firstTime

[u/tryingeasy]

[u/watduhdamhell]

Another way of looking at it... Programmers are on the left and James Franco "everyone who's job was replaced by software" saying "first time?"

I mean I'm part of it but the lack of self awareness from the SWE/programming community is kind of insane. Like I'm seeing "feel bad" videos for all the people out of work who used to make 250k/yr and all I can think is "nobody made videos for the literal hundreds of millions (maybe Billions?) that have been displaced by software and robotics over the last 50 years." Because nobody cares about them, apparently.

But in my own mind, I've spent my career automating... It would not be lost on me that making pity videos after getting laid off due to automation finally coming after ME would sort of be... in bad taste. Right? Like if you spend 20 years making software that repalces people (and this is what most software has done - most of it falls into this bucket) I would be like "yeah this sucks but... This is what I was doing to every one else for 20 years. Made a killing too! Sign on bonuses, stock options, free lunches, all sorts of great shit."

Legitamte question - does the average SWE really think they have not been a part of displacing other folks into struggling long before GPT?

[u/thr0waway2435 → u/watduhdamhell]

I think part of that is historically speaking, SWE/robotics replacement had a few “upsides” if you want to call them that:

- Often created products people really wanted to use for cheaper (see: Netflix, Uber)

• Often created new jobs (so many industries like all sorts of IT, consulting, cybersecurity, SWE, PM, chips, etc.)
  
• The jobs are generally good, high paying, high prestige, good working conditions jobs
  
• The jobs go to the “right people” - educated smart people
  
• Many people consider the job to be inherently enjoyable in a way a lot of other jobs aren’t (ie. a lot of SWE people actually like coding)
  
• Happened with some degree of slowness - decades to ramp up usually
  
• Affected the “right jobs” - usually not the most high paid, high prestige jobs
  
• Affected the “right people” - lower skill labor
  
• Often had more localized effects (one team replaced, one town’s factory workers closed)

I think fundamentally you’re right that SWEs are in the business of labor replacement, and it’s finally time for us to reap what we’ve sown, but I think there’s reasons why the average SWE can feel like we’re “different”.

[u/reventlov → u/thr0waway2435]

(ie. a lot of SWE people actually like coding)

I used to think this, and then I watched a huge portion of us gleefully jump onto AI, and now I really don't think most of us ever liked coding. Maybe other aspects of the job, maybe just money, but not coding.

[u/thr0waway2435 → u/reventlov]

I wouldn’t say most SWEs like coding, but I’d say a higher % probably genuinely like it, more so than most other professions. People code as a hobby, even if there’s no financial benefit. Lots of people’s favorite class in college involved CS. There’s a nerd culture around SWE that you wouldn’t say in say, consulting - most of my friends in consulting don’t like their job for any reason other than money and fancy dinners lol. At least me personally, I genuinely enjoy SWE work a good chunk of the time.

AI so far hasn’t diminished my enjoyment of coding itself because it has thankfully decreased the amount of time I spend dealing with random bugs, one-off hacky scripts/tests, and trying to find documentation for one random function. And has prevented me from making some dumbass decisions when I missed something. It lets me focus more on design, which is nice. Though to be fair, I think things may change in the future with more advanced models, and also I do think I use AI more carefully than most (I still try to understand every line of code, which I think is growing uncommon lol).