[wokwokwok]

I’m amazed at the number of people responding to this and answering the question they want to answer, not the question the OP is asking.

> It just feels like anyone could do it.

This.

Yes, you’re 100% right. No, AI will not take away all the jobs, that’s not going to happen, but no one thinks it’s going to happen, anyone calling that out and saying… “don’t worry! AI is just a tool…” are beating a strawman.

The reality is that doing difficult highly paid work will become significantly eaiser and a much wider pool of people will be able to apply to do jobs that previously only people demanding significantly higher wages were able to actually do.

…and that will mean, a surplus of people wanting jobs, to the delight of large businesses who will use it as an (entirely reasonable) excuse to choose to employ cheaper workers.

Flat fact: 20 year of experience and a college degree mean nothing if someone can do the same job for 60% of the pay, and there are 1) people who will accept that and 2) the technology will increasingly enable this scenario.

Certainly, other roles will appear in other areas, but face the blunt reality: the days of scarcity based high wage roles for programmers such as there are today is numbered.

If you want to maintain your income and level, you probably need to start looking around for ways of doing that now, before there are 60 people applying to do your job on Fiverr.

If you stand still, you are correct, you’re basically screwed.

…but, you don’t have to stand still.

Remember, you are better than the majority of the people who will be able to do your current job in the future using AI. That’s why you have your job now.

Lean into it with your professional development to make yourself better than you are now using the tools.

That seems like the only really sensible advice I’ve seen recently.

[gizmo]

Today, chatGPT can do zero percent 0% of the actual programming I do. I use chatGPT to find a library function or to find command line options and other simple stuff.

But actual programming? ChatGPT can only write completely trivial scaffolding code. I don’t understand how people get a significant productivity boost out of it when chatGPT can’t do design, can’t do algorithms, can’t do concurrency, can’t do architecture. I like chatGPT but I don’t see how it can even double my productivity.

[thaway_thaway34]

You’re probably not talking to it right way. You need to build up the story. It doesn’t look up information, it only maintains coherence. You need to bring up key points for your design, have a chat. Then start asking for code. Unless you have a starting code, then give that and chat on top of it.

I am getting at least 5x boost in productivity.

Just last night, I solved 7-8 bugs consecutively.

[gizmo]

My prompts are pretty basic but also I have to spell everything out or the output will be wrong. I can poke and prod until I get something approximately correct, but I have to give step by step instructions for the simplest things like you would when coaching a slow student.

[animuchan]

Yep, that's exactly the thing. If a random person + GPT makes a programmer equal to me in skill, then me + GPT makes a programmer who's at least 150% of my skill (for some definition of skill), so it's all good.

[thaway_thaway34]

I know I will be taking the devils advocate to another level but…;

Is there such a thing as %150 developer, Is there a market for the %150 developer?

All of these are not yet answered or tested by the market.