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Comment by twright | Hacker News Reader

When I read articles like this I don't know whether to think I have some decent job security or not. On the one hand, people graduating having used LLM's for a significant majority of their work are almost certainly deficient at critically thinking about computer systems and programming them (there's a good quote in the article stating this much better than I am here). On the other, if they're cheating so much to get well-paying jobs will I --without cheating, relying on just the merits and knowledge from my career-- be competitive enough to find work in the future? Been wondering if anyone else feels this way.

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a lot of the ChatGPT assignments are so incredibly obvious. in the most egregious cases literally copy and pasted from the browser without reading. laziness is all-pervasive.

the problem is an academic cheating penalty can have grievous consequences for someone's life, so to prove it requires almost like a "beyond a reasonable doubt" criminal justice standard. and that's difficult to do. so they get through their classes.

"don't hire someone" is a much lower bar. if there are obvious but unprovable ChatGPT vibes in the application, you probably just don't interview them. if there are weird pauses in their conversation during the interview and they sound like they're reading long sentences, don't advance to next round.

a lot of these cheaters are going to get filtered hard.

there is a smarter way to use it but this still requires some level of thought to disguise your cheating, you have to be able to understand the LLM outputs yourself, and a large portion of the cheaters can't manage that.

I will likely retired within the next 5-7 years and by that point after nearly 45 years in tech I will be damn happy to be gone. I believe the coming AI shift in tech will definitely benefit society, but will devastate many/most tech disciplines as a vocation especially for those average technologists within those discipline. In my experience…that is most of the folks working today.

My guess is there will still be a market for those folks who don’t have to rely on AI to solve problems (but can still utilize those AI tools effectively) and that is where I would be focusing my own growth if I was younger with decades to go. Either that or I would give up tech entirely and try and find a plumber to apprentice under.

Everyone always talks about becoming a plumber, but you know what sucks? Working under a sink. I'm assuming it sucks even harder when you're 60.

Sure it’s a shit job, but let’s face it…AI and automation wouldn’t be able to replace it…probably ever. I don’t see too many people talking about “vibe plumbing”. We will never reach a point in society where people will not pay handsomely to remove backed up shit from their homes and have clean water piped in.

And frankly, I know a few plumbers—most of the ones my age are already semi retired, play golf daily, just work when they want to, and all have a shitton more money than I do.

>> On the other, if they're cheating so much to get well-paying jobs will I --without cheating, relying on just the merits and knowledge from my career-- be competitive enough to find work in the future? Been wondering if anyone else feels this way.

You need to find a place that understand the difference between BS and real work. The next 5 years might bankrupt the ones that embrace the BS.

i think people who learned how to do a skill prior to AI will have an edge. writing will be a valuable skill. same with people who know computer fundamentals.

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