Why do they want to get rid of software engineers? | Hacker News Reader

Why do they want to get rid of software engineers?

jrswab.com

37 pointsabnercoimbre54 comments

Why does this entire article read like chatgpt? Kind of ironic considering the content.

Big llm smells: 'Not "AI helps you autocomplete a function." Not "AI explains a stack trace." I mean the full-on narrative:'

'Sure, it's a weird language. It looks archaic. Sometimes it's hostile. Sometimes it's beautiful.

But still—if you know what you're doing—you can sit down with a keyboard and turn words into:

a product a workflow an automated business process a system that makes money while you sleep a tool that saves a team thousands of hours That's real power. It's leverage.'

'Not because we're lazy. Not because we're gatekeeping. Because building real systems is hard, and the number of people who can reliably do it is limited.'

Sometimes I think we get too caught up on what chatgpt will do to the economy, software, and businesses, and forget the most insidious aspect of this type of technology - we will no longer know how to write and all human text communication will confirm to a specific pattern.

Who's "we"? I won't stop knowing how to write. If other people do, that's their problem.

I meant rather the market for human writing will vanish when 80% or more of the population views LLM text as good communication.

The next generation on humans growing up with TikTok autogenerated AI videos written by ChatGPT, generated by Sora and uploaded to the web using OpenClaw or whatever automation tool you wrote using Claude Code.

There are literally people running bots creating such shortform videos as we speak.

And there are millions of kids (and adults) scrolling those same videos as you reading this.

Let that sink in.

> The next generation on humans growing up with TikTok autogenerated AI videos written by ChatGPT

That's other people. I'm not in that cesspol and neither will my children.

not one word written by the author, i'd rather read the prompt

Why do "they" (bloggers) want to get rid of their own writing?

What are the good reasons to write a blog, minus those that involve you actually writing it?

I guess just status farming, or some sort of delusion about writing being a hindrance to conveying your ideas, much like with writing code.

There's money to be made if you can build an audience. There are many ifs on the way of course, but some people do earn handsomely from publishing. They're called content creators or influencers.

I don't know if it's LLM-generated or not, but I'm guessing you're right. It sure as hell matches the horrible choppy LinkedIn blogspam pattern, though, and that was enough to bounce me right there.

Short sentences. And construction in 3's. Not because......, not because...., but....because. or - It's this....., It's that.....And.......

They want to get rid of software engineers because we are expensive, we have an annoying habit of saying no, we are not particularly good looking on average and are not obviously tied to directly revenue in a way that sales is (sales folks tend to be good looking too as a bonus.)

It's basic market dynamics + some high school social calculus.

This reads like a fanfic.

"My manager wants to get rid of me because I'm too good with computers and he is jealous."

No, he wants to get rid of you because you are an operating expense for the company. If they can achieve the same outcome without paying your salary then why wouldn’t they fire you?

So far they have prevailed despite RADs, 4GLs, no-code solutions, etc. Software engineers have ended up using these new tools to still develop. You can already see developers embracing LLMs to create heaps of trash for fun while they learn to integrate them in their job.

It would take a huge leap forward, if not actual AGI, to fully replace Software Developers. If that's the case, they could replace any human job at any level, not just developers.

Software engineering as a profession isn’t going anywhere, but what makes AI different from previous fads is that engineers who fail to adapt and update their skills will definitely be replaced.

That's no different from previous developments. If you refuse to work with modern programming languages, or with the web, or with a task-tracker, you're narrowing your opportunities for employment considerably.

I’m less worried about them “fully” replacing developers than what partial replacement looks like for the 95%+ of us who aren’t set-for-life, special genius devs in big tech.

I kind of agree with the article. AI will make SW engineers (or engineers in general) lot more productive, but you still need someone who translates the fuzzy and potentially conflicting specs into something that can be built. That involves a lot of little decisions on how to resolve contradictions, and that's why formal programming language is used. AI can do it to an extent, but likely it won't get you what you want with less communication.

It's a misunderstanding that AI makes SW engineers less valuable, when the code making is cheaper. This assumes there is some fixed amount of code that the society needs to produce. I think the companies will face a different reality - the code they own ("intellectual property") will become less valuable, but the programmers (who are now effectively promoted to kind of product managers) will become more valuable, as they can now do more (and cause more damage, too).

The innovations of the past, such as compilers and open source, which made programmers more productive, didn't make them obsolete.

That being said, it will take companies (and their owners) some time to accept the new reality - programmers have more power now and it's harder to gatekeep what they work on. So the management of these companies will try to twist it, which will ultimately be counterproductive. The programmers should recognize it and look into some form of social organization - be it unions, professional organization or worker cooperatives. (Distinction of labor vs capital is not a natural law, just like the distinction between lords and peasants isn't god-given.)

It would be much better to replace CEOs & other C-suite execs but no one is working on that kind of AI.

Jealousy definitely. They can't do the thing that they depend on for money and AI gives them some feeling of power/an upper-hand. That's why the AI art types immediately started bashing traditional artists as "paint pigs."

