8 ms·

I've had quite a few conversations and read many thoughts on the subject of job security in the software industry through the years. New technologies, various c

I've had quite a few conversations and read many thoughts on the subject of job security in the software industry through the years. New technologies, various crisis and crashes, just age, incoming "hordes" of less prepared developers, or whatever. If I had to highlight the one thing all those conversations had in common it would be precisely this: I thought that having this knowledge would set me apart And it never does.

lukan 3mo ago
Some knowledge does set you apart - the ability to ship things, people pay for. Not producing holy code in the academic best language.
- catmanjan 3mo ago
  Ability can't really be compared to knowledge... e.g. you might lose the ability to play the piano, yet retain the knowledge about how to
  - lukan 3mo ago
    I don't know (also english is not my first language), but to me it takes knowledge to know what is the right tool for the job. To know what is required to make the client happy. To know where great code matters and where quick and dirty or nowdays vibe code is sufficient. And that knowledge can be complex. It usually requires knowing how people think and act, who don't know how to open a terminal. Because those are the main people using software.
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
lwhi 3mo ago
I think in the future, those who succeed will be equivalent to wayfinders. People who _can_ see the wood for the trees, and are able to understand multiple (sometimes conflicting) requirements and work out a way through that solves the problems that arise, for all involved parties. An understanding of domain, the ability to communicate effectively and a mind that can think laterally, will all be vital.
- csomar 3mo ago
  In a perfect world, yes. However, the current tech world is akin to a flea market. Those who shout out more stand out more.
  - lwhi 3mo ago
    Surely you can judge people by results though?
    - RugnirViking 3mo ago
      measuring programmer productivity is notoriously difficult. Does james, who shipped 20 features without testing thoroughly provide more value? or does joe, who patched a security hole in that time and avoided disaster? what about jason, who facilitated communication between them, and kept the infra going so their changes could go into prod without issues?
      - lwhi 3mo ago
        We won't be programmers in this scenario. The results will hopefully be a lot more tangible.
        RugnirViking 3mo ago
        This also was true for teams, and indeed, businesses. It's not a property of the code itself, its a property of products and outcomes. I don't think AI agents doing the day to day changes will affect this directly (but people may have more time to think about these higher level problems, and increased volume of changes may make the issue more important)
        lwhi 3mo ago
        I agree. I suppose, my best guess is that a team will be reduced to one or two people; the those that are left will be judged solely on outcomes. Two (human) brains are always useful; the benefit of a human in these scenarios is that we can be accountable, and that we have a very real incentive to do well and not be fired. The LLM obviously doesn't care in that regard!
RugnirViking 3mo ago
does it never? seems to me that people pay me precisely for my knowledge, learned over many years. The knowledge translates into action, sure. But thats like the old parable about a plumber being paid €150 for a 5 minute consult that involves turning a single screw. "i could have turned that screw!" the customer cries, ignoring that yes, they could have. But they didn't know to. I think perhaps the problem is instead "I thought that having this knowledge would set me apart, forever, without me having to learn anything else"
- esikich 3mo ago
  There's a good chance the apprentice plumber could've fixed it just as quickly. That's where we are now.
  - RugnirViking 3mo ago
    right. Apprentices will always grow, and so too must you, if you want to keep being paid. Their job is to come with new tools and new ideas, and your job is to keep a wider view into what you're doing and why, maintaining trust (you need to build the authority to tell apprentices no when their ideas might flood the customer's house), and keep moving towards other parts of the business and solving harder problems (working with sales, hiring, etc to manage customers and apprentices). AI will not build authority for you. If your argument is that the customer themselves could use an AI or whatever to learn plumbing, that was always an option (libraries, google, youtube). They pay you so they don't have to worry about flooding their house (or at least have someone else to blame). They might be able to "one shot" simple fixes that you might previously have assigned to an apprentice, but believe me, AIs are not about to start doing complex things for the layman that actually required seniors previously in either programming or plumbing, because very few of those things were just "type better into a computer". (build trust, speak confidently, know what doesn't work, take responsibility, test without breaking systems, communicate and work together with other professionals, have opinions)
    - ufocia 3mo ago
      Libraries, Google and YouTube were/are not nearly as efficient at conveying _targetted_ _actionable_ expertise as AI is.
dist-epoch 3mo ago
This is the old China fallacy. "Oh, we'll just ship production to China, and do the design and marketing in US, this is where the real value is anyway, China will never be able to do design and marketing as well as we do". Literally same thing: "Oh, we'll just let LLMs code, and we'll just do Taste. LLMs will never be able to do Taste"
- wetpaws 3mo ago
  [dead]
- pmg101 3mo ago
  It certainly seems similar. Except China is just humans in a different location so it shouldn't be surprising they can do things humans in the US can do. LLMs are a totally distinct type of thing. It's possible they'll be able to do Taste but it's also quite possible they'll never be able to.
kristjank 3mo ago
