6 ms·

In a leaked recording, AWS CEO tells most developers could stop coding soon

56 points by rainhacker 2y ago

al_borland 2y ago
So many bad takes in that article. It will be interesting to look back in 5+ years to see how things play out vs this unlimited optimism. > "everyone is a programmer now" I’ve heard this about so many things. Various tool they make everyone a programmer, or everyone a DBA. Nice dreams, that never seem to play out. Being a programmer isn’t about the syntax, it’s about breaking problems down, so they can logically be built back up in code. I have yet to see anyone without an extensive background in programming write good spec for what they want code to do. How many assumptions are we comfortable having AI make? On my last project I was given 1 sentence of direction, and the people giving the direction truly thought that’s all they needed to say… or it was the extent of their understanding of the topic. It took thousands of lines of code, backed by a bunch of testing and design decisions, informed by 15+ years with the company and the various personalities involved, to make that 1 sentence a reality in a way that would make sense for the organization. Call me a cynic, but I don’t see AI doing a good job with something like that in a world where “everyone is a programmer.” I did try putting it in Copilot at the start, just to see what it dumped out. It gave me maybe 40 lines of broken code. It was the blog post version of how to do it, not an enterprise solution.
- mrinfinitiesx 2y ago
  I think the enterprise stuff is programmers become more tool-assisted, so fewer programmers are needed. A team of two seniors and 6 juniors can just be two seniors. As you said, it's mostly breaking down a problem and knowing what's needed, then telling it what components are needed. 'Make me a function that does this and that' I use it all the time to make things I know I can make but it makes it, if it makes it a weird way I modify the prompt to tell it not to make it that way. Good for frameworks for skeleton code and simple hacking things together at sysadmin level and tinkering with things. Not sure about full fledged program projects though. Helps devs get 'unstuck' if they get the writers block. It's absolutely changing the game for marketing, bizdev, and programmers now. Intel layoffs ~20,000, IBM ~24,000. Kind of scary. Smart people with better tools can be a dominant force. So, yeah programmers might be looking for newer skillsets. Operations and Sysadmins I don't forsee ever changing, especially with AI. As you said, will be interesting to look back in five years and see.
  - piperswe 2y ago
    If we're replacing 2 seniors and 6 juniors with just 2 seniors, where are you gonna get more seniors when the 2 retire?
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      The same way that currently most HR departments only care about people with at least 10 years experience in exactly the same stack the company is using, and more often than not, training is not even part of the picture.
    - tivert 2y ago
      > If we're replacing 2 seniors and 6 juniors with just 2 seniors, where are you gonna get more seniors when the 2 retire? Happily drive off a cliff?
      - jedmeyers 2y ago
        With a golden parachute nonetheless.
    - treyd 2y ago
      That problem isn't in scope. That's a long term issue, we care about returns we can deliver in the next 2 quarters.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    try https://github.com/OpenInterpreter/open-interpreter https://github.com/OpenInterpreter/open-interpreter. sysadmining stuff just got a whole lot easier. I've been admining Linux systems for over two decades, but I give LLMs a shot at dealing with some stupid Unix shit so I don't have to. it won't get 100% of the problems, but I can ask it to fix the mess made of, say, my system SSL certificate authorities, and it won't judge me for saying SSL and not TLS and it'll go off and try the first couple of fixes it basically the same way I would, saving me time while I work on something else.
    - 2y ago
- samsk 2y ago
  I'll be afraid when AI takes a bug report with that typical one sentence problem description (like 'Paypal payments are not being processed, we loose 30k a day'), and fixes the problematic one line of code that the AI wrote before.
- InDubioProRubio 2y ago
  They despise dependencies so much. Half of there life is to get rid of them - declared as "risks" and "depending on some guy down the hall who codes really well" just makes them loose sleep at night. And they put so much effort into this side-quest. No code, low code, everyone codes, simple languages, uml-programing,graph-based programing, so easy my intern can do it, outsourced programming, code by specs, all just to get rid of that dependency that can not be- and it never works out. The complexity was inside the company and its product all along.
  - InDubioProRubio 2y ago
    I guess dependency is powerlessness and thus depending on programming, without the ability to control your destiny, is the equivalent of power thirsty sociopath torture. Makes ones life that one notch more beautiful, going into work..
djmips 2y ago
I have yet to see a significant increase in productivity from AI. I wonder where they are extrapolating from?
- 01100011 2y ago
  They're extrapolating from their beliefs which they must hold given the investments they've already made in a fairly immature technology. They have to believe that AI will lower their staffing costs and start generating serious revenues because to admit otherwise means they have failed to present an honest picture to their investors.
  - tivert 2y ago
    > They're extrapolating from their beliefs which they must hold given the investments they've already made... I swear that covers an embarrassingly large fraction of tech industry reasoning. And everybody thinks they're so smart.
- hnthr_w_y 2y ago
  There are two sides to the story. Look at the unemployment rates or recent layoffs, a 2% difference is enough to disrupt a lot of things. You don't need a lot. AI tools has made a significant impact already. But that significant number isn't '100%'. On the main topic, of course you can't replace a team of 8 compromised of seniors, mids, and juniors with just 2 seniors. Nowhere near that.
- suzzer99 2y ago
  They're extrapolating from their PowerPoint slides, the single source of truth from which all else is manifested.
- senectus1 2y ago
