A professional, experienced engineer can filter the crap from the real. LLMs usually get me over the mental hump of project setup/boilerplate. They also let me rapidly prototype vague ideas in record time.
They also make the bar for a productive junior engineer much higher, as an LLM can perform a precisely defined task much faster than a junior engineer.
How can one become a professional, experienced engineer if one has not put in multiple years being a productive junior engineer?
And what happens if those jobs are no longer available?
My first job in 2010 required 12 operations personnel to manage a simple app server + database. The db had a dba oncall of 3 people, along with oracle support contracts. These days that job would be done using cloud tools, and that team of 12 people wouldn’t exist.
The same story has been true throughout the infrastructure space for 15+ years, with current practices foisting the remaining work on software teams.
I suspect junior engineers who can make effective use of LLM tools will be in high demand. LLMs also minimize the benefit of experience provided you can still sift BS vs truth. A firm ultimately only cares about who delivers the most impact.
This is the paradox that I'm seeing everywhere. While LLMs ostensibly make it easier for inexperienced engineers to get started, in practice it makes juniors irrelevant in the market. A senior with an LLM is more productive than a senior with a team of juniors. So while LLMs may make programming accessible to more people, it simultaneously kills their chances of employment.
I predict the software market is going to shift away from entry jobs entirely. They can be replaced with LLMs under an experienced hand. Which makes senior engineers more valuable. How are we going to train seniors if we're not hiring juniors? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