I think it spreads further. I just read two different blog posts from two very different authors lamenting the death of "indie businesses." Another developer in person expressed "concern" for me too. What they all had in common is they're in corporate or SaaS, looking at my indie work from the outside.

This tweet succinctly encompasses my thoughts on AI coding:

"thank god programming is solved, I hated writing code...

anyway, off to issue statements to a computer in a way it can interpret"

https://x.com/iamdevloper/status/2021883924595593300

???

Flagged why?

I think it was a pretty good article.

I don't how this could offend anyone.

I suspect it got flagged by the people who think it was written by an LLM, and the people who thought the "jealousy" argument was particularly weak. It's also a lot of words when the answer is obvious (as pointed out by many commenters here): Money.

Since the development of computers, companies have wanted to save money and that's meant a push to find a magic bullet that can replace many, if not most or all, programmers. Natural language programming, RAD tools, much of the work on fifth-generation languages, was oriented around that objective (removing or reducing the dependence on programmers as a category of professionals, versus domain experts who happen to also program).

Biased as the submitter here, but even if "jealousy" may be a weak argument (as presented) some of us were discussing scenarios where jealous statements were too obvious to let slide. It's a real human emotion and adds an unexplored angle.

“Here's the part I think a lot of people miss:”

:-/

The same argument could be made about people writing articles and influencing actions in other humans. Something, it seems, people want to use AI for. Have AI write articles for them.

It's natural to reduce the cost of doing business.

I’m honestly at a loss for words at this question.

We’re software engineers. Like half of the work we do is try and automate jobs.

Are we really confused about why “they” might want to automate our jobs?

We don't just automate jobs, that's a narrow way of looking at it.

We manage complexity.

Part of this is jealousy (yes, I said it)

It's not jealousy though. It's seeing an operational bottleneck as inefficiency. If you know what you want and you have to go through someone else to get it, that's frustrating, so you look for ways around it. AI is a way around software engineers.

The key to remaining usefully employed is not to be the bottleneck. If it's faster for someone to get to a solution with a software engineer than without a software engineer then you will remain employed. This is largely irrespective of cost - generally speaking spending money on a salaries to go faster is always better so long as you're actually going faster.

I've been noticing lately that the discussion around LLMs and using them for programming has begun to expose people for how little they understand programming or what software developers do in general. I think I generally agree with the author as a result. A year ago I might think this was more naive, but today... I think software development has more of a moat than I thought, for more reasons than I originally perceived.

There are a lot of senior developers who discuss how they use LLMs and why, for example, and it exposes that even with a decade or so of experience, people can have extremely thin and weak understandings of what they're doing, and why. That isn't to cast shade at all, and I've been (and will be) the experienced yet clueless person at times. I could be right now.

A reductive description is that it's turning a lot of people in expert beginners, and the coworker they collaborate most now has no way of compensating for it. LLMs are useful and powerful tools, but they can't make up for these kinds of deficiencies yet. It doesn't seem like they will very soon, either. As they get better at generating code, they seem to simultaneously widen gaps in their ability to identify or anticipate bugs or poorly fit solutions.

I can't imagine the messes people are creating with LLMs when they have no experience at all, though. They might feel empowered (and to a degree they certainly are) but when it comes to complex, large, mission-critical, and/or distributed systems... These tools are nowhere near where they need to be.

Otherwise, I've also found that important software can now become more ambitious. We seem to model the career risk developers face based on the software of today, but what I'm seeing is that I'm able to build and maintain more ambitious projects than ever. I'll be pushing the limits of what's possible for myself for a while yet, and I suspect it will continue to produce value for the people I work with. I could have these tools do the work I used to do (or help me do it faster) and leave it at that, but the reality is that I don't just stop there. I keep going, I continue refining, I discover more ways to make it more valuable, I iterate faster and maintain a tighter feedback loop with the people who use the things I create.

So, why would I be eliminated from that process? Do people really believe that my position in that loop will be eliminated by AI? This seems to disregard a myriad of qualities that allow software developers to be effective and valuable team members.

If that happens, frankly, I believe far more roles than software development would be eliminated at that point. The implications would go far beyond software.

The truth is that it's all about wage suppression because billionaires want something for nothing. And this situation exists because of a failure to unionize and a failure to form worker-owned co-ops that are fairer and more stable than megacorps.

Don't need to read: cost.

Money.

Software engineers are laborers. If you're a capital owner, a laborer is something that weights down your returns.

It's not rocket science.

> Software engineers are laborers. If you're a capital owner, a laborer is something that weights down your returns.

> It's not rocket science.

It's far above the heads of many supposedly "smart" software engineers, who looked at their high salaries and 401ks, forgot they were disposable laborers, and confused themselves for capitalist tycoons.

Drop the libertarianism and form a labor union before it's too late. You're not smart if you're parroting your boss's talking points like an idiot.

> forgot they were disposable laborers, and confused themselves for capitalists.

I agree with this, but it isn't just limited to software engineers. Most of the supposed "middle class" in the US fits this description.