  yeah all I've seen so far is a very expensive but actually limited in features QoL upgrade that works for a very limited subset of the enterprise workforce. (mostly copilot).
- gklitz 2y ago
copperroof 2y ago
I’m so glad I left. The execs there are comically incompetent.
- raman325 2y ago
  I am missing something, what is being said that signals incompetence?
  - tivert 2y ago
    > I am missing something, what is being said that signals incompetence? You could start at the first quoted remark: "If you go forward 24 months from now, or some amount of time — I can't exactly predict where it is — it's possible that most developers are not coding." 1. Doesn't seem to demonstrate understanding of what developers actually do. 2. Poor understanding of the limitations of the technology he's talking about. 3. Totally unrealistic timeline. 4. The kind of claim that has been made countless times, about countless technologies, and has never panned out yet. That doesn't mean it won't ever pan out, but it means it warrants a huge amount of skepticism.
    - raman325 2y ago
      OK fair enough. There was some salesmanship and exaggeration going on for sure, but I thought the follow up quote clarified what he meant, or at least the way I read it, which is that code assistants will significantly reduce the amount of boilerplate coding that users are having to write by hand, which will give engineers more time to spend on the design part of the job. I didn't read this as saying your job is not safe because AI is coming, but maybe I am looking at this with tinted lenses
  - janalsncm 2y ago
    At a very basic level, the only way the CEO could say most developers would be replaced is if he has not used state of the art code assistants. It’s either a lack of understanding the role of a developer, or of machine learning, or both. And last time I checked AWS’ AI assistant won’t even handle IAM policies. So at least those jobs should be safe.
anynailsaround 2y ago
AWS CEO is just catching up now. Most developers have stopped coding since several years now and have been dancing around with JSON, yaml, helm charts, terraform and docker files.
- xwolfi 2y ago
  They managed to code in text files instead of text files, the devils !
ein0p 2y ago
Worrisome. If I were heavily dependent on AWS I’d start thinking about plan B.
dandanua 2y ago
In the meantime, CEOs will increase their pay by 10x-100x, because, obviously, they do the most important work out there. /s
Duanemclemore 2y ago
I'm sorry, please don't downvote me for a low-quality reply - but my only reaction after reading that is ... "sure, Jan."
janalsncm 2y ago
In other news, Amazon investors just found out the AWS CEO could be replaced by a chatbot and nothing of value would be lost.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  I agree, although we should note that the constant here is that I and this CEO both think jobs we aren’t doing could be replaced by bots. But, really, I do think I’m right and they are wrong…
alexnewman 2y ago
I actually have a different hypothesis. The amount of professional developers is increasing exponentially since the invention of computers, at a pretty steady rate. It’s only possible because of increased tooling. I’m hoping that ai is powerful enough to keep this trend going
edg5000 2y ago
In the last 100 years, software adoption went from non-existant to being used everywhere, so even through programmer productivity was increasing, we stil always needed more programmers. But maybe the growth of programmer productivity will be higher than the growth of software demand at some point?
- globular-toast 2y ago
  If "programmer productivity" increases then I'll spend 90% of my time thinking and talking to domain experts instead of 80%. Being able to write executable software is not and never has been the problem. But, sure, if it ever becomes easy to write working software then you can expect programmer salaries to fall precipitously, at least to the level of nurses or any other occupation that requires training but essentially anyone can do.
  - edg5000 2y ago
    Interesting, for me, it has been the opposite. You spend some time identifying the problem, meet with a few customers (if it's your own business) or have a chat with your employer. Once you get an idea of what is needed you get to work. I'd say 90% of the time is spent implementing for me.
    - globular-toast 2y ago
      What do you mean by "implementation", though? Notice I said 80% of my time includes thinking. In other words, only around 20% is typing, which is the only thing LLMs help with. For me, most of my time "implementing" is thinking.
shrubble 2y ago
I’m waiting for the story where a developer says that AI is equally able to replace senior managers; I can only imagine the blustering and outrage that would result!
t3rra 2y ago
CEO could stop manage sooner
in_ab 2y ago
They have to say that to make the number go up. All these companies have heavily invested in AI. AI is just another tool whose output depends on the skill of the user. You can't put people without domain knowledge in front of a LLM and get good results. It's very good at producing output that's looks good enough to convince non experts that it can do the job.
foobarkey 2y ago
AWS CEO: https://xkcd.com/605/ https://xkcd.com/605/
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jacknews 2y ago
This is why 'leaders' should spend some time in the trenches, doing the job of those they 'lead', so that they have at least a basic understanding of the actual difficulties, limitations, possibilities, etc.
smitty1e 2y ago
I've got a tinfoil hat that says this AI hype cycle is ~20% no-kidding tech, and ~80% fig leaf for offloading expensive employees.
PeterStuer 2y ago
Thing is that the new crop of LLM AI systems are far more suited to replace the vagueries and multiway interpretable and broadly generic outputs of positions like sales and marketing, and yes, management, than they are at replacement in engineering based environments where output and performance is highly specific, knowledge very fractal and volatile, and unforgiving in the slightest. I' productively using LLM coding assistants daily, but if I had to choose between having to go with the unmodified LLM output of codebase or a marketing plan, it would not even be a question.
rk06 2y ago
"If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in" I am happy to change my title from Software Engineer to AI Software Debugger if it means more money and prestige.

