This is *brutal*...
-
This is *brutal*...
"There are no more juniors. There was a funeral for their passing in 2024. Nobody came. The machine does what they do now, but cheaper. Of course, juniors weren't valuable for what they produced, they were valuable for who they would become: the senior engineer who knows where the bodies are buried. We optimized for output, and abolished apprenticeship. A few years from now, we'll wonder where all the seniors are. We shot them. Nobody will remember."
Programming Still Sucks. — Writing
Sorry Peter. — I'm at a birthday party, and while most people here also work in tech, there's always a Guy with a Real Job. You know, a physical job, building some or other thing people need. And this Guy always asks some variant of the same question: aren't you worried AI is taking your job? I glance around and see a few faces turning around toward us, rolling their eyes ever so slightly before returning to their previous conversation. Yes, this question again.
(www.stvn.sh)
@llorenzin what a great essay!
-
-
@llorenzin
I see things like these and I get severe mixed feelings, on one side this shitshow is a time bomb that will cause untold damage for many, many years, but on the other I always get a bit of weird relief of "Yes, it's not just me"@jherazob yes! The AI enthusiasts gaslighting everyone make it even more compelling when someone actually calls out the ugly underbelly...
-
@llorenzin - I’m a Sophomore in CS, and the “Junior developer hiring is over” is saddening. The amount of effort I need to just get up to bat let alone on first base is deflating. It’s not enough to show basic competence, communication, and a capacity to learn; these days you need to have your own end-to-end software platform up and 100+ leetcode questions memorized. The system is all messed up, and the worst part is this is all unforced errors. It doesn’t have to be like this.
@heroicthehobbyist I am so sorry...
I was mentoring a CS college student a few years ago, and she asked if we could continue after she graduated - I told her I'm happy to be a sounding board and a friend, but I can't in good conscience call myself a mentor anymore because the world I worked in is gone and all the rules I knew for how to succeed no longer apply.
It *shouldn't* be like this. But I honestly think learning a trade may be a safer course than IT until the bubble pops and sanity returns... -
-
@llorenzin @wordshaper The anxiety started long before "AI"; management is always obsessing about something and developers are always afraid they're going to get fired which makes it easy for management to leverage that anxiety so they do things against their own best interest. At some point we have to say enough is enough but somehow it's always never now or this.
A union and/or professional society would help but...
@zimzat @wordshaper that (union) ship has sailed. I don't think we have any choice but to ride out this madness and then figure out what the aftermath looks like.
-
PREACH
I'm not in the biz anymore but I fear for those that are. It's not going to be pretty.@IAmDannyBoling same. Sooooo very grateful I got out of tech just before the AI craze really started eating people's brains.
-
This is *brutal*...
"There are no more juniors. There was a funeral for their passing in 2024. Nobody came. The machine does what they do now, but cheaper. Of course, juniors weren't valuable for what they produced, they were valuable for who they would become: the senior engineer who knows where the bodies are buried. We optimized for output, and abolished apprenticeship. A few years from now, we'll wonder where all the seniors are. We shot them. Nobody will remember."
Programming Still Sucks. — Writing
Sorry Peter. — I'm at a birthday party, and while most people here also work in tech, there's always a Guy with a Real Job. You know, a physical job, building some or other thing people need. And this Guy always asks some variant of the same question: aren't you worried AI is taking your job? I glance around and see a few faces turning around toward us, rolling their eyes ever so slightly before returning to their previous conversation. Yes, this question again.
(www.stvn.sh)
@llorenzin *looks at other sectors who shredded juniors previously, like gamedev*
*They are collapsing*
*Starts sweating hard*
You all better start saving up wikis and other knowledge sources if you haven't already, and to back up all open source programs/codebases that you can
Because this sooner or later is gonna crash, and we gotta start again somewhere
-
This is *brutal*...
"There are no more juniors. There was a funeral for their passing in 2024. Nobody came. The machine does what they do now, but cheaper. Of course, juniors weren't valuable for what they produced, they were valuable for who they would become: the senior engineer who knows where the bodies are buried. We optimized for output, and abolished apprenticeship. A few years from now, we'll wonder where all the seniors are. We shot them. Nobody will remember."
Programming Still Sucks. — Writing
Sorry Peter. — I'm at a birthday party, and while most people here also work in tech, there's always a Guy with a Real Job. You know, a physical job, building some or other thing people need. And this Guy always asks some variant of the same question: aren't you worried AI is taking your job? I glance around and see a few faces turning around toward us, rolling their eyes ever so slightly before returning to their previous conversation. Yes, this question again.
