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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?

#911

Post by Vegenoid »

codexon wrote: post #661
johnnyanmac wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>as long as the quality is good. Well that's where we're seemingly at an impasse, no? I don't even like the term "good vibecoding". The term was implied as a means to just let the computer type its own code and "go with the vibes". i.e. you have no deeper idea on how it works underneath. Now, AI-assisted coding? It can be good. It can be a rush job. But the idea is that LLM's are in the passenger's seat, not the dive…

The output is indistinguishable from manually written code.

"My vibecoded stuff is indistinguishable from handwritten stuff" and "I got anti-AI comments after vibecoding my website even though I didn't say anything about AI" are not very compatible with each other.

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

#912

Post by WalterBright »

tombert wrote: post #763
WalterBright wrote: post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be surprised at how incompetent some engineers are. They get filtered out with the leetcode test. Of course, it doesn't filter them all out, and that's why there's a followup interview round.

I have given dozens of interviews at big companies and small companies and medium companies so I am not speaking out of my ass. These leetcode tests are not good filters, nothing is “surprising” me. Generally they are just wanky bullshit from some middle manager’s slightly-incorrect recollection of their first “data structures and algorithms” class, and the solution is almost invariably “use a hashmap” or “use a minh…

I haven't heard of any interview method that wasn't roundly condemned on HN.

> the solution is almost invariably “use a hashmap” or “use a minheap”

And you wouldn't be wasting your time on candidates who:

1. don't know what a hashmap or minheap is

2. didn't bother to study up before the interview

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

#913

Post by WalterBright »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #856
tombert wrote: post #763

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have given dozens of interviews at big companies and small companies and medium companies so I am not speaking out of my ass. These leetcode tests are not good filters, nothing is “surprising” me. Generally they are just wanky bullshit from some middle manager’s slightly-incorrect recollection of their first “data structures and algorithms” class, and the solution is almost invariably “use a hashmap” or “use a minh…

Agree 100%. The problem is that leetcode problems are nothing like the actual practice of writing commercial code. Writing good commercial code is about keeping things as simple as possible, as clean as possible, as readable as possible. Use libraries for the complex stuff, don't invent complex solutions. And, as you say, use standard data structures whenever possible. Don't optimise early. Don't fix performance bott…

> The best interview method I've seen is getting the candidate to work for a day or two alongside the team.

That doesn't scale - what if you have 100 applicants? The leetcode will narrow down the field.

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

#914

Post by marcus_holmes »

WalterBright wrote: post #913
marcus_holmes wrote: post #856

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree 100%. The problem is that leetcode problems are nothing like the actual practice of writing commercial code. Writing good commercial code is about keeping things as simple as possible, as clean as possible, as readable as possible. Use libraries for the complex stuff, don't invent complex solutions. And, as you say, use standard data structures whenever possible. Don't optimise early. Don't fix performance bott…

> The best interview method I've seen is getting the candidate to work for a day or two alongside the team. That doesn't scale - what if you have 100 applicants? The leetcode will narrow down the field.

Yeah, I've only seen it work for the last few applicants, but it did work really well.

The "pick a bug and fix it" scales better, though still not to 100 applicants.

Though I'd say putting 100 people through leetcode interviews would still break a talent acquisition process. I've been part of this kind of process before (though with arbitrary code problems not leetcode) and it was hell for the entire team going through it. Nothing got done for weeks while they were dragged into endless tech interviews.

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

#915

Post by soperj »

rhdunn wrote: post #790
soperj wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why wouldn't you use those limited resources to test things before they go to production, instead of creating more crappy things that go to production?

What do you test? How much time/effort do you spend testing each of those things? How do you know those will be performance issues? There's only so much you can do -- making reasonable assumptions, choosing suitable data structures, database indices, testing various workloads, etc. -- in a limited test environment. You may spend a week optimizing a feature that only 10 people use or that never gets to the point where…

We have a test team that runs various test suites(automated) and manual testers that test functionality. They spend their entire working day, every day testing.

