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Comment by gf000 | Hacker News Reader

Well, there are so many more lower hanging fruits that LLMs can actually replace before they get to developers -- basically every middle manager, and a significant chunk of all white collar jobs.

I'm not convinced software developers will be replaced - probably less will be needed and the exact work will be transformed a bit, but an expert human still has to be in the loop, otherwise all you get is a bunch of nonsense.

Nonetheless, it may very well transform society and we will have to adapt to it.

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Not all software development will be automated immediatly. But I've noticed that many skills I've built are lessened in worth with every model release.

Having a lot of specifics about a programming environment memorized for example used to be the difference between building something in a few hours and a week, but now is pretty unimportant. Same with being able to do some quick data wrangling on the command line. LLMs are also good at parsing a lot of code or even binary format quickly and explaining how it works. That used to be a skill. Knowing a toolbox of technologies to use is needed less. Et cetera.

They haven't come for the meat of what makes a good engineer yet. For example, the systems-level interfacing with external needs and solving those pragmatically is still hard. But the tide is rising.

The capitalists and industrialists have waited for centuries to get rid of paid labor. Imagine the profits once the cost of human work gets out of the loop!

Of course the question that is left unanswered is how the economy will work there's no one left with purchasing power. But I guess the answer to this is, the same way it works now in any developing country without much of a middle class.

I don’t see middle managers taking the initial brunt unless they truly are just pushing papers around. At companies of sufficient size, they do play a role of separation between C suite and the grunts. To me, certain low-performing grunts will be the first out. Then a team reorg to rebalance. Then some middle managers will be out as fewer of them can handle multiple teams.

> probably less will be needed and the exact work will be transformed a bit

My guess is the opposite: they'll throw 5–10x more work at developers and expect 10x more output, while the marginal cost is basically just a Claude subscription per dev.

>I'm not convinced software developers will be replaced

Most of us will probably need to shift to security. While you can probably build AI specifically to make things more secure, that implies it could also attack things as well, so it ends up being a cat-and-mouse game that adjusts to what options are available.

Agree. Marketing, Finance, Legal, already having huge impact for junior positions.

you know, natural attrition is still attrition.

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