attached to it”, as in say some totally airgapped AND low-performance things (industrial computing, PLCs, military stuff, etc.).

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#846

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

hattmall wrote: post #733
sgarland wrote: post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, for one, am extremely happy that electricians and plumbers have to be licensed.

Sure, but are you happy about the requirements of that licensing? Requirements that have continually expanded to require more "experience" over the years. I know in my state it was originally 1 year of experience or completion of a tech diploma and then you had to take the licensing exam. Now it is 5 years of experience and a diploma can count for one of those years. Which of course has pushed prices to insane levels…

These are valid things to be unhappy about and should be corrected. But if the implication is 'licensing has issues so we'd be better off without' then I'm not on board. It reads like one of those 'if we can't have a 100% perfect solution, then we should do nothing' arguments. Licensing does have merits and I think currently they outweigh the drawbacks. If we can make licensing better by fixing some issues, then absolutely let's do that.

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#847

Post by jreynar »

AI may indeed lead to a barbell shaped distribution - lots of people with modest skills and the need for lots of awesome people. But I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

One of the problems with the "middle class" in the past was that there were lots of mid-level jobs in big companies but people hit a ceiling and couldn't progress. Maybe the middle hollowing out will lead to more jobs with significant opportunity and responsibility rather than ones where you get trapped because you weren't at the company early enough or all the top jobs are filled.

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#848

Post by blu3pr1n7 »

dijit wrote: post #843
ElProlactin wrote: post #755

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is whether you then want there to be a legal licensing requirement that requires an individual to hold certification to work as a software developer.

Maybe treat it like other professions and have a specific title be protected?

Is it really possible to do that? I think if we were to go down this avenue we would need to consider titles other than software engineer.

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#849

Post by tuesdaynight »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #827
rayiner wrote: post #151

Technology has been doing this for decades. I think a lot of our "K shaped economy" discourse is about the bifurcation of the upper middle class creating downwardly mobile educated young people. Nobody in my wife's immediate family finished college. She and all of her cousins are quite indisputably better off than their parents. My father in law drove a forklift at a soup factory. My sister in law is studying to be a…

Will it ever stop, though? I mean, why even try if social mobility has been destroyed? If we're the permanent underclass now, then there's no point in struggling against any of this.

The class consciousness from middle class lately has been funny to me. We always had poor people that were "permanent underclass" and middle class didn't care. They were not afraid of revolution or whatever we are afraid now.

If the bad scenario happens and 99% of the people becomes irrelevant to the economy, everybody will live their life's worried about basic necessities and smart hardworking people will be richer because your background or where you live or grew up doesn't matter.

Life is not fair. We should accept that AI companies and billionaires deserve to be aristocrats. They worked hard to create these conditions. In the end, it will trickle-down (this one I partly agree, irony aside)

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#850

Post by TrackerFF »

palmotea wrote: post #784
Valakas_ wrote: post #778

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This blog post illustrates the importance of NEVER outsourcing your critical thinking or outsourcing decision-making to an LLM." This is a sentence that if written just 5 years ago would result in you being seen as crazy. "LLM capable of any sort of critical thinking? Haha. Not in 50 years." It never ceases to amaze me how people are stuck in the here in the now and just accept the new reality as if it had always be…

> This is the worst LLMs will ever be. Not outsourcing critical thinking to LLM will be seen as a liability in the not so distant future. Just a year or two ago almost no one even took LLM seriously for coding. Now the status quo has moved for also critical thinking, and we hear comments like this. LLM's chances of making a mistake will be orders of magnitude lowers than humans. Slowly learn to let the wheel go. AI w…

We're moving toward a future where intellectual workers are, indeed, fucked. At least intellectual work will be the first real casualty.

I'm not AI maximalist. But with how things have progressed the past 4-5 years, I'm more confident on the above being true, than not.

I don't think intellectual work will drop off overnight. There will be a long period, perhaps decade or two, where many jobs will just gradually disappear, where salaries will be suppressed, and humans will just become AI-babysitters and auditors.

It is a uncomfortable scenario, but people - especially young ones about the enroll college or early in their career - should consider the possibility as realistic.

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