I can only speak for myself, so I hope this resonates with you.

I wasn’t even really concerned with optimizing low level code before LLMs and that wasn’t why I was hired either.

However following that low level thread: We can look at the reasonable options and immediately know if they’re reasonable or nonsense. Why? We know the code. Now zoom a level out, where I think our expertise really lies.

Building a complex system isn’t easy. There are customers with requirements, there are budgets, SLAs etc. Sometimes one customer needs X and one needs Y. Our expertise is taking all of this in, and producing something that balances all the different variables. It’s knowing that we’ll expect X events a second so we’ll need Y to ensure we can tolerate failure.

Is it possible LLMs will be able to do all of that too? Maybe. But then why would our customers need the enterprises they pay for?