Knowledge often does not produce competence, especially in the applicable market. I work on the system administration side of things, and I have encountered many output-competent developers that were immeasurably stupid, but very little incompetent ones with tons of cryptic knowledge and intuitive understanding of the systems they worked on. It seems to me that knowledge doesn't always imply competence, but the lack of knowledge often very well explains incompetence. And, since the LLM is replacing the competence part without imprinting any knowledge on the one that wields it, it generates a lot of competent imbeciles that pass interviews and appear as though they not only do things, but know things as well. And once you reach that critical mass, sheeeeesh
- dag100 3mo ago
  > Knowledge often does not produce competence From your example, perhaps you mean "competence does not imply knowledge" or more accurately in fact "lack of competence implies lack of knowledge" i.e. !competence -> !knowledge, in that competence && !knowledge is common but !competence && knowledge is rare.
  - kristjank 3mo ago
    Yeah I think you're right. My ESL is pushing through, I guess.
kamaal 3mo ago
>>I thought that having this knowledge would set me apart The whole leetcode movement was designed to sell this idea that knowing a solution that can be looked up in a matter of minutes on the internet some how puts you astronomically ahead of those who don't. Strangely enough go look at that site itself and thousands submit working solutions to those problems. Knowing a solution discovered by somebody the first time, is no test of capacity or ability to get work done. It would probably matter if you discovered solution to a novel problem by yourself. How does knowing the end result of a long process by other people decide your ability to do anything at all? During interviews I have seen companies go to absurd lengths to justify these tests. Including asking candidates to imagine they might not have internet and might need to know these solutions. The only skill that really matters in our line of work is today most popularly known as high agency lifestyle. And delivery skills largely depend on ownership. In my decades of experience with software work, not knowing a thing isn't even a correlating factor in getting things done.
nlawalker 3mo ago
My concern is less about knowledge and more about the ability to communicate and make good decisions. I'm not sure how well it holds up against technology that can sometimes make a good showing at it, but is most importantly automated, cheap and subservient.
AndrewKemendo 3mo ago
Everyone but insane people like me want some kind of durable stability to their life they don’t want to be forced to reinvent themselves every five years because the world is changing faster than it ever has While I understand where people are coming from to an extent that’s just never been my lifestyle and so when I see people looking for some kind of long-term stability I just kind of baffled at what makes them think that that was ever possible. It’s like the propaganda from the American 1950s nuclear family idealism really got locked in in a way that people believe that there was a real thing And while it was certainly true that American baby boomers got to ride the economic pax Americana that happened from 1949 to today, that period is over While it is still possible for you to have a career your career is most likely going to change every 5 to 10 years now and that’s just a fact of the society that we have built we did not build society intentionally It was built via attrition and the current leaders are the ones who are fully committed to monetary based global domination
- Npovview 3mo ago
  Red Queen hypothesis is a hypothesis in evolutionary biology proposed in 1973, that species must constantly adapt, evolve, and proliferate in order to survive while pitted against ever-evolving opposing species. Why do we always assume environments and other agents will always remain static.
  - AndrewKemendo 3mo ago
    I think the people that survive don’t assume environments stay the same All the people I know who have a bunch of kids are planning a century ahead
yankee_dodge 3mo ago
Knowledge depreciates, so it is clarifying to add time explicitly: I thought this knowledge would set me apart... Forever? That seems over-optimistic for all occupations in all eras. For the rest of my working career? This really hasn't been true in a long time either, especially in software, where technology changes on the order of years. For the duration of my mortgage? The fondest hope, but pretty much like the above. For the next 10 years? Here is the big change. Even for fields like medicine, where knowledge really did set you apart. The AI can adapt faster. AI is inside the human OODA loop.
- sifar 3mo ago
  May be for OO not yet for DA. Existential pressure drives better(fruitful) decisons and actions. AI has yet to incorporate that into training/inference.
- OJFord 3mo ago
  The good news I think is that you have to be really really specialist for the specialist knowledge to actually be the important bit; for most it's the ability to obtain specialist knowledge, and apply it. As long as we can adapt, move on to the next knowledge-needed area, we'll hopefully be alright. (I think there are many analogies here to things people have always said about undergraduate study – e.g. it's about teaching you to learn, not teaching you the specific things you're taught, to be remembered and applied forever.)
TimTheTinker 3mo ago
Agreed. The ability to learn new things, and what characteristics their ability to learn has -- that's one dimension that strongly differentiates people in nearly any domain. But there are other dimensions as well that differentiate people and determine their value to business, like the ability to be handed problems no one else can solve and stick with them through sheer stubbornness until solutions begin to emerge.
matheusmoreira 3mo ago
If knowledge doesn't set us apart, then what does? How do we make it in this brave new world? Anomie is at an all time high. It feels like the world's unreadable right now. No idea what to do.

