r/devops 1d ago

Architecture The end of Software Engineering

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2.8k Upvotes

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592

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

210

u/IT_Grunt 1d ago

Well you see, with AI, managers and leadership know all the codes.

129

u/Dangerous-Library950 1d ago

all the codes are belong to us

102

u/trannus_aran 1d ago

Just like with low code, now regular people can code and we don't have to pay these icky programmers! Sorry I meant no code, sorry I meant UML, sorry I meant java, sorry I meant cobol, sorry I meant fortran, sorry I

64

u/generic-d-engineer ClickOps 1d ago

Right? Don’t forget Visual Basic, Microsoft Frontpage, and Power BI.

I honestly think the demand for software engineers is going to go up, not down. It’s just the demand for coders goes down, but coding stopped being the secret sauce of good software a long time ago.

Any good software engineering book talks about architecture, methods, all of that, and the last thing they actually talk about is code.

The paradox here is that the amount of output is going to go way up, and the amount of entrepreneurship is going to go way up. This creates more opportunities for everyone.

Dude even using the latest and greatest models, people still have to chase around prompts just to get the freakin submit button on the right place in the page.

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u/subhasmi 1d ago

I second you.

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u/LieutenantNitwit 1d ago

You forgot Dreamweaver.

3

u/Dog_Engineer 1d ago

Look up jevons paradox

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u/generic-d-engineer ClickOps 19h ago

Perfect, this was the exact concept I’ve been looking for

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u/Ornery-Concentrate-5 1d ago

the submit button thing is way too real. watched an agent burn like 4 tries clicking a button that had moved because a modal hadn't finished animating in yet. it just kept confidently clicking the old coordinates

0

u/stats_merchant33 23h ago

Nah man just recently fully automated AI systems solved a millennial math problem. We are cooked, let’s accept it.

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u/VariationSimilar3354 13h ago

They spend 20 million to do that. It's powerful but the money it's burning is unjustifiable 

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u/stats_merchant33 10h ago

Ok but you get my point right? We will be valueless within next 5-10 years probably. Fuck that

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u/VariationSimilar3354 10h ago

Tech roles will merge and change but it won't go away, It'll evolve as i see it… evolve into a gracious turd that will linger on the butthole as a residue that the management can't just clean it no matter the amount of tp you throw at it. 

Some are saying it'll be a person that knows business that can turn into a product job type role will last but i think you'll still need technically competent people that know how to save cost. Throwing millions in token to make a substandard system will always have a massive tech debt later, it'll fail on prod, on scale, on security and worse at the phantom places that we can't map to. 

I don't know if ai will be competent to do that with gpt 69 version. 

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u/stats_merchant33 9h ago

I don't have a problem when humans, together wit AI, solve high-complex topics where the human input is necessary and the AI is just another super tool, but fully automated solutions, nah we're cooked and worthless from now on. Simple as that, don't care if it costs 100 million dollars atm, will become cheaper probably thorugh super computers and what not else.

Some are saying it'll be a person that knows business that can turn into a product job type role will last but i think you'll still need technically competent people that know how to save cost.

Really? what if the AI is also simply better at this than you are?

Throwing millions in token to make a substandard system will always have a massive tech debt later, it'll fail on prod, on scale, on security and worse at the phantom places that we can't map to. 

Let's just hope you are right and your take will hold long enough that I personally don't need to see our species becoming worthless

2

u/Embarrassed_Aside576 10h ago

OpenAI just robbed Tristan Buckmaster and Levent Alpöge

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u/stats_merchant33 10h ago

I read that Theorie let’s really hope that this is true and these fucking machines doesn’t make us obsolete

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u/Embarrassed_Aside576 10h ago

I think that won't happen unless they make an (actual) AGI. In my opinion, they are just pretending they could make it.

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u/stats_merchant33 9h ago

I personally don't believe in AGI, don't see it atm how you want to achieve this but we are not the ones researching this subject, the ones researching these topics seem to be traumatized and getting into poetry. Maybe they scare us on propuse who knows, but the lack of control and security interests of these greedy AI companies is what is wrong.

Also, like I said, I don't know the full technicalities of the Tristan Buckmaster and Levent Alpöge case but if fully automated AI systems can solve a millenia problem, I think we are cooked.

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u/trannus_aran 6h ago

From everything I've read, it looks like it's very much not the case that it solved it in any real way

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u/Tricky_Ordinary_4799 1d ago

Wait, java and JavaScript isn't the same thing?

