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Comment by suyash | Hacker News Reader

So how long till AI will be fully replacing a SWE at Google? That is where the drive for productivity at organizations like Google are leading towards.

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Assuming Google has tens of thousands of software engineers (for a lower bound of 10,000) and artificial intelligence increases productivity by at least 0.01%, the first engineer has already been replaced.

> for a lower bound of 10,000

I'm guessing it's 30+k, depending on how liberal you are with the job (eg. data engineering, SREs, etc).

> the first engineer has already been replaced

Realistically, many engineers never got hired because of this already. Also they've had a few rounds of layoffs, so probably plenty are fired by now.

Google already was known for their use of automated code-gen long before they invented LLMs so I wouldn't be surprised if they're on the verge of major systems being gen'ed or templated with LLMs.

So how long till AI will be fully replacing a SWE at Google?

Notice parent said "fully"

It's the wrong question.

It's like asking "How long until a bulldozer [1] fully replaces a human construction worker?" A bulldozer is not a full replacement for a human construction worker. However, 1 worker with a bulldozer can do the work of 10 workers with shovels. And 10 workers with bulldozers can build things no amount of workers with shovels can.

[1] I'm using bulldozer as shorthand for all automated construction equipment - front end loaders, backhoes, cranes, etc.

But then the 10 shovel-wielding humans are out of a job, right? The employer isn't just going to give everyone bulldozers.

It'll be one guy with a bulldozer doing the work of ten men.

Buggy-whip makers aren’t around anymore…

New tech drives job changes. Always has, always will. No guarantee that the changes are good for every individual. And there’s no guarantee that they are good in the aggregate, either.

Or you become a bug hunter for 10 AI shovels who are now your senior.

Never? Google will probably reduce their SWE more and more assuming we get exponentially better at LLMs or something better comes along, but it won't ever be fully replaced.

That depends on when we'll have AI and my guess is never. But I may be wrong.

The question posed makes no sense.

Either it's 1 Software developer full-time equivalent (already happened) or all SWEs (never going to happen.)

Why would it mean that? Couldn't it just mean google is more productive?

Or not, and they want more productivity.

Not if they use Gemini Advanced...It's so far behind Claude or ChatpGPT4 as to be laughable.

You clearly haven't used 1.5 pro it seems. Pretty damn close to gpt-4o

Yes paying customer of all three. Sometimes for fun, start a task with the same prompt across all three. Within tree interactions Gemini start giving woke lectures, and provide worst or unusable results while the other two shine.

Just try it....

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