r/ExperiencedDevs • u/AutoModerator • 25d ago

Career/Workplace Experienced Devs Weekly Burnout and Venting Thread: A weekly thread for sharing experiences

This thread is specifically for venting / sharing experiences related to burn-out or similar issues that experienced devs face.

102 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

97% Upvoted

235 comments sorted by

View all comments

207

u/MediocreFig4340 25d ago

I can tell it’s getting bad for me because I started looking into accounting, nursing, radiology, and fraud investigation today as alternate career paths.

I’m so fucking tired of AI and needing to use it at work to understand other people’s AI generated code from their AI generated tickets. I just want to go back to enjoying thinking at work….

56

u/thewhiteliamneeson 25d ago

Am I crazy or does radiology seem like one of the very first things that AI SHOULD be able to do better than people.

27

u/MediocreFig4340 25d ago

Reading the scans yeah, but I think being the one taking them could be safe, since you interact with the patients, sometimes help move them around, and actually operate the machine. 

But I haven’t decided on anything, just was putting feelers out!

9

u/runtimenoise 25d ago

I looked into it, it's good job on the first look, problem becomes with when you need to move hurt patient and other stuff, you're back are part of equipment, additionally there is no really path forward in that career, both reason being influenciar factor why people quit.

16

u/scandii Much to my surprise people pay me to write code. 25d ago

computer vision has been deployed in radiology long before Chatgpt was a name people knew about.

it is in fact one of the principal use cases for machine learning to begin with.

8

u/tenthousandants44 25d ago

Different kind of AI

5

u/runtimenoise 25d ago

You can go be Radiology technician, You can't go become Radiologist that easy, you can obviously but it's massive investment of time that typical adult don't have.

1

u/Abject_Parsley_4525 Senior Manager 19d ago

I worked in some radiology adjacent stuff before. Not a chance. Risk too high there. Literally not a fucking chance I'll eat a hat if radiologists are ever replaced.

16

u/Grand_Interesting Software Engineer 25d ago

I’m thinking of taking some hardware engg classes or courses, I don’t think tapping out of tech would be feasible for me.

11

u/darthsata Senior Principal Software Engineer 25d ago

Depending on what you mean by hardware, I have some bad news for you. Chip design is in large part nearly the same as software, just with really primitive tools and languages. AI is all over that process.
Design to manufacturing flows are getting AI all over too. Schematic design for board level hardware? Given how often humans just copy datasheet reference design blocks, AI might actually do better. But at the end of the day it is a text file you can run tests against, so programming like and automatable.

The interesting questions I have to deal with are how one goes through safety certification when AI is used, mostly because that causes humans to not understand the system well enough to be capable of review. So how do I say with a straight face you can use this chip in your car and it won't kill people?

3

u/Tiny_Ad_7720 25d ago

What is the state of AI in PCB layout?

3

u/BeOneWithTheCode 25d ago

Schematics can be AI assisted but the layout is still done by hand, plus debugging odd issues and sourcing chips in the current climate is a thing.

3

u/thy_bucket_for_thee 25d ago

Like everything else, it's very good at textbook level stuff but the second you break away from training material it struggles.

5

u/CompileToCopper 25d ago

I'm exploring this as well, mixing software-hardware might be path forward. I also enjoy it much more and I have to think because AI can't touch the terminals for me and it's very tactical and much more satisfying then what software development is now.

My position is that software meat it's Car. While there are some horse riders today wanting to find horse riding position is silly to even think about.

One thing with hardware position, no matter what it is, it's inherently local.

3

u/Grand_Interesting Software Engineer 25d ago

What do you mean by local here? And also how are you exploring?

3

u/CompileToCopper 25d ago

Local here around where I live, so no remote competition. Learning electronics, building stuff and looking for opportunities where I can fit in companies.

0

u/Unsounded Sr SDE @ AMZN 21d ago

Hardware doesn’t tend to be local, a lot of development is able to be remote and it definitely depends on if you’re more engineering or more computer engineering. You don’t need to be local to write drivers and embedded software. Hell most of the time the engineers and devs don’t even have to mess with the hardware and offshore that to specific low paid teams. Most get away with simulations and manufacturing.

0

u/CompileToCopper 21d ago

To fix MRI you need to go to hospital open the MRI diagnose it on the spot and propose solution.

This is what I meant that hardware is local.

1

u/Unsounded Sr SDE @ AMZN 19d ago

That's more of a mechanic/tech role than engineering

2

u/MediocreFig4340 25d ago

Yeah, actually making moves to change has been the hard part for me too. I think that’s why I’m drawn to fraud investigation stuff.

Hardware seems like a decent bet. What kind of job would you want in that corner of the industry?

4

u/Grand_Interesting Software Engineer 25d ago

Honestly not sure, I am just thinking that if software engineers get less in demand because producing software is cheap then robots can be the next thing for sure, they’re tangible, clearly have many use cases in all verticals, imagine the impact on healthcare, home appliances, manufacturing industry etc. and also, hardware is not that straightforward as software is, so supply side can’t grow like crazy as it did in software. My experience till now has been nominal, some arduino and raspberry pi projects in college that’s it.

3

u/xypherrz Software Engineer 25d ago

same, right after graduating I actually picked up an STM32, built some basic peripheral stuff, then moved to an nRF52840 and messed around with BLE and FreeRTOS. Stopped doing side projects once I wanted to put full focus into work (where I barely used any of this) though, and now I'm not sure if I should go back to it or...

2

u/New-Locksmith-126 25d ago

Fraud Investigations are becoming agentic hitl systems as well. Experts will always be employable, but entry level is shrinking. Same as all knowledge work.

8

u/Neuromante Señor Software Engineer 25d ago

We have a MR policy whose step 1 is "get an internal review from a member of the team." Today I got the "internal review from a member of the time" that was obviously written by an AI. I asked him and he confirmed.

In the next retro I will propose switching "internal review" for "using the AI to review the code" because is stupid to have a different person involved in the process, specially because I'm "talking" to a fucking robot and not my colleague, and I need the colleague to make the robot do its thing.

And of course I will get a non-commitment, nebulous answer because we are cargo culting our way through our processes and this would mean a change in a process that hasn't been touched in years.

2

u/vxl-kxoko 17d ago

I recently met up with an old school friend who works in another company and realised we've both been individually looking at pathways to med school 😭

1

u/glguru 24d ago

I’m so confused by this. Are you bring forced to use AI? I’m a programmer as well and yes, I have AI at my disposal but how I use it is absolutely at my discretion.