"There are no more juniors.
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"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)
@tante heh - my wife, who (encouraged by our friend who did the same switch ~5/6 years ago) decided at the end of 2021 to quit her supply chain management career and become a developer (so we both could have remote jobs ant travel) - ignored the funeral and tried, and tired and tried till 2025, when she said fuckit and became qa engineer … just in time to train the machines
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I think the thing to be pointed out is that cost of the systems versus their operational costs are very different things and this page gives you an idea of what the power draw is. Primarily the cost is in increased energy, demand and waste.
This is what I meant. Is that Moore’s law, is only been kept alive by stacking components on the silicon. For GPU this is intrinsic and ideal. You can’t contravene thermodynamics though.
12 best GPUs for AI and machine learning in 2026 | Blog — Northflank
Compare the 12 best GPUs for AI in 2026: B200, H200, H100, RTX 4090 & more. Specs, performance & costs. Deploy with Northflank's cloud platform.
Northflank — Deploy any project in seconds, in our cloud or yours. (northflank.com)
Also I can help nerding out a bit, but running on the assumption that Nvidia is talking about technical reality and not some marketing ploy, the raw compute power does not necessarily equate to better performance. Compute power is more subtle than gigaflops. This means that more compute power may not be found necessarily more gigaflops but in the surrounding architecture and that can be good or less good.
NVIDIA CUDA Cores: How They Work and Why They Matter (2026)
Learn how CUDA cores power AI training through parallel processors. Compare CUDA vs Tensor cores, performance factors, and get started with cloud GPUs.
(www.thundercompute.com)
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@tante oh hey I wrote this! Thanks for sharing!
@stevendotjs @tante Thanks for writing this and congratulations on your craftsmanship with words! Hits the perfect tone and while English is not my first language, reading this was pure bliss.
Made it out of programming (it’s just a hobby now) and glad about that.
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"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)
@tante Gawd this is good.
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@tante oh hey I wrote this! Thanks for sharing!
@stevendotjs it's fantastic! Thanks for writing it
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@stevendotjs @tante Thanks for writing this and congratulations on your craftsmanship with words! Hits the perfect tone and while English is not my first language, reading this was pure bliss.
Made it out of programming (it’s just a hobby now) and glad about that.@Linkshaender @tante ahw thank you! Happy for you you made it out! If you wanna tell me about it, I'm all ears.
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"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)
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@tante oh hey I wrote this! Thanks for sharing!
@stevendotjs i applaud you, kind sir
- I hilariously joined a web dev program in 2022, and when I completed it in 2024, I could see it was pointless trying to get a job as a Jr..Your story resonates (also bc I'm a career changer so old enough to have other experiences that are similar) - it's both hilarious and stark.
Well done
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@tante oh hey I wrote this! Thanks for sharing!
@stevendotjs kudos. so very on point.
Having ridden out the implosion of the dot-com crash, I’m staring at all this buildout and wondering what this time smells like. Capital spend crushed a few big names. Example: Lucent went to a nickel on the dollar.
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@stevendotjs i applaud you, kind sir
- I hilariously joined a web dev program in 2022, and when I completed it in 2024, I could see it was pointless trying to get a job as a Jr..Your story resonates (also bc I'm a career changer so old enough to have other experiences that are similar) - it's both hilarious and stark.
Well done
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@stevendotjs i feel for my cohort who tried to move forward by going for their masters.. I hope it works for them. I hope there are enough companies who see the mess AI creates cannot be trusted.. but humans tend to take the path of least resistance..
In truth, I was never a coder, so let's hope I can find other ways to feed myself and my family.. it's rough out here for everyone.
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@stevendotjs kudos. so very on point.
Having ridden out the implosion of the dot-com crash, I’m staring at all this buildout and wondering what this time smells like. Capital spend crushed a few big names. Example: Lucent went to a nickel on the dollar.
@InkomTech oh yeah, pulling up a chair to roast marshmallows over the bonfire.
And thanks
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@stevendotjs i feel for my cohort who tried to move forward by going for their masters.. I hope it works for them. I hope there are enough companies who see the mess AI creates cannot be trusted.. but humans tend to take the path of least resistance..
In truth, I was never a coder, so let's hope I can find other ways to feed myself and my family.. it's rough out here for everyone.
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@stevendotjs That is very kind. I return your kindness and encouragement. We humans do better when we act in solidarity.
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@InkomTech oh yeah, pulling up a chair to roast marshmallows over the bonfire.
And thanks
️@stevendotjs I don’t fear dioxin nor microplastics, but I ain’t eating anything cooked over that blaze.
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R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
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@tante oh hey I wrote this! Thanks for sharing!
@stevendotjs @tante Great article... I checked out out the link and the pckt.blog page mentioned there but I only saw this article: I'd love to read more of your writing, either past or future.
I started work as a full-time software dev in 1988 (or a few years earlier if you count summer jobs), and I was lucky enough to enjoy it pretty much through to retirement a few years ago, right around the first chatgpt release. One of the parts I found most personally fulfilling was mentoring younger devs (which definitely included me learning from them and them challenging my old-guy reflexes) and to see what's happened in the very few years since is profoundly discouraging...
And thanks for @tante for forwarding this...
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@stevendotjs @tante Great article... I checked out out the link and the pckt.blog page mentioned there but I only saw this article: I'd love to read more of your writing, either past or future.
I started work as a full-time software dev in 1988 (or a few years earlier if you count summer jobs), and I was lucky enough to enjoy it pretty much through to retirement a few years ago, right around the first chatgpt release. One of the parts I found most personally fulfilling was mentoring younger devs (which definitely included me learning from them and them challenging my old-guy reflexes) and to see what's happened in the very few years since is profoundly discouraging...
And thanks for @tante for forwarding this...
@DaleHagglund @tante oh man yeah congrats on getting out in time!
My site is honestly barely half finished, I wasn't really expecting this to go anywhere, and this was the first thing I published in years. I'll be sure to keep writing
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@DaleHagglund @tante oh man yeah congrats on getting out in time!
My site is honestly barely half finished, I wasn't really expecting this to go anywhere, and this was the first thing I published in years. I'll be sure to keep writing
️@stevendotjs @tante Thanks, and I'll look forward to more articles. As far as retiring, I can't claim any any special foresight; it was just the right time to leave for various reasons. Without at all realizing it at the time, I just happened to be in the industry at a time when software devs had substantial power versus management, if we chose to use it. It was much closer to retirement, and more-so in the years since, that I started to realize that was historically unusual, and changing rapidly for the worse in software.
Every now and then I read articles by a couple software dev bloggers I trust who are, I think, looking carefully at *how* to use LLMs in a way that might (just maybe) set devs up to be "centaurs", ie the drivers of technology, versus Doctorow's "reverse-centaurs", ie, meat-puppets directed by the system a la Amazon drivers. I don't have any particular faith that those can be achieved in any broad sense in the current context of the industry, though...
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"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)
@tante And if anyone does remember they will have eyes rolled at them for being olds....
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Also I can help nerding out a bit, but running on the assumption that Nvidia is talking about technical reality and not some marketing ploy, the raw compute power does not necessarily equate to better performance. Compute power is more subtle than gigaflops. This means that more compute power may not be found necessarily more gigaflops but in the surrounding architecture and that can be good or less good.
NVIDIA CUDA Cores: How They Work and Why They Matter (2026)
Learn how CUDA cores power AI training through parallel processors. Compare CUDA vs Tensor cores, performance factors, and get started with cloud GPUs.
(www.thundercompute.com)
@GhostOnTheHalfShell @tante Thanks for the links. I will try to find time to nerd into them
