1,271 karma · joined February 5, 2024
It's a difficult, though IMO noble, thing to try to build a workplace that is actually suited for this style of work. But the vision of the company: what are they trying to build, how world-changing is their vision, etc.—those things impact whether or not it's even feasible to get rid of middle-management.
As a final point, I've met many brilliant engineers who are simply not capable of being put in front of a customer. They either didn't care or weren't capable of communicating in the necessary way to correctly move the needle. That doesn't mean we toss them out, it means we put a layer between them: middle management.
It seems that without legal obligation things will continue to go this route.
Asking because my business is growing and we've gotten lucky with our hires so far, but I'd like to add my discipline to hiring well.
It sounds right, but I see zero evidence of this. I think you underestimate how many people in the current administration are True Believers. This does not, to me, seem like anything to do with Big Capital, but rather "America over China".
For nerds (like me) who think data and statistics are the way to persuade people, you're doing yourself a disservice by ignoring the truth. Lots of people think sales are icky, but much of life is influenced by your ability to persuade and sell, even yourself, to others.
Hell, I'd wager there's MORE humanity in what we're building because we can afford (literally) to sweat details that previously we couldn't.
I don't understand the argument that somehow because two mega-corps are duking it out, I cannot use their tools to win in my small arena.
I believe open source is important, but for my business I'm just going to use the best tools I have available to me.
Because by the inverse of their argument, slower MUST be better, right?
This is silly. LLMs are a diesel powered keyboard. If I've got a backlog of features, why shouldn't I ship all of them? If they're bad ideas, I can also just remove them.
Nothing about SDLC best practices has changed EXCEPT the ability to increase volume.
It's easy to hand wave the question of pain away, but much wiser men than you and I have arrived at very different conclusions than you suggest.
I can be both satisfied with my decisions and still wish better for my neighbor; these are not mutually exclusive.
I am not saying, don't choose between embryos. I'm saying, be careful because it's a slippery slope and not a slide you want to ride.
We're a society built by thought and good-will engagement. We won't get out of our "rules for thee" with less thought and less good-will engagement.
I said I had zero concern for the quality of the code. That is, I do not have concern that the quality of the code will be a concern in and of itself.
It's a subtle, but IMO important difference. We only care about code quality so as it gives us stable, understandable systems. Historically that meant a human had to read and understand it. Suppose a future where that's no longer the case, then we may still end up with stable, understandable systems without understanding every minutiae of the substrate. It's the same way I don't really know if my compiler is correct, but the behavioral patterns of my code suggest it is without me understanding anything about its code quality.
Character, beauty, love, sacrifice. Every one of these involves pain and it makes life worth living. You can't avoid pain, so you might as well engage it in service of those you hold dear.
You should very much care about society wielding a sword like this, because historically we do not wield it well.
Yet, I can't deny the reality that I observe working with LLMs every day. If this truly is a step-function (as some are sgguesting), then I have absolutely zero concern for the quality of the code.
Coding seems to be one of the core use-cases for LLMs (as Simon Willison pointed out recently) and even if that's the only real use-case for LLMs, they're wildly useful. I do understand that useful != profitable and that's where I think Ed has a real point: until inference becomes much cheaper these companies cannot be profitable. Some mega-players will pay the API token price, but most will not.
I just don't understand this argument. "Theft" feels like a nice, heavy, moral accusation to toss at those you're debating with, but the actual prerequisites for theft don't even exist in this situation.
I could never, as an individual read, let alone synthesize and make decisions with, the amount of information on the internet. The LLM takes that free and open information and feeds me back novel information based on that free information. It gives me ideas, opinions, and hard data based on that information.
It's the most powerful information synthesizing tool in existence. I don't find the argument that "it's built on free information and sold to you" fair or plausible at all.
It's like saying you're free to make your own bottled water. Technically true, but in reality not.
Oh? Is that so? I've yet to see any evidence of this.
I've seen big companies laying off developers with dubious claims about them being replaced by AI. None of them can prove their claims. Their software hasn't gotten noticeably better.
Jevons paradox appears to be in full swing. No sign yet of software slowing down. In fact, my company has continued to grow in demand over the past 2 years due to the fact that we can build better software faster. By any way I could attempt to measure my "value", it is increasing.
Yet, I'd say my career so far has been very successful and personally enriching for me.
So what am I losing? I still use my intellect day in and day out, so it can't be that I'm not using my intellect at all.
I don't find this argument persuasive.
I'm feeling effects of using LLMs day in and day out, but I am not yet convinced that it's overwhelmingly negative, the way much of HN seems to lean.
I derive a lot of joy from shipping outstanding code for my clients and fixing problems they're experiencing. My joy has only increased as I can now ship better code, faster, with fewer bugs. No, I don't intimately understand the code the way I used to, but I understand it enough to accomplish the end goal.
The premise of this article takes a presumed position that the grades we were posting before really mattered a whole lot. I'm not convinced that's true.
So... no! It's not too late!
You can absolutely do that. But you'll have to network hard and find those people.
It's not impossible, and you may have to work some of those less-desirable jobs in the process. I have a theory that you'll actually find more of those companies as AI proliferates because the work that a single good engineer can do is being scaled very quickly.