>Of course, the junior + AI pairing was tempting. It looked cheaper and played into the fear that “AI will take our jobs.”
Those are two different narratives. One implies that everyone will be able to code and build: "English as a programming language", etc. The other is one of those headless-chicken, apocalyptic scenarios where AI has already made (or will very shortly make) human programmers obsolete.
"AI taking jobs" means everyone's job. I won't even comment on the absurdity of that idea; to me, it only comes from people who've never worked professionally.
At the end of the day, companies will take any vaguely reasonable excuse to cull juniors and save money. It's just business. LLMs are simply the latest excuse, though yes, they do improve productivity, to varying degrees depending on what exactly you work on.
Terr_•52m ago
> Those are two different narratives.
Also, those two narratives are sometimes deployed as a false-dichotomy, where both just make the same assumption that LLM weaknesses will vanish and dramatic improvement will continue indefinitely.
A historical analogy:
* A: "Segway™ balancing vehicles will be so beneficially effective that private vehicles will be rare in 2025."
* B: "No, Segways™ will be so harmfully effective that people will start to suffer from lower body atrophy by 2025."
jacquesm•27m ago
For the same reason that an amateur with a powertool ends up in the emergency room and a seasoned pro knows which way to point the business end. AI is in many ways a powertool, if you don't know what you are doing it will help you to do that much more efficiently. If you do know what you are doing it will do the same.
Rzor•1h ago
Those are two different narratives. One implies that everyone will be able to code and build: "English as a programming language", etc. The other is one of those headless-chicken, apocalyptic scenarios where AI has already made (or will very shortly make) human programmers obsolete.
"AI taking jobs" means everyone's job. I won't even comment on the absurdity of that idea; to me, it only comes from people who've never worked professionally.
At the end of the day, companies will take any vaguely reasonable excuse to cull juniors and save money. It's just business. LLMs are simply the latest excuse, though yes, they do improve productivity, to varying degrees depending on what exactly you work on.
Terr_•52m ago
Also, those two narratives are sometimes deployed as a false-dichotomy, where both just make the same assumption that LLM weaknesses will vanish and dramatic improvement will continue indefinitely.
A historical analogy:
* A: "Segway™ balancing vehicles will be so beneficially effective that private vehicles will be rare in 2025."
* B: "No, Segways™ will be so harmfully effective that people will start to suffer from lower body atrophy by 2025."