Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jjkeddo199 1185 days ago
Disagree -- I think chatGPT will make juniors more palatable to hire. ChatGPT will basically give juniors a free pair programmer to baby-sit their work/progress. Why pay extra for senior devs when juniors can become much more efficient thanks to ChatGPT becoming stack-overflow on steroids. I think the wage gap between junior and senior will actually drop massively. I predict teams will keep 1-3 architect level positions for designs and reviews and replace all seniors with cheaper juniors.
2 comments

I really doubt that ChatGPT will be able to give the kind of guidance that turns juniors into seniors.

Getting juniors un-stuck on "simple" problems, maybe. Stack Overflow already does this. Image doesn't build? Search for the error message online. Don't know how to build the old software that only works in Ubuntu 14.10? Sure, you'll find that.

Suggestions on how to refactor, proper design of interfaces, what skill to acquire next? Maybe, but that will be a bigger surprise.

I think it could go either way depending on the product. For example in app/game/web development where code quantity > quality, hire more juniors who can bust out code with ChatGPT all day. But if you're developing software for medical devices, vehicle control systems, HFT, etc. Then nobody's going to let some college grad using ChatGPT touch it. You'd hire senior engineers who can be responsible for the reliable operation of the software and they can use ChatGPT for code review, test suites, etc.
Even in the gaming industry. Typically you have people developing an engine, common frameworks... tools that downstream work to lower branches - now I can just type to chatgpt rather than go through requesting/reviewing, see quicker where I mis-designed my "framework" etc... I am afraid it's gonna be not great for junior engs all together.

Every org has varying level of engineers. This technology will make cheap grind, well cheap. We see the progression. With the speed of changes it seems we should all be worried. (as why does it matter despite being last we fell a year after)