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Re:Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light... by latentsea on Monday December 16, 2024 @04:46PM (#42435809)
If the last-mile problems of things like autonomous vehicles have been anything to go by, it seems the last mile problems of entrusting your entire business operations to complete black box software, or software written by a novices talking to complete black box, will be infinitely worse.

There's plenty of low-code, no-code solutions around, and yet still lots of software. The slice of the pie will change, but it's very hard to see it being eliminated entirely.

Ultimately it's going to come down to "do I feel like I can trust this?" and with little to no way to be certain you can completely trust it, that's going to be a harder and harder sell as risk increases with the size, complexity, and value of the business processes being managed.

Re:Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light... by janalsncm on Monday December 16, 2024 @04:58PM (#42435915)
Even if seniors still do the last mile, that’s a significant reduction from the full commute they were paid for previously. Are you saying seniors should concede this?
Re:Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light... by latentsea on Monday December 16, 2024 @06:01PM (#42436465)
No, I think there's cases in which if you can't do the last mile, you aren't entrusted to do the first either.
Re:Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light... by Tadpole9181 on Monday December 16, 2024 @07:02PM (#42436922)
It's astounding that basically every response you give is just "it can't happen to me". The actual answer to the OP's question for you is a resounding: "nothing".
Re:Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light... by latentsea on Tuesday December 17, 2024 @05:56AM (#42440303)
More or less. I'm just going to enjoy the ride of what becomes of the industry until I either retire or just go do something else with my life.

I already had my panic moment about this like 2 years ago and have calmed down since then. I feel a lot more at peace than I did when I was thinking AGI was right around the corner and trying to plan for a future where no matter what course of action I took to learn new skills to outpace the AI I was already too late with my pivot because the AI would also become capable at doing whatever I was deciding to switch to on a shorter timeline than It would take me to become proficient in it.

If you at all imagine a world where the need for human software engineers legit goes away, then there isn't likely much for you to do in that world anyway. Maybe except become a plumber.

I don't think AGI is this magic silver bullet Silicon Valley thinks it is. I think, like everything in engineering, it's a trade-off, and I think it comes with a very unpalatable caveat. How do you learn once you've run out of data? By making mistakes. End of the day I think it's in the same boat as us, only at least we can be held accountable.

Re:Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light... by dreamfactored on Tuesday December 17, 2024 @02:39PM (#42444504)
Compilers weren't trusted in the early days either.