> Only seniors who can use LLMs and evaluate the outputs.

I'm just a hobbyist but I've gotten pretty good at using LLMs and evaluating and refining their outputs. Think there's still space in this industry or is it hopeless?

While you should always remain grounded and know what you don't know, don't ever self-select yourself out of things. (Some things require credentials, but notwithstanding that, there are entirely new jobs and opportunities being created constantly.)

While I would expect someone to know algorithms, data structures, distributed systems, and have good taste and pragmatism for both eng design and office politics, that doesn't mean you can't learn those things. You absorb them the deeper you go and the more frequently you encounter them.

There are no real rules of the universe, and you're only here for an infinitesimally short time. As long as you're not hurting anyone, break the rules.

It’s a bad look these days IMO to say you have no real classical training but you picked up an LLM and now you think you know what you’re doing (for a job interview).

In the past, people without formal training had to learn things the hard way and projects were proof enough that they understood the fundamentals, but now there is no way to reasonably distinguish between such people and a heavy LLM augmented user. In our company we will likely place more importance now on full four year CS degrees as a signaling mechanism of candidate quality.

Keep it a hobby and build stuff you like.