56 points by rainhacker 2y ago

So many bad takes in that article. It will be interesting to look back in 5+ years to see how things play out vs this unlimited optimism. > "everyone is a programmer now" I’ve heard this about so many things. Various tool they make everyone a programmer, or everyone a DBA. Nice dreams, that never seem to play out. Being a programmer isn’t about the syntax, it’s about breaking problems down, so they can logically be built back up in code. I have yet to see anyone without an extensive background in programming write good spec for what they want code to do. How many assumptions are we comfortable having AI make? On my last project I was given 1 sentence of direction, and the people giving the direction truly thought that’s all they needed to say… or it was the extent of their understanding of the topic. It took thousands of lines of code, backed by a bunch of testing and design decisions, informed by 15+ years with the company and the various personalities involved, to make that 1 sentence a reality in a way that would make sense for the organization. Call me a cynic, but I don’t see AI doing a good job with something like that in a world where “everyone is a programmer.” I did try putting it in Copilot at the start, just to see what it dumped out. It gave me maybe 40 lines of broken code. It was the blog post version of how to do it, not an enterprise solution.

mrinfinitiesx 2y ago
I think the enterprise stuff is programmers become more tool-assisted, so fewer programmers are needed. A team of two seniors and 6 juniors can just be two seniors. As you said, it's mostly breaking down a problem and knowing what's needed, then telling it what components are needed. 'Make me a function that does this and that' I use it all the time to make things I know I can make but it makes it, if it makes it a weird way I modify the prompt to tell it not to make it that way. Good for frameworks for skeleton code and simple hacking things together at sysadmin level and tinkering with things. Not sure about full fledged program projects though. Helps devs get 'unstuck' if they get the writers block. It's absolutely changing the game for marketing, bizdev, and programmers now. Intel layoffs ~20,000, IBM ~24,000. Kind of scary. Smart people with better tools can be a dominant force. So, yeah programmers might be looking for newer skillsets. Operations and Sysadmins I don't forsee ever changing, especially with AI. As you said, will be interesting to look back in five years and see.
- piperswe 2y ago
  If we're replacing 2 seniors and 6 juniors with just 2 seniors, where are you gonna get more seniors when the 2 retire?
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    The same way that currently most HR departments only care about people with at least 10 years experience in exactly the same stack the company is using, and more often than not, training is not even part of the picture.
  - tivert 2y ago
    > If we're replacing 2 seniors and 6 juniors with just 2 seniors, where are you gonna get more seniors when the 2 retire? Happily drive off a cliff?
    - jedmeyers 2y ago
      With a golden parachute nonetheless.
  - treyd 2y ago
    That problem isn't in scope. That's a long term issue, we care about returns we can deliver in the next 2 quarters.
- fragmede 2y ago
  try https://github.com/OpenInterpreter/open-interpreter https://github.com/OpenInterpreter/open-interpreter. sysadmining stuff just got a whole lot easier. I've been admining Linux systems for over two decades, but I give LLMs a shot at dealing with some stupid Unix shit so I don't have to. it won't get 100% of the problems, but I can ask it to fix the mess made of, say, my system SSL certificate authorities, and it won't judge me for saying SSL and not TLS and it'll go off and try the first couple of fixes it basically the same way I would, saving me time while I work on something else.
  - 2y ago
samsk 2y ago
I'll be afraid when AI takes a bug report with that typical one sentence problem description (like 'Paypal payments are not being processed, we loose 30k a day'), and fixes the problematic one line of code that the AI wrote before.