lukan 3mo ago

Some knowledge does set you apart - the ability to ship things, people pay for. Not producing holy code in the academic best language.

catmanjan 3mo ago
Ability can't really be compared to knowledge... e.g. you might lose the ability to play the piano, yet retain the knowledge about how to
- lukan 3mo ago
  I don't know (also english is not my first language), but to me it takes knowledge to know what is the right tool for the job. To know what is required to make the client happy. To know where great code matters and where quick and dirty or nowdays vibe code is sufficient. And that knowledge can be complex. It usually requires knowing how people think and act, who don't know how to open a terminal. Because those are the main people using software.

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

lwhi 3mo ago

I think in the future, those who succeed will be equivalent to wayfinders. People who _can_ see the wood for the trees, and are able to understand multiple (sometimes conflicting) requirements and work out a way through that solves the problems that arise, for all involved parties. An understanding of domain, the ability to communicate effectively and a mind that can think laterally, will all be vital.

csomar 3mo ago
In a perfect world, yes. However, the current tech world is akin to a flea market. Those who shout out more stand out more.
- lwhi 3mo ago
  Surely you can judge people by results though?
  - RugnirViking 3mo ago
    measuring programmer productivity is notoriously difficult. Does james, who shipped 20 features without testing thoroughly provide more value? or does joe, who patched a security hole in that time and avoided disaster? what about jason, who facilitated communication between them, and kept the infra going so their changes could go into prod without issues?
    - lwhi 3mo ago
      We won't be programmers in this scenario. The results will hopefully be a lot more tangible.
      - RugnirViking 3mo ago
        This also was true for teams, and indeed, businesses. It's not a property of the code itself, its a property of products and outcomes. I don't think AI agents doing the day to day changes will affect this directly (but people may have more time to think about these higher level problems, and increased volume of changes may make the issue more important)
        lwhi 3mo ago
        I agree. I suppose, my best guess is that a team will be reduced to one or two people; the those that are left will be judged solely on outcomes. Two (human) brains are always useful; the benefit of a human in these scenarios is that we can be accountable, and that we have a very real incentive to do well and not be fired. The LLM obviously doesn't care in that regard!

RugnirViking 3mo ago

does it never? seems to me that people pay me precisely for my knowledge, learned over many years. The knowledge translates into action, sure. But thats like the old parable about a plumber being paid €150 for a 5 minute consult that involves turning a single screw. "i could have turned that screw!" the customer cries, ignoring that yes, they could have. But they didn't know to. I think perhaps the problem is instead "I thought that having this knowledge would set me apart, forever, without me having to learn anything else"

esikich 3mo ago
There's a good chance the apprentice plumber could've fixed it just as quickly. That's where we are now.
- RugnirViking 3mo ago
  right. Apprentices will always grow, and so too must you, if you want to keep being paid. Their job is to come with new tools and new ideas, and your job is to keep a wider view into what you're doing and why, maintaining trust (you need to build the authority to tell apprentices no when their ideas might flood the customer's house), and keep moving towards other parts of the business and solving harder problems (working with sales, hiring, etc to manage customers and apprentices). AI will not build authority for you. If your argument is that the customer themselves could use an AI or whatever to learn plumbing, that was always an option (libraries, google, youtube). They pay you so they don't have to worry about flooding their house (or at least have someone else to blame). They might be able to "one shot" simple fixes that you might previously have assigned to an apprentice, but believe me, AIs are not about to start doing complex things for the layman that actually required seniors previously in either programming or plumbing, because very few of those things were just "type better into a computer". (build trust, speak confidently, know what doesn't work, take responsibility, test without breaking systems, communicate and work together with other professionals, have opinions)
  - ufocia 3mo ago
    Libraries, Google and YouTube were/are not nearly as efficient at conveying _targetted_ _actionable_ expertise as AI is.

dist-epoch 3mo ago

This is the old China fallacy. "Oh, we'll just ship production to China, and do the design and marketing in US, this is where the real value is anyway, China will never be able to do design and marketing as well as we do". Literally same thing: "Oh, we'll just let LLMs code, and we'll just do Taste. LLMs will never be able to do Taste"

wetpaws 3mo ago
[dead]
pmg101 3mo ago
It certainly seems similar. Except China is just humans in a different location so it shouldn't be surprising they can do things humans in the US can do. LLMs are a totally distinct type of thing. It's possible they'll be able to do Taste but it's also quite possible they'll never be able to.

