minware reposted this
AI is about as close to replacing senior engineers as I am to replacing the NY Yankees' shortstop. Volpe, the Yankees' shortstop, fields 97% of plays without making an error. I played baseball in high school and could maybe field 50-60% of those that are routine. A good college player could probably field 95% of those plays, and a minor leaguer maybe within 1%. However, that last percentage point is worth millions and can only be delivered by a few uniquely talented people. AI doing 50% of someone's job doesn't mean it's 50% of the way to replacing them. Each step up is exponentially more difficult, and those difficult things are where experts add all of their value.
So you may have identified a new type of problem. Let's assume you're correct. AI would struggle to replace a 'real' programmer. A solid Senior programmer. The question is... how will we train these new folks? I suppose AI. But don't most programmers learn through the grind? Not just exercises, but those long stretches in the zone trying to solve real problems? Even if some of them ARE repetitive that others have done. You find something on Stack or someone's github, but then you want to understand it, right? What happens when most of the junior stuff is replaceable? Will it be harder to train people right through this phase?
I felt *really* good giving both Claude and ChatGPT the structure of a current business problem and seeing them fail miserably when the prompts are what a stakeholder would feed and not a skilled DS
I highly doubt AI can even reach 50%. It has zero understanding of context and produces gibberish most of the time. The only thing it's good is about producing boilerplate and maybe autocompletion sometimes. P.S. In some other areas it might excel like creating images or videos, but for coding it's quite sh*te at least for now.
Precisely. This is why the fears of AI displacing millions out of their roles is baseless fear-mongering. AI doing 50% of someone’s job means higher productivity and people being able to focus on more interesting and satisfying areas than the mundane tasks AI took over.
Wait. I’m able to build entire enterprise systems by myself with ai now. That means 2-3 other developers aren't hired - where otherwise they would have been. This is the future. Devs who can work with ai and have a head for code will outperform and eek out those of lower quality. Hell it may even be reversed, the lower quality (less pay) may be upserping the high quality developers since ai is crutching their weaknesses (think maintenance contracts). It is still unknown where the dice will fall but be sure that there will be a reckoning in our field.
How about Juniors? How can an inexperienced engineer get to become senior if they aren't being given the opportunity to grow?
So, you think they're spending billions of dollars DEVELOPING AI so as NOT to save money on trillions of dollars of paychecks? Not everyone is that shortstop. There are lots of people who would like to still be allowed to eat.
Kevin Borders So you have blackmail details on Steinbrenner? 😆 😂 🤣 😂 Sorry, I kid, I kid.
Product Leader | Startup Founder | Mediocre Developer
1moWeren't you a third baseman? Changing positions is extremely difficult.