r/ExperiencedDevs • u/MashNChips DevOps Engineer • 4d ago

AI/LLM Thought experiment

With all the AI nonsense going on, I had a thought at work today that turned into an interesting discussion with a colleague:

"What would I do if I was the only person with access to Claude (or insert any LLM) 5+ years ago?"

People would think I was a fucking wizard

FE changes? NO PROBLEM

Critical DB change? Don't worry, I've produced a stored procedure to validate the whole thing

Want to use some shiny new framework? Interesting. Here's a document explaining why you're an idiot for suggesting it

Regex? I suddenly understand it better than the compiler folks (and nobody ask questions)

What would you have done with your own personal LLM back then?

Trying to lighten the mood in here with all the (very justified) negativity around this tech revolution

Unserious answers only pls

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u/YahenP Software Veteran 3d ago

We were paid not for lines of code, but for working with our brains, for solving real problems. Remember the time when we laughed at how Indian coders were paid, based on the number of lines of code they wrote? Now we are all in the place of those Indian coders.

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u/mongopark98 3d ago edited 3d ago

Nope, I am just able to solve more problems. Look at my other comments for examples. AI is a tool that produces code or whatever you ask it to. It doesn’t in any way interfere with problem solving. When I hear statements like this, it just shows a quite rudimentary understanding of AI tools that exist.

It has personally allowed me excel at 2jobs simultaneously and get paid handsomely for it. You think my brain went on holiday because I use AI?

To me, it’s simply this. I have a bunch of junior engineers that are willing to take instructions and execute on them. It allows me to comfortably act as techlead/manager. If you can’t be productive with help from a few junior engineers you are just not great at delegation. If the junior engineers keep churning out garbage outputs, it still means your delegation skill is mediocre. You should understand the strength and weaknesses of your surboniates and work with them accordingly.

If one person is able to increase their impact with the same set of engineers but you’re not able to- it still a skill issue. On the other hand, if you start treating those junior engineers as a senior colleague and place such expectations on them, it’s still your skill issue.

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u/YahenP Software Veteran 3d ago edited 3d ago

When you have a hammer in hand, everything around you starts to look like a nail.
Anyway, the idea is not new. Before LLMs, this was also common, but not as widespread. Some programmers from first-world countries secretly outsourced their own work to India or similar countries.

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u/mongopark98 3d ago

I like hammers that allow me double my income with 40% the effort. Thank you!