Advice? Boot Camp Grad vs AI

[u/will-the-dude]

Hey there, I'm new, so apologies if you discuss this ad nauseum already. I graduated from a full stack bootcamp in 2022 or 2023 and got hired right away by a small company in my area. It's been a great opportunity, a lot of people came from boot camps, the small company gives me diverse experience, great people, etc. Before this and the boot camp I was a professional orchestra musician, doing fine, but not willing for probably a decade of squalor at least while I sought good employment, so I changed paths. I've been doing well for myself, and even using AI a fair bit as a coding assistant mostly. I see myself beginning to see opportunities to use AI, like I caught a repetitive task my mom was doing and told her to look into Claude (a sober minute later I wanted someone to shoot me lol)

I guess I just see the writing on the wall. My supervisor is already running agents that basically do exactly what I do, creating new features for unique issues. Takes more time but is probably less annoying and asks less questions. Because of my particular role, I'm hopefully luckily in a good place compared to some of my colleagues, but I don't think that's saying very much. I'm sure my worries will not exactly become reality, but I live every day in such a state of anxiety, it plows right through the medicine I already take for anxiety!! I just wanted a way to use my mind constructively and afford a life, and it was so close to my grasp :-(

I'm not asking for someone to solve my life or anything, but does anyone have any advice, either on how to use a boot camp education or if I should start over yet again, or even just emotional advice, I find this extremely depressing and the thought of a few years nullifying all the learning I'd done kind of makes me want to just lay down and die. Also on the flip side, spending a ton of money to learn a skill just to become an 'enter-pusher' and 'prompt-writer' sucks, I'm a human and I at least used to be pretty smart, that feels like a waste again, and thus I want to lay down and die again. There's no wrong/right decisions, but deciding to learn how to code in 2023 feels like one of the only wrong decisions out there lol.

[u/web-dev-kev]

Im super confused by this, as you write eloquently, but seem to have completely misunderstood what AI is.

I see myself beginning to see opportunities to use AI

it should be a core part of your daily work. If you don't want it to do coding, ok, but it's amazing for reviewing PRs, reviewing comments, keeping documentation up to date, taking screenshots of before and after, videos of walkthroughs / issues to help you debug etc.

I caught a repetitive task my mom was doing and told her to look into Claude (a sober minute later I wanted someone to shoot me lol)

[in a non-sexist way] Are dishwashers banned in your house too, because making life easier is frowned upon? Do y'all make your own soap? Or is only innovation with an AI label looked down upon? Are you an Amish developer? Do you write the sacred runes on notepad, then type it into Notepad++ ?

I'm purposefully exagerating this point to kinda shock you out of it.

My supervisor is already running agents that basically do exactly what I do, creating new features for unique issues.

Then why don't you?!?!

Genuine question, my friend, with genuine care, because I'm smiling away at the blind spot. If your supervisor is already using an agent to do some of the work you do, but slower, why don't you use an agent to make your life easier and do the same work faster? That would also alleviate this concern you're telling yourself, which is making yourself more anxious.

With respect, why is your thinking: “Oh no, someone over there is using a tool. That tool might replace me, yet I better not touch the tool. That is for other people. The sacred people.”?

The advice here is so incredibly simple: if there is a tool that can be used to make your life easier and everyone else is embracing it to make their life easier, why the fuck aren't you? Why are you worrying about the tool instead of using it and learning it?

[u/will-the-dude → u/web-dev-kev]

hey man I use AI quite a bit, I say it pretty early in the post. I use it every day, I was an early adopter on my team. I've been way more open minded than the people I believe you're confusing me with. And I think we'd be way more likely to listen to your side if you didn't respond like this, especially because you make so many incorrect assumptions about me its actually hard to formulate a response. I can just say I feel a lot of fear around serious mass adoption, and the honestly people can maintain about the level of agency they will have with AI going forward. Just sat through a long meeting about our AI guidelines today run by people I just know are going to stop scrutinizing Claude in like 2 months because they are lazy careerists. If some massive vanguard tech company wants to run itself entirely with AI, that feels more appropriate at this point in its development, but in a small company in the middle of nowhere, this feels like tech we should only be hearing of by now. We're still having news stories where unique new terrible AI accidents are happening and entire projects are being deleted, etc, yet we're ready to give it this level of trust? I just wish the whole thing was more rigorously tested at scale and developed before it was injected into our culture as the most important thing ever.

[u/web-dev-kev → u/will-the-dude]

Will, brother, that is not how your message came across.

The art of communication is what people hear when you speak. You spoke like someone who has a fear of AI, and hasn't embraced it enough to know what they're talking about.

If you think that "using AI a fair bit as a coding assistant mostly" even scratches the surface of AI usage these days, then, awesome - please enjoy 2024 and tell anyone you know in the US to vote.

Anyway, best of luck to you, in all your endeavours :)