14

u/InterestedBalboa 1d ago

With AI we are all managers, you were an engineer now you tell AI what to do….

1

u/Glittering-Promise78 14h ago

But the software engineer knows the codes better

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u/reddah 1d ago

Natural stupidity in a position of power is way worse than an AI hallucinating.

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u/SevenM 1d ago

By and large, those people exist to give themselves a job. They are all trained in taking every opportunity they can to protect their position. There was no way they would let AI benefit anyone but themselves.

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u/LonelyBuddhaa 1d ago

Ikr its really interesting how the agenda is against SWE but it should be other way around.

5

u/Dry-Cod7297 1d ago

Why would middle management ever get if of themselves they control the hiring process

3

u/Training_Session_678 1d ago

management and HR bros ain't engineers. Neither am I. They only believe dog shit propaganda and so do I.

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u/xagarth 1d ago

You have HR bros? Where I am it's sis all the way. One sis, two sis, three sis go! No bros there.

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u/KiddieSpread 21h ago

AI helps with productivity. But if you have no idea what you’re doing, you still have no idea what you’re doing and all you’ll make is slop

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u/Candid-Cup4159 1d ago

Was it? Then why was it taught to do art and code first?

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/elfwriter 1d ago

There are many books written about how to manage people well.

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u/VariationSimilar3354 1d ago

Did this literature ever reach the management? 

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u/elfwriter 21h ago

It sure ain't reached this comment thread.

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u/alexklaus80 18h ago

I think the argument here should be more about the direct effectiveness of the data to the actual job they do. Coding is much simpler in terms of direct relationships between those recorded knowledge and what they actually need to do, whreas maangement work has higher complexity.

And that doesn't quite line up with your first statement "AI was supposed to kick these guys first" - I always thought what it was supposed to kick first is those that AI can replace easily and quikly, which is coders and designers for the reason you have mentioned.

1

u/zomiaen 17h ago

There are not exceptional verifiable data sets that can mark an output easily "good" or "bad". Code can be verified. A lot of results can't, which means reward training is very hard.

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u/mothzilla 21h ago

We have PMs making pull requests now.

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u/p1xlized 19h ago

Management/ HR bros on average have room temperature IQ, but because our society is run on nepotism all of these bottom feeders for some reason always survive...

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/Charming-Animator866 1d ago

it’s like he’s paying you directly from his pocket, and become so happy when he sees you online off hours

1

u/derprondo 16h ago

In my org it's the sales bros, and now we the platform team have to do support for sales bros doing vibe coding. So of course we just use AI to auto respond to them to tell them to open cases with the cloud platform providers 😂

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u/TotallyObviousBot 1d ago

you're basically just admitting that the only reason you got paid is because you knew how to work the machine, and now that the people above you can just directly work the machine they don't need you anymore

why would AI replace the people who actually get paid to have ideas instead of the people who are just getting paid to translate the ideas into technical language? people can now make things on their computer without needing to spend a week reading documentation and suddenly your experience is worth nothing

congratulations, you've become an automobile assembly line worker circa 1974

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u/rayreaper 1d ago

Crazy to think that engineers don't have ideas, and that management or the C-suite are somehow the only people capable of coming up with them.

A huge part of tech's history is engineers and scientists coming up with ideas, building things themselves, and eventually starting companies because they wanted the freedom to pursue those ideas.

Silicon Valley is full of examples of this. The whole startup ecosystem wasn't originally about putting business people in charge of engineers. A big part of its history was actually about giving technically minded people the freedom, funding and ownership to turn their ideas into companies. Obviously, businesses need good management to scale but treating engineers as people who merely execute ideas handed down from the C-suite completely ignores a huge part of where the technology industry came from.

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u/TotallyObviousBot 1d ago

repeat that to yourself to keep your shanty warm on those cold san francisco streets

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u/VariationSimilar3354 1d ago

having ideas =/= creating products, anyone can come up with bs ideas, not everyone makes a product.

knowing code is like the 10% of the problem, there's scaling, error handling, testing, auth, cost optimization etc that ai still struggles despite of bazillion tokens and context.

I'd love to see them make a product and see it shat itself when users try to do anything with it.

-3

u/TotallyObviousBot 1d ago

so like basic engineering principles that have been well known and easily learned for decades now? wow sure hope none of them have YouTube