We currently have the highest level of wealth inequality in history which is still growing at runaway rates and plenty of laborers who view themselves as "temporarily embarrassed billionaires" willing to prop up the system, seemingly unaware that those at the top will gladly wipe them off their boot when given the chance.

Yes this has been the motivation for decades. There has always been a language, methodology, or system being hyped that promised to eliminate the need for trained programmers. Why? Because they are expensive.

Digital computers were cheaper than the legions of human "calculators" that they replaced, but once those savings were realized, the next step was to attack the smaller number but still expensive per head staff of programmers you needed to get the most value out of a computer.

I had the feeling that the promise was higher productivity and better quality. Like, we wanted to implement more and faster. Maybe now we have run out of more and faster things to implement, so the optimization is on the costs?

Why not all of the above? Reducing costs and improving quality.

I agree but I'd also note that a capital owner actually has a couple motivations to get rid of high paid labors.

1) Cost

2) Flexibility. If you can hire random laborers to do most of your tasks, you can quickly scale up whereas if you depend on highly skilled and trained workers, starting a new operation elsewhere is hard. Similar, you can shift activity around, are less impeded by the opinions of workers, etc. Significantly, this may allow you to "franchise" your operations in various ways.

From what I am seeing in the consulting space for enterprisey companies is that there is an extreme push to normalize /standardize all tools/platforms not even talking about AI tools to be able to replace tribal knowledge with cheaper workers. The narrative and in some cases reality of AI is just bringing the badhavior to the forefront

Counterpoint -- capital owners see SWEs as their asset, and owners do not like to see their assets go away (with intellectual property in their heads). So they nurture and give a lot of freedom to their SWEs.

I've seen both ways, and don't share the "capital owners BAD" sentiment. The first thing to join a company is to see whether they assign Eng department to Costs or to Assets mentally.

> Counterpoint -- capital owners see SWEs as their asset, and owners do not like to see their assets go away (with intellectual property in their heads).

The same is true for other knowledge workers, not just programmers. That doesn't mean that if corporate owners and managers had a magic wand that could replicate the worker on demand they wouldn't use it and toss the knowledge worker aside. They would do so happily, especially if it saved them money.

The reason that programmers (few are actually engineers, no reason to bullshit we're among friends and can be honest) have been treated so well is that they were hard to replace. If that barrier gets lifted, or is perceived to have been lifted, they'll get rid of the programmers in a heartbeat.

If the intellectual property can be captured inside an LLM that is cheaper, tireless, compliant, not demanding, does not require HR, and will not jump to a competitor for higher pay, why would capital owners look at SWEs as assets?

You could say LLMs can't "keep intellectual property in their heads", but even today they don't need to. They just need to capture everything in a bunch of artifacts -- code, docs, spreadsheets, etc. -- which is already possible. The same things we do but to a limited extent because we're human. LLMs, being tireless, can do so with much more meticulous detail. Whatever an LLM cannot do can be done by a fraction of the workforce.

Yes, enlightened companies used to value their engineers, but the calculus has shifted. Look around -- layoffs, RTO mandates, AI mandates, offshoring, under-leveling, record levels of burnout -- even before AI has been widely adopted! The tech industry overall is been telling us what their stance is with their actions louder than any amount of perks or "we are all family" ever could.

It's not "because capital owners BAD", it's just "because Capitalism."

Our primary edge at this point is creativity and innovation that creates new intellectual property. I think that will be safe for a while, but that requires a pretty high level of skill and experience, which excludes a majority of the workforce. This is where I suspect a lot of pain will be felt.

> The first thing to join a company is to see whether they assign Eng department to Costs or to Assets mentally.

Workers are costs. Always have been. If you don't own them, they're not assets.

"SWEs are assets" is HR propaganda so you think you're valued.

Hard disagree, I've seen how it can be otherwise. Try looking at smaller companies, they can be much better OR much worse than large companies, more variation.

You can disagree all you want, but it's really a matter of defining basic concepts. If you don't own it it's not an asset. It's not a matter of opinion.

Yup, that's why stock prices increase in value when companies announce massive layoffs because they know their operating costs got much lower.

And software engineers and IT staff are notoriously expensive, so hearing about a way to get rid of them would excite any investor.

They want to replace software engineers because they want exclusive power and because they are not team players.

Narcissism

> Part of this is jealousy (yes, I said it)

This feels like cope here.

They want to get rid of SWE because they are highly paid (in the US especially) and they want them for cheap (e.g. Bangalore, London)

AI just makes it a no brainer.

Also I don't think there is anything wrong with everyone being a software engineer, more accessibility to the SWE field for all is great.

Current SWE's will just need to now adapt quicker to remain relevant, and those that can't will just then leave the field.

Perhaps those that don't adapt were probably not good engineers anyway.

That's like saying that the chefs who didn't want to adapt when their restaurant became a McDonald's were probably not the good chefs anyway.

Unfortunately you need to get with the times, or get left behind.

A job is a machine that takes money from someone who is very wealthy and gives that money to someone who does not already have enough wealth to live a safe and secure life of idle leisure. The people who have wealth want there to be as few jobs as possible. If they can eliminate a highly compensated job, all the better.

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