(www.stvn.sh)
@llorenzin i keep complaining about the loss of the pipeline, but i'm just some greybeard who's probably long overdue for the firing squad.
the worst part is i meet young people every day who have the same excitement and zeal that i enjoyed at the beginning of my programming days. they are curious and inquisitive about the world of computers, and the best leadership has for them is becoming prompt engineers and review farmers.
-
@llorenzin dang, "The CEO says AI is making his buddy Jared's team so productive he was able to fire half of them, but like, as a brag, not a threat? I dunno, I felt threatened, but that's probably just my anxiety flaring up. Surely I can borrow a xanax from one of the several employees crying in the bathroom."
@ryanvade too real.
-
@heroicthehobbyist I am so sorry...
I was mentoring a CS college student a few years ago, and she asked if we could continue after she graduated - I told her I'm happy to be a sounding board and a friend, but I can't in good conscience call myself a mentor anymore because the world I worked in is gone and all the rules I knew for how to succeed no longer apply.
It *shouldn't* be like this. But I honestly think learning a trade may be a safer course than IT until the bubble pops and sanity returns...@llorenzin - I kid you not I had a potential mentor say the exact same thing! He gave me so general wisdom and insight but he told me and i quote “The pathways to got me to where I am and where I want to go aren’t around anymore”.
-
@IAmDannyBoling same. Sooooo very grateful I got out of tech just before the AI craze really started eating people's brains.
@llorenzin I'm glad you did too
-
@llorenzin And that’s an important point….destruction to who? The individual? So what cause the work is still being produced. Unless the output itself starts to become the problem, the individual destruction won’t matter
@Diami03 I was thinking the destruction of the junior-to-senior pipeline, but you make a great point - the destruction of code quality, of software architecture, of solution design best practices are all in play too.
-
@llorenzin *looks at other sectors who shredded juniors previously, like gamedev*
*They are collapsing*
*Starts sweating hard*
You all better start saving up wikis and other knowledge sources if you haven't already, and to back up all open source programs/codebases that you can
Because this sooner or later is gonna crash, and we gotta start again somewhere
@maestrafenix absolutely. I think we have no idea the extent of the damage this will cause as it plays out...
-
@llorenzin - I kid you not I had a potential mentor say the exact same thing! He gave me so general wisdom and insight but he told me and i quote “The pathways to got me to where I am and where I want to go aren’t around anymore”.
@heroicthehobbyist at least he was honest with you. Not that that's a consolation.
-
@llorenzin i keep complaining about the loss of the pipeline, but i'm just some greybeard who's probably long overdue for the firing squad.
the worst part is i meet young people every day who have the same excitement and zeal that i enjoyed at the beginning of my programming days. they are curious and inquisitive about the world of computers, and the best leadership has for them is becoming prompt engineers and review farmers.
@elmiko that's absolutely the most painful part for me - I'm at the point where I want to reach down and give a hand up, and the ladder just fucking evaporated.
Honestly, I'm to the point of telling young people excited about coding to go learn a trade that will pay their bills, and find an open source project to be passionate about in their free time... -
-
@elmiko that's absolutely the most painful part for me - I'm at the point where I want to reach down and give a hand up, and the ladder just fucking evaporated.
Honestly, I'm to the point of telling young people excited about coding to go learn a trade that will pay their bills, and find an open source project to be passionate about in their free time...> Honestly, I'm to the point of telling young people excited about coding to go learn a trade that will pay their bills, and find an open source project to be passionate about in their free time...
@llorenzin that sounds like a tough conversation to have. i know it would be for me.
-
@llorenzin
Thank you so much for sharing. Even with the dire truth in it it was a nice read.I loved the way the picture was painted so vividly.
@inw he really takes something I think we've all been vaguely feeling, and absolutely nails it.
-
This is *brutal*...
"There are no more juniors. There was a funeral for their passing in 2024. Nobody came. The machine does what they do now, but cheaper. Of course, juniors weren't valuable for what they produced, they were valuable for who they would become: the senior engineer who knows where the bodies are buried. We optimized for output, and abolished apprenticeship. A few years from now, we'll wonder where all the seniors are. We shot them. Nobody will remember."
Programming Still Sucks. — Writing
Sorry Peter. — I'm at a birthday party, and while most people here also work in tech, there's always a Guy with a Real Job. You know, a physical job, building some or other thing people need. And this Guy always asks some variant of the same question: aren't you worried AI is taking your job? I glance around and see a few faces turning around toward us, rolling their eyes ever so slightly before returning to their previous conversation. Yes, this question again.
(www.stvn.sh)
@llorenzin The section towards the last third about Sara and the cron job... yeah... that's me. 100%