InDubioProRubio 2y ago
They despise dependencies so much. Half of there life is to get rid of them - declared as "risks" and "depending on some guy down the hall who codes really well" just makes them loose sleep at night. And they put so much effort into this side-quest. No code, low code, everyone codes, simple languages, uml-programing,graph-based programing, so easy my intern can do it, outsourced programming, code by specs, all just to get rid of that dependency that can not be- and it never works out. The complexity was inside the company and its product all along.
- InDubioProRubio 2y ago
  I guess dependency is powerlessness and thus depending on programming, without the ability to control your destiny, is the equivalent of power thirsty sociopath torture. Makes ones life that one notch more beautiful, going into work..

djmips 2y ago

I have yet to see a significant increase in productivity from AI. I wonder where they are extrapolating from?

01100011 2y ago
They're extrapolating from their beliefs which they must hold given the investments they've already made in a fairly immature technology. They have to believe that AI will lower their staffing costs and start generating serious revenues because to admit otherwise means they have failed to present an honest picture to their investors.
- tivert 2y ago
  > They're extrapolating from their beliefs which they must hold given the investments they've already made... I swear that covers an embarrassingly large fraction of tech industry reasoning. And everybody thinks they're so smart.
hnthr_w_y 2y ago
There are two sides to the story. Look at the unemployment rates or recent layoffs, a 2% difference is enough to disrupt a lot of things. You don't need a lot. AI tools has made a significant impact already. But that significant number isn't '100%'. On the main topic, of course you can't replace a team of 8 compromised of seniors, mids, and juniors with just 2 seniors. Nowhere near that.
suzzer99 2y ago
They're extrapolating from their PowerPoint slides, the single source of truth from which all else is manifested.
senectus1 2y ago
yeah all I've seen so far is a very expensive but actually limited in features QoL upgrade that works for a very limited subset of the enterprise workforce. (mostly copilot).
gklitz 2y ago

copperroof 2y ago

I’m so glad I left. The execs there are comically incompetent.

raman325 2y ago
I am missing something, what is being said that signals incompetence?
- tivert 2y ago
  > I am missing something, what is being said that signals incompetence? You could start at the first quoted remark: "If you go forward 24 months from now, or some amount of time — I can't exactly predict where it is — it's possible that most developers are not coding." 1. Doesn't seem to demonstrate understanding of what developers actually do. 2. Poor understanding of the limitations of the technology he's talking about. 3. Totally unrealistic timeline. 4. The kind of claim that has been made countless times, about countless technologies, and has never panned out yet. That doesn't mean it won't ever pan out, but it means it warrants a huge amount of skepticism.
  - raman325 2y ago
    OK fair enough. There was some salesmanship and exaggeration going on for sure, but I thought the follow up quote clarified what he meant, or at least the way I read it, which is that code assistants will significantly reduce the amount of boilerplate coding that users are having to write by hand, which will give engineers more time to spend on the design part of the job. I didn't read this as saying your job is not safe because AI is coming, but maybe I am looking at this with tinted lenses
- janalsncm 2y ago
  At a very basic level, the only way the CEO could say most developers would be replaced is if he has not used state of the art code assistants. It’s either a lack of understanding the role of a developer, or of machine learning, or both. And last time I checked AWS’ AI assistant won’t even handle IAM policies. So at least those jobs should be safe.

