[Dumblydorr]

Glass half empty view? Their whole skill set built up over decades, digitized, and now they have to shift everything they do, and who knows humans will even be in the loop, if they’re not c-suite or brown nosers. Their whole magic and skill is now capable of being done by a PM in 5 minutes with some tokens. How is that supposed to make skillful coders feel?

Massive job cuts, bad job market, AI tools everywhere, probable bubble, it seems naive to be optimistic at this juncture.

[mitchitized]

The world changes. Time marches on, and the very skills you spend your time developing will inevitably expire in their usefulness. Things that were once marvelous talents are now campfire stories or punchlines.

LLMs may be accelerating the process, but definitely not the cause.

If you want a career in technology, a durable one, you learn to adapt. Your primary skill is NOT to master a given technology, it is the ability to master a given technology. This is a university that has no graduation!

[gzread]

Is it though? If it was that universal, we'd employ the best programmers as plumbers, since they have the best ability to master plumbing technology. There are limits, and I think the skill being to master programming technologies is a reasonable limit.

If you're a great programmer, can you can stop using Angular and master React? Yes. Can you stop telling the computer what to do, and master formal proof assistants? Maybe. Can you stop using the computer except as a tool and go master agricultural technology? Probably not. (Which is not to say you can't be a good programmer at an agritech company)

[scoofy]

The “this wrecked my industry” sob story is especially rich when the vast majority of tech workers ability to demand premium salaries comes directly from creating software that makes existing jobs obsolete.

Let’s talk about the industries the computer killed: travel agents, musician, the entire film development industry, local newspapers built on classified ads, the encyclopedia industry, phone operators, projectionists, physical media industries, and a few dozen other random industries.

We aren’t special because we are coders. Creativity and engineering thoughtfulness will still exist even with LLMs, it will just take a different form.

[reverius42]

Since I love programming, I feel pretty lucky I got to live and work in the only few decades in which it's economically viable to work as a computer programmer. At least "musician" had a longer run, but I guess we had it coming.

[overgard]

What exactly would people retrain into? The future these companies explicitly want is AI taking ALL the jobs, It's not like PMs are going to be any safer, or any other knowledge work. I see little evidence that AI is going to create new jobs other than a breathless assurance that it "always happens"

[intended]

No, retraining has been tested and found to be unfeasible. Even if you throw money at it.

[mactavish88]

> Their whole skill set

This is the fundamental problem with how so many people think about LLMs. By the time you get to Principal, you've usually developed a range of skills where actual coding represents like 10% of what you need to do to get your job done.

People very often underestimate the sheer amount of "soft" skills required to perform well at Staff+ levels that would require true AGI to automate.

[dopidopHN2]

Yeah well. That's what we've been doing to other industries over and over.

I remember a cinema theater projectionist telling me exactly that while I was wiring a software controlling numeric projector, replacing the 35mm ones.

[bmurphy1976]

If a principal doesn't have the skills to mentor juniors, plan and define architecture, review work and follow a good process, they really shouldn't be considered a principal. A domain expert? Perhaps. A domain expert should fear for their job but a principal should be well rounded, flexible, and more than capable of guiding AI tooling to a good outcome.

[seba_dos1]

> Their whole magic and skill is now capable of being done by a PM in 5 minutes with some tokens.

[citation needed]

It has just merely moved from "almost, but not entirely useless" to "sometimes useful". The models themselves may perhaps be capable already, but they will need much better tooling than what's available today to get more useful that that, and since it's AI enthusiasts who will happily let LLMs code them that work on these tools it will still take a while to get there :)

[merlindru]

> It has just merely moved from "almost, but not entirely useless" to "sometimes useful"

[citation needed]

:P

This thing has changed the way I work. I barely touch my editor to actually edit anymore, because speaking into the chat field what changes I want it to make is more efficient

The tooling does need to get better, yes, but anecdotally, I do a fundamentally different job (more thinking, less typing, less sifting through docs, less wiring up) than 3 months ago

So much of my career was spent on especially rummaging in docs and googling and wiring things up. I believe that's the same for most of us

[shadowgovt]

I'm optimistic about people being able to build the things they always wanted to build but either didn't have the skills or resources to hire somebody who did.

If we truly value human creativity, then things that decrease the rote mechanical aspects of the job are enablers, not impediments.

[bluefirebrand]

If we truly value human creativity we should stop building technology that decreases human value in the eyes of the rich and powerful

[shadowgovt]

Or stop measuring ourselves by our reflection in their eyes.

Society can interpret sociopathy as damage and route around it, if we do the work to make it happen. It will not happen by itself without effort.