> How does increasing the productivity of software engineers benefit anyone but employers?
The same reason a tractor benefits society, not just the farmer. Labor is free'd up for other uses, like inventing computers.
The same reason a tractor benefits society, not just the farmer. Labor is free'd up for other uses, like inventing computers.
Who is going to pay laid off software engineers to spend time on inventing anything?
Fortunately, "AI" decreases productivity in software engineering, so this question is academic. But the Atlantic should mention these issues.
Citation needed.
- Understanding code: I can dump thousands of lines of undocumented code into a large context model and get back architectural outlines, API usage examples or even full documentation. I can also ask questions directly of the codebase.
- Debugging. The newer reasoning models are extremely good at deciphering a test failure or stack trace and pinpointing the potential causes of the bug, sending me right to the relevant code.
- Suggesting where to make edits. I've started asking models for a high level implementation plan based on the codebase and dumping in an issue thread - they frequently spot parts of the code I forgot I would need to update.
- "What should I test?" - dump in a diff and get back a checklist of branches I need to add test coverage for
At this point, if you can't find ways to make yourself more productive as a programmer with LLMs I have to conclude that you just aren't trying very hard.
Over my career, I've known many software engineers who were laid off. The ones I kept track of:
1. got another job, sometimes in another field
2. started their own business
3. retired
4. became a consultant
Does it? ROI stays generally about the same.
The reason is simple: highly profitable businesses attract competition, causing their prices to fall.
Capital also has a much easier time organizing politically than the poor masses, so over time the government will also introduce policies that benefit capital over labor, as we can very clearly see.
The farmer owns the farm and benefits directly from the improvement in operating margins. A software engineer does not own the farm, only the owner would benefit from improved productivity. They're actually getting paid less per hour given they're more productive in this hypothetical.
I grew up in a family with a lot of farmers and I can tell you this is not universally true.
It’s very common for farmers to have leased their farmland or fields.
I can also say we are all very much better off with farming automated on a large scale. Farming jobs were brutally difficult in the past
Productivity really is good for everyone. It’s the reason quality of life has improved dramatically in the past 50 years despite real wages being stagnant to declining.
During WW2, the Japanese would take several weeks to make an airfield, using a large labor force with picks and shovels.
They were horrified when the SeeBees showed up with bulldozers making forward airbases operational within hours.
And maybe it happens to software engineers next. So what? The economy looks completely different today than it did 50 years ago, which was completely different than 50 years before that, and that shouldn't stop just because some people feel childishly entitled to do the same work for their whole lives even it if it is obsolete. I'll just change careers like I have done twice before. There's a massive shortage of electrical/plumbing/hvac contractors. There's a massive shortage of nurses / doctors that will only get worse as the population gets older. Not as cushy as my mid six figure tech job, but I have no god given right to that. And there's plenty more opportunity beyond that for anyone willing to take it, so if any other engineers want to cry about it, their tears will be wasted on me.
Like you said, owning farmland wasn’t as common as everyone assumes. The number of farming analogies where everyone imagines the farmer as operating a lucrative business empire on land they own is a testament to how much people manufacture historical narratives to fit their desired narratives.
I would be shocked if more than a tenth of a percent of people who write code for a living work in startups, period.