anynailsaround 2y ago

AWS CEO is just catching up now. Most developers have stopped coding since several years now and have been dancing around with JSON, yaml, helm charts, terraform and docker files.

xwolfi 2y ago
They managed to code in text files instead of text files, the devils !

ein0p 2y ago

Worrisome. If I were heavily dependent on AWS I’d start thinking about plan B.

dandanua 2y ago

In the meantime, CEOs will increase their pay by 10x-100x, because, obviously, they do the most important work out there. /s

Duanemclemore 2y ago

I'm sorry, please don't downvote me for a low-quality reply - but my only reaction after reading that is ... "sure, Jan."

janalsncm 2y ago

In other news, Amazon investors just found out the AWS CEO could be replaced by a chatbot and nothing of value would be lost.

bee_rider 2y ago
I agree, although we should note that the constant here is that I and this CEO both think jobs we aren’t doing could be replaced by bots. But, really, I do think I’m right and they are wrong…

alexnewman 2y ago

I actually have a different hypothesis. The amount of professional developers is increasing exponentially since the invention of computers, at a pretty steady rate. It’s only possible because of increased tooling. I’m hoping that ai is powerful enough to keep this trend going

edg5000 2y ago

In the last 100 years, software adoption went from non-existant to being used everywhere, so even through programmer productivity was increasing, we stil always needed more programmers. But maybe the growth of programmer productivity will be higher than the growth of software demand at some point?

globular-toast 2y ago
If "programmer productivity" increases then I'll spend 90% of my time thinking and talking to domain experts instead of 80%. Being able to write executable software is not and never has been the problem. But, sure, if it ever becomes easy to write working software then you can expect programmer salaries to fall precipitously, at least to the level of nurses or any other occupation that requires training but essentially anyone can do.
- edg5000 2y ago
  Interesting, for me, it has been the opposite. You spend some time identifying the problem, meet with a few customers (if it's your own business) or have a chat with your employer. Once you get an idea of what is needed you get to work. I'd say 90% of the time is spent implementing for me.
  - globular-toast 2y ago
    What do you mean by "implementation", though? Notice I said 80% of my time includes thinking. In other words, only around 20% is typing, which is the only thing LLMs help with. For me, most of my time "implementing" is thinking.

shrubble 2y ago

I’m waiting for the story where a developer says that AI is equally able to replace senior managers; I can only imagine the blustering and outrage that would result!

t3rra 2y ago

CEO could stop manage sooner

in_ab 2y ago

They have to say that to make the number go up. All these companies have heavily invested in AI. AI is just another tool whose output depends on the skill of the user. You can't put people without domain knowledge in front of a LLM and get good results. It's very good at producing output that's looks good enough to convince non experts that it can do the job.

foobarkey 2y ago

AWS CEO: https://xkcd.com/605/ https://xkcd.com/605/

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

jacknews 2y ago

This is why 'leaders' should spend some time in the trenches, doing the job of those they 'lead', so that they have at least a basic understanding of the actual difficulties, limitations, possibilities, etc.

smitty1e 2y ago

I've got a tinfoil hat that says this AI hype cycle is ~20% no-kidding tech, and ~80% fig leaf for offloading expensive employees.

PeterStuer 2y ago

Thing is that the new crop of LLM AI systems are far more suited to replace the vagueries and multiway interpretable and broadly generic outputs of positions like sales and marketing, and yes, management, than they are at replacement in engineering based environments where output and performance is highly specific, knowledge very fractal and volatile, and unforgiving in the slightest. I' productively using LLM coding assistants daily, but if I had to choose between having to go with the unmodified LLM output of codebase or a marketing plan, it would not even be a question.

rk06 2y ago

"If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in" I am happy to change my title from Software Engineer to AI Software Debugger if it means more money and prestige.