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

#916

Post by WalterBright »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #857
WalterBright wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A colleague of mine came to me for advice. He wanted one of those high dollar jobs at a well-known MegaCorp. He knew a leetcode test was used by them. I suggested that his top priority was to study the leetcode books for the next 3 weeks. I told him those three weeks would be the best ROI he'd ever make. He did so. He aced the test. He got the job with a huge offer. He agreed that the ROI was out of the park! P.S. I'…

Let's assume that instead of leetcode, the company had decided that the qualifying test for programmers would be sketching a vase of flowers (about as relevant as leetcode for commercial programming). Your friend would have spent three weeks practicing their sketching, right? And they would have made a decent drawing at the interview. And that would have the exact same ROI as spending those weeks on practicing leetco…

What do you use to narrow down 100 candidates to 2?

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

#917

Post by manos-saratsis »

Fully agree on the interpretation. Changes are massive, we checked 100k+ OSS PRs and we see plenty with 1k+ lines of code. And the bigger the PR is, the longer the time is to review and the highest the chance of rejection https://dromeas.ai/blog/pr-vs-trunk-what-code-review-actuall...

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

#918

Post by WalterBright »

sscaryterry wrote: post #841
WalterBright wrote: post #745

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I don't care about writing a qsort algorithm

That wasn't the point. Would you wash your car before picking up your date for the first time? A dirty car would drive just as well, but your date will figure you don't care about the date going well.

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

#919

Post by crystal_revenge »

skydhash wrote: post #719
crystal_revenge wrote: post #698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe most current improvement in speed is just moving from idea to demo in a few days This is an outdated view. Current timelines I'm facing are to be going from "thought", through customer trials and being fully live in the product and ready for sales in ~3 weeks (from kick off to live in app is a bit more than a week). This is for a full product feature that could easily be standalone. In 2023 I would say th…

> Current timelines I'm facing are to be going from "thought", through customer trials and being fully live in the product and ready for sales in ~3 weeks (from kick off to live in app is a bit more than a week). This is for a full product feature that could easily be standalone. In 2023 I would say the timeline for a similarly shaped feature at another startup was around ~3 months (and the team at the time agreed th…

> YOLO generated code straight into prod

Most of my team's time is spend carefully reviewing PRs and iterating on improving new ways we can ensure the product works well, the product is hardly "YOLO'd"

> then frustrate your customers/users when things aren't working or keep shifting around.

All of these products come at the request of customers and they are generally quite delighted with the results and equally delighted with how fast we can deliver.

> For all of AI being touted as the best thing since sliced bread

I don't think it's the best thing since sliced bread, but I am telling you that your understanding is weirdly out of touch. I know HN doesn't have people working startups anymore but what I'm experiencing at work is a lot of serious engineering work and discussion around delivering quality products rapidly (as well as improving process so we can get ahead of transformations in what a 'product' is).

It sounds like you have a view of the world and want to stick to it, in which case there's not much point in arguing. If you search my comment history you can easily find around 8 months ago I would have largely agreed with you, which is why I opened mentioned that your view is "outdated". This space has changed dramatically in the last year, and continues to change in ways that surprise me.

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

#920

Post by marcus_holmes »

WalterBright wrote: post #916
marcus_holmes wrote: post #857

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's assume that instead of leetcode, the company had decided that the qualifying test for programmers would be sketching a vase of flowers (about as relevant as leetcode for commercial programming). Your friend would have spent three weeks practicing their sketching, right? And they would have made a decent drawing at the interview. And that would have the exact same ROI as spending those weeks on practicing leetco…

What do you use to narrow down 100 candidates to 2?

Well, in this case, sketching a vase of flowers.

This is classic Streetlight Effect [0]. Just because it's easy to test leetcode, and it appears to have something vaguely to do with coding, it gets used.

Like I said in other posts, I would use the "pick a bug and fix it" method. But I'd also screen down from 100 candidates to ~20 or so before getting into technical interviews.

And, again, I don't think leetcode will scale well to 100 interviews either. You need technical staff in that interview room, and if you subject your team to 100 technical interviews using leetcode they're not going to be happy about it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect

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