kristjank 3mo ago

Knowledge often does not produce competence, especially in the applicable market. I work on the system administration side of things, and I have encountered many output-competent developers that were immeasurably stupid, but very little incompetent ones with tons of cryptic knowledge and intuitive understanding of the systems they worked on. It seems to me that knowledge doesn't always imply competence, but the lack of knowledge often very well explains incompetence. And, since the LLM is replacing the competence part without imprinting any knowledge on the one that wields it, it generates a lot of competent imbeciles that pass interviews and appear as though they not only do things, but know things as well. And once you reach that critical mass, sheeeeesh

dag100 3mo ago
> Knowledge often does not produce competence From your example, perhaps you mean "competence does not imply knowledge" or more accurately in fact "lack of competence implies lack of knowledge" i.e. !competence -> !knowledge, in that competence && !knowledge is common but !competence && knowledge is rare.
- kristjank 3mo ago
  Yeah I think you're right. My ESL is pushing through, I guess.

kamaal 3mo ago

>>I thought that having this knowledge would set me apart The whole leetcode movement was designed to sell this idea that knowing a solution that can be looked up in a matter of minutes on the internet some how puts you astronomically ahead of those who don't. Strangely enough go look at that site itself and thousands submit working solutions to those problems. Knowing a solution discovered by somebody the first time, is no test of capacity or ability to get work done. It would probably matter if you discovered solution to a novel problem by yourself. How does knowing the end result of a long process by other people decide your ability to do anything at all? During interviews I have seen companies go to absurd lengths to justify these tests. Including asking candidates to imagine they might not have internet and might need to know these solutions. The only skill that really matters in our line of work is today most popularly known as high agency lifestyle. And delivery skills largely depend on ownership. In my decades of experience with software work, not knowing a thing isn't even a correlating factor in getting things done.

nlawalker 3mo ago

My concern is less about knowledge and more about the ability to communicate and make good decisions. I'm not sure how well it holds up against technology that can sometimes make a good showing at it, but is most importantly automated, cheap and subservient.

AndrewKemendo 3mo ago

Everyone but insane people like me want some kind of durable stability to their life they don’t want to be forced to reinvent themselves every five years because the world is changing faster than it ever has While I understand where people are coming from to an extent that’s just never been my lifestyle and so when I see people looking for some kind of long-term stability I just kind of baffled at what makes them think that that was ever possible. It’s like the propaganda from the American 1950s nuclear family idealism really got locked in in a way that people believe that there was a real thing And while it was certainly true that American baby boomers got to ride the economic pax Americana that happened from 1949 to today, that period is over While it is still possible for you to have a career your career is most likely going to change every 5 to 10 years now and that’s just a fact of the society that we have built we did not build society intentionally It was built via attrition and the current leaders are the ones who are fully committed to monetary based global domination

Npovview 3mo ago
Red Queen hypothesis is a hypothesis in evolutionary biology proposed in 1973, that species must constantly adapt, evolve, and proliferate in order to survive while pitted against ever-evolving opposing species. Why do we always assume environments and other agents will always remain static.
- AndrewKemendo 3mo ago
  I think the people that survive don’t assume environments stay the same All the people I know who have a bunch of kids are planning a century ahead

yankee_dodge 3mo ago

Knowledge depreciates, so it is clarifying to add time explicitly: I thought this knowledge would set me apart... Forever? That seems over-optimistic for all occupations in all eras. For the rest of my working career? This really hasn't been true in a long time either, especially in software, where technology changes on the order of years. For the duration of my mortgage? The fondest hope, but pretty much like the above. For the next 10 years? Here is the big change. Even for fields like medicine, where knowledge really did set you apart. The AI can adapt faster. AI is inside the human OODA loop.

sifar 3mo ago
May be for OO not yet for DA. Existential pressure drives better(fruitful) decisons and actions. AI has yet to incorporate that into training/inference.
OJFord 3mo ago
The good news I think is that you have to be really really specialist for the specialist knowledge to actually be the important bit; for most it's the ability to obtain specialist knowledge, and apply it. As long as we can adapt, move on to the next knowledge-needed area, we'll hopefully be alright. (I think there are many analogies here to things people have always said about undergraduate study – e.g. it's about teaching you to learn, not teaching you the specific things you're taught, to be remembered and applied forever.)

TimTheTinker 3mo ago

Agreed. The ability to learn new things, and what characteristics their ability to learn has -- that's one dimension that strongly differentiates people in nearly any domain. But there are other dimensions as well that differentiate people and determine their value to business, like the ability to be handed problems no one else can solve and stick with them through sheer stubbornness until solutions begin to emerge.

matheusmoreira 3mo ago

If knowledge doesn't set us apart, then what does? How do we make it in this brave new world? Anomie is at an all time high. It feels like the world's unreadable right now. No idea what to do.