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Comment by g9yuayon | Hacker News Reader

> Lattner found nothing innovative in the code generated by AI

I don't think the replacement is binary. Instead, it’s a spectrum. The real concern for many software engineers is whether AI reduces demand enough to leave the field oversupplied. And that should be a question of economy: are we going to have enough new business problems to solve? If we do, AI will help us but will not replace us. If not, well, we are going to do a lot of bike-shedding work anyway, which means many of us will lose our jobs, with or without AI.

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Before software, there were accountants. It was The qualification to have.

Today accountants are still needed. But it's a commodified job. And you start at the absolute bottom of the bottom rungs and slave it out till you can separate yourself and take on a role on a path to CFO or some respectable level of seniority.

I'm oversimplifying here but that is sufficient to show A path forward for software engineers imo. In this parallel, most of us will become AI drivers. We'll go work in large companies but we'll also go work in a back room department of small to medium businesses, piloting AI on a bottom of the rung salary. Some folks will take on specialisms and gain certifications in difficult areas (similar to ACCA). Or maybe ultra competitive areas like how it is in actuarial science. Those few will eventually separate themselves and lead departments of software engineers (soon to be known as AI pilots). Others will embed in research and advance state of art that eventually is commoditized by AI. Those people will either be paid mega bucks or will be some poor academia based researcher.

The vast majority? Overworked drones having to be ready to stumble to their AI agent's interface when their boss calls them at 10 PM saying the directors want to see a feature setup for the meeting tomorrow.

Business problems are essentially neverending. And humans have a broader type of intelligence that LLMs lack but are needed to solve many novel problems. I wouldn't worry.

Unless you're one of the bulk of 1x programmers who aren't doing anything novel. I think it will be like most industries that got very helpful technology - the survivors have to do more sophisticated work and the less capable people are excluded. Then we need more education to supply those sophisticated workers but the existing education burden on professionals is already huge and costly. Will they be spending 10 years at university instead of 3-4? Will a greater proportion of the population be excluded from the workforce because there's not enough demand for low-innate-ability or low-educated people?

To add, just keeping up in this industry was already a problem. I don't know of many professions[1] with such demands on time outside of a work day to keep your skills updated. It was perhaps an acceptable compromise when the market was hot and the salaries high. But I am hearing from more and more people who are just leaving the field entirely labeling it as "not worth it anymore".

[1] Medicine may be one example of an industry with poor work-life balance for some, specifically specialists. But job security there is unmatched and compensation is eye-watering.

> I don't know of many professions[1] with such demands on time outside of a work day to keep your skills updated.

This is an extremely miopic view (or maybe trolling).

The vast majority of software developers never study, learn, or write any code outside of their work hours.

In contrast, almost all professional have enormous, _legally-required_ upskilling, retraining, and professional competence maintenance.

If you honestly believe that developers have anywhere near the demands (both in terms of time and cost) in staying up to date that other professions have, you are - as politely as I can - completely out-of-touch.

Sure, but those same professional certifications and development hours also allow them to not need to re-prove their basic competency when interviewing.

Basically everything you mentioned is covered by L&D

I never really felt this. If you have a job where you're actively learning by doing the work then you shouldn't need to learn outside of the job.

Problems are never ending but amount of money which can be made in short (or even mid) term by solving these problems is limited. Every dollar spent on LLM is a dollar not spent on salaries.

> Business problems are essentially neverending

That feels overly optimistic. LLMs seems on track to automate out basically any "email job" or "spreadsheet job," in which case we'll be looking at higher unemployment numbers than the great depression for at least some period of time. Combine with increased automation...

There are a LOT of people in the world and already a not insignificant portion can't find work despite wanting to. Seems the most likely thing is that the value of most labor is reduced to pennies.

Do you really think the billionaires are willing to have consumers so impoverished that they can’t continue to spend large sums of discretionary income buying the things that make the billionaires themselves richer?

They may not be, but even so they might find themselves in a prisoner's dilemma. I wouldn't rely in this logic for peace of mind.

I've read a theory that as the ultra rich divide their wealth among their descendants, eventually they capture so much of it among their families that trying to extract more from the working class is hardly worth the effort. The only option then, for the descendants of the ultra wealthy, is to start turning on each other. The theory states that the last time this happened was WWI.

The billionaires are already billionaires. People like Sam Altman are not building a doomsday bunker because they believe in the longevity of established society. They are doing it because they've already won and are taking their ball.

Well what would each billionaire do? Give out money so that the poor can give some of it back?

You cannot just point at a system, say it’d be unsustainable and then assume nobody will let that happen.

Monarchies, lords, etc. have had much more reason to support their own countryfolk, yet many throughout history have not - has society changed enough that the billionaires have changed on this?

What evidence is there otherwise? That seems to be exactly what they want.

The impoverished are cheaper to enslave.

Megacap investors already cargo cult business practices that reduce their own return and harm employees. This is why they all over-hired at the start of covid only to begin layoffs a couple of years later.

In summary: billionaires aren't as competent as you'd hope.

“The billionaires” are a boogeyman and not a cabal with all that much power in the west.

I know multiple engineers who have spent months or even years trying to find a job. How can you say not to worry when the industry has already gotten this bad?

It's no consolation, but this situation is temporary. Everyone is just distracted with AI.

"Temporary" might mean "the next three years", but at the same time some acted as if the Zero Interest Rate Policy would continue indefinitely, so this situation might end suddenly and unexpectedly.

if you want a job then here's my 2 cents:

To me the opportunity is with agents. Specially copilot and what ever amazon's agent it. figure out how to code using them. build something cool in the space your interested in finding a job for. that's the skill enterprise companies are fighting for. nobody knows how to do it.

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