“This is particularly effective in in-person environments, and less-so in remote environments (another contribution to the disappearance of junior-level roles). It has been shown over and over that people learn more effectively in in-person environments both in school and out.”
I feel bad for Bryce and Mallory in this regard, although remote afforded them the opportunity to be closer to family and friends, and, as much as I love myself, I think that’s more important. Or maybe I could have been like a show-up-at-your-doorstep car washing service who came into your house and started white boarding problems.
I do think the cat is out of the bag on this one. I think the question is how do we make it better?
On the flip side to the junior engineering crisis, is there going to be a mentorship crisis? I think most senior engineers enjoy mentoring younger engineers, but what role do they have to play when younger engineers have a genius engineer (albeit one who drops acid and has amnesia) at their fingertips 24/7? Feels like we’re moving towards a world where we don’t impart knowledge to other humans, we just put knowledge into the hive mind, and then other people take it out of the hive mind without us ever knowing.
> I think that at this point, you might see the problem for many junior engineers. If a senior or even lead engineer can break down his problem into the smallest pieces and task an AI coding assistant with writing those pieces, then why bother with a junior engineer at all?
I’m struggling with this right now. I have a talented intern who wants to do junior engineering work. And I want to help him, but I also don’t want to run a makework program. So I basically told him what you wrote, but I think that was pretty disheartening to hear.
I think he was hearing “you’re not needed”, and I firmly believe that NOT to be true. But I don’t have a quick answer off the top of my head for where he’s desperately needed either. There used to be an obvious answer for where engineers needed help. And now that’s gone.
By induction, it seems that if the junior engineer disappears, it’ll only be a matter of time before the senior engineer disappears and it’s just the lead engineer. What’s the end state? Single player mode with swarms of AI slaves?
Good question. It's hard for me to believe that we will have strong enough models in the short- and mid-term to replace the engineers who are solving the bigger, more complex problems. But if we are capable of doing so, it might end up with just a prompt and a short wait for a working application. That seems like it will be very, very far off though. It's a 90-10 thing. 90% might be able to be done by AI, but we will likely still need humans for the 10%.
“This is particularly effective in in-person environments, and less-so in remote environments (another contribution to the disappearance of junior-level roles). It has been shown over and over that people learn more effectively in in-person environments both in school and out.”
I feel bad for Bryce and Mallory in this regard, although remote afforded them the opportunity to be closer to family and friends, and, as much as I love myself, I think that’s more important. Or maybe I could have been like a show-up-at-your-doorstep car washing service who came into your house and started white boarding problems.
I do think the cat is out of the bag on this one. I think the question is how do we make it better?
On the flip side to the junior engineering crisis, is there going to be a mentorship crisis? I think most senior engineers enjoy mentoring younger engineers, but what role do they have to play when younger engineers have a genius engineer (albeit one who drops acid and has amnesia) at their fingertips 24/7? Feels like we’re moving towards a world where we don’t impart knowledge to other humans, we just put knowledge into the hive mind, and then other people take it out of the hive mind without us ever knowing.
HA! That is an interesting thought. Are we creating a hive mind for humans?
> I think that at this point, you might see the problem for many junior engineers. If a senior or even lead engineer can break down his problem into the smallest pieces and task an AI coding assistant with writing those pieces, then why bother with a junior engineer at all?
I’m struggling with this right now. I have a talented intern who wants to do junior engineering work. And I want to help him, but I also don’t want to run a makework program. So I basically told him what you wrote, but I think that was pretty disheartening to hear.
I think he was hearing “you’re not needed”, and I firmly believe that NOT to be true. But I don’t have a quick answer off the top of my head for where he’s desperately needed either. There used to be an obvious answer for where engineers needed help. And now that’s gone.
I think that now the question of where engineers need help will be answered in significantly different ways depending on the engineer.
By induction, it seems that if the junior engineer disappears, it’ll only be a matter of time before the senior engineer disappears and it’s just the lead engineer. What’s the end state? Single player mode with swarms of AI slaves?
Good question. It's hard for me to believe that we will have strong enough models in the short- and mid-term to replace the engineers who are solving the bigger, more complex problems. But if we are capable of doing so, it might end up with just a prompt and a short wait for a working application. That seems like it will be very, very far off though. It's a 90-10 thing. 90% might be able to be done by AI, but we will likely still need humans for the 10%.