| ▲ | layer8 3 hours ago |
| > "With so many companies worldwide faced with upheaval due to AI in software development, I believe this program will become a template for rapidly leveling up new developers across the industry." This seems cognitively dissonant with the AI upheaval resulting in the industry needing fewer developers. Maybe they want cheaper developers? |
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| ▲ | alpha21io an hour ago | parent | next [-] |
| Is there evidence that overall software developer positions are declining relative to other jobs? It wouldn't surprise me if Jevons paradox applied here. |
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| ▲ | zugi 29 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > Jevons paradox Thanks! I've heard numerous examples of this. E.g. paint rollers, and later paint sprayers, made painting so much more efficient and cheaper that people wanted their houses and apartments painted more often, ultimately increasing house painter employment. But I didn't realize the phenomenon had a name. | | |
| ▲ | sublinear 7 minutes ago | parent [-] | | The broader topic of marginal utility is worth looking into if this is interesting to you. The reason why AI induces more demand is more interesting than simply observing a correlation. At the root of the paradox is the dissatisfaction with AI as it raises the bar for human work. In that sense, AI functions like training wheels more than actually doing anything useful on its own. More people can ride the bike well as a result. This is the "law of diminishing marginal utility". In other words, LLMs are an NLP-powered google search 2.0. That sums up pretty well why AI hit a plateau a couple of years ago. There's only so much training data and humans become more efficient and creative once exposed to the exact information they were always looking for, but could never find in the past. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_utility |
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| ▲ | LanceH 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It feels like it's all senior developers now and nobody new. At some point they will want someone new and won't be able to find them. |
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| ▲ | flowerlad an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | > At some point they will want someone new If we freeze AI models at their current stage of development, then yes. If not, given the rate at which models are improving (compare Claude today to Claude 1 year ago), in 3 to 5 years software development could be fully automated. | | |
| ▲ | astrobe_ an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Including development of AI models? | |
| ▲ | dominotw an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | we dont' need to "freeze" models if next versions aren't a huge improvement over previous ones. That seems to be case now. | | | |
| ▲ | teiferer an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Are you sure that's how this works? Let's see, my grandparents were about 160cm when they were 35. My parents were about 170cm when they were 35 and I am about 180cm around 35. You are saying I can expect my grandchildren to be around 200cm at that age and their grandchildren 220cm? | | |
| ▲ | tomkarho an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Or we could assume since new data is increasingly AI generated then the next generation of models are inherently born out of incestuous relationships so I would imagine Claude's grandson is going to be a dwarf. Of course it is possible also that Claude will marry a chinese model (since it's asian odds are it is also smarter) bringing some diversity into the "gene" pool. Or better yet, a Russian supermodel. | |
| ▲ | emdash an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Are you sure that AI model progression and the height of your family members are 35 is related? It seems unlikely but I guess you'd know better than I. | | |
| ▲ | wlesieutre an hour ago | parent [-] | | That's their point, we can't assume model capabilities will go up linearly forever just because they have increased quickly in the past | | |
| ▲ | flowerlad an hour ago | parent [-] | | "We're running out of data, so LLM progress is hitting a wall" was a prominent late-2024 narrative. Back then many experts including Ilya used the word "plateau" when describing LLM progress. No one is using that word now, and there is no evidence we are about to reach a plateau, even though we ran out of data long ago. | | |
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| ▲ | an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | falcor84 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If we didn't have any humans before your grandparents, and these were the only data points we have to extrapolate from, then, yes, this would be a very reasonable prediction. | |
| ▲ | 44 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | Terr_ 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Some of that is long pre-existing, where too many companies would go: "Hey, let someone else hire juniors and train them up, we'll them away after that." Not that the new LLM-as-junior trend doesn't make it worse. |
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| ▲ | austin-cheney 39 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Your comment completely misses the point. AI is fully capable of replacing shitty developers that cannot program and cannot write original code of their own. This is not a technology problem, missing skills problem, or even an AI problem. It’s a problem of missing training and missing mentorship coupled with weak leaders who would rather throw their people to the wolves armed with crayons and coloring books until they just figure it out. Before AI was a thing once a large organization hired too many shitty developers you could occasionally clean house by laying some off and ordering the rest to own more responsibilities. Once AI starts replacing the weakest among us the scapegoats are gone. Then what? Eventually the finger pointers can only point at themselves once there is nobody else to point at. |
