[noobermin]

>they've only solved "what you boss thinks software engineering is".

Which is why bosses are excited but engineers are not, because subpar LLMs will be used to justify firing actual engineers and replace them with fresh college grads tasked to work with a code bot, because the bosses fundamentally think that is enough.

[sanderjd]

Well, if that works, then it works! But if it doesn't (and I'm in the "I don't think it will" camp), then we'll know in less than a year or so.

I actually don't relate to this "bosses don't know what software engineering is" thing at all. All my bosses are older-school engineers-turned-management who are more skeptical of this than the young'uns.

[testtesttesst]

Then those projects will fail and they won't do that anymore. Or they'll succeed and engineers will have to find harder problems to solve.

If a new grad + LLM can do task X about as well as an experienced engineer can, then the experienced engineer will have to find other harder problems to solve. Personally I think labor efficiency is good; why waste your labor on easy/solved problems?

[foogazi]

> then the experienced engineer will have to find other harder problems to solve.

The experienced engineer also gets an LLM though

[testtesttesst]

> The experienced engineer also gets an LLM though

Say experienced engineer Edna was working on a project and the new grad Nelson replaced her because he was cheaper and about as good if both have LLMs, i.e.,

Edna + LLM ≈ Nelson + LLM

even though

Edna >> Nelson.

So Edna needs to find a project to work on where LLMs don't equalize her arbitrage, i.e.,

Edna + LLM >> Nelson + LLM

and Nelson needs one where

Nelson + LLM >> LLM.

[noobermin]

My contention is "how do you determine if someone was 'as good'?" Very likely the people in the position to make a decision will not be qualified enough to even make that decision. IF (and really only if) such a determination is possible, then sure, I agree, find harder problems etc, but I assert that people will not make that determination (which is close to impossible to make) well, if at all because that wasn't the point in the first place.

[testtesttesst]

Project succeeds = good.

Project fails = bad.

If a bunch of projects given to NG + LLM fail, the company will say at some point "this is no good, let's not do that anymore". If they mostly succeed, they'll do it more.

From a middle manager's perspective, where they're funding 10-20 projects, this kind of measurement is feasible and carries at least some signal. So I don't agree it's difficult to measure.