It's mind blowing to me how many developers are happy about the developments here.. as if they're going to eventually be paid to just sit there while agents do everything. Ah, work is now so easy!
I think in the success case (still TBD), that it will increase productivity to the point where things that can’t be affordably addressed by software will now be able to be addressed with software.
I expect that anyone who is a skilled dev today will be fine. Expectations and competition might be higher, but so will production and value creation.
I think the demand will come, just as Excel didn’t put finance people out of jobs in aggregate.
Why would "primary benefactor" be the most relevant question rather than mere "benefactor"? If my life is improved by something, I don't care that someone else's life is improved by more; I don't want to reject that improvement out of spite, jealousy, or envy.
Bankers (and customers) benefited from ATMs as far more bank locations became economically sustainable and bank tellers could do higher value work (and do so more safely).
Millions of software developers continue to benefit from improvements in productivity, the resulting value creation, and the resulting high pay in our sector from ever more productive languages and frameworks. Can you imagine how little pay you'd make trying to sling websites in assembly language at less than 1% of the pace of today?
> Millions of software developers continue to benefit from improvements in productivity
You're absurdly naive if you think developers will see the most benefit. We will have fewer developers just as we have fewer farmers and factory workers. When labor is automated it becomes owned by fewer people, this is historically consistent for over a hundred years across every sector. Thousands of towns have collapsed under this sort of change and effects are felt for generations.
> Can you imagine how little pay you'd make trying to sling websites in assembly language at less than 1% of the pace of today
Productivity gains do not align with income gains, this is a complete strawman. Developers today may be 100x more productive, but they do not have a 100x higher income.
Ask yourself, where did that value go — and is that fair? We're creating the automation and someone else is taking the lions share of the benefit. We're being conned.
You seem hyper-focused on the share of benefit going to others and I am much more focused on the share of benefit going to my family. My family benefits enormously from the value created through technology development and I have benefited enormously from being able to work in a field where I am generously rewarded for doing things that I happily do free in my spare time. If I work on someone else's technology puzzles instead of my own, they are able and willing to pay me a well-above median salary in exchange.
I genuinely hope that they think they're getting rich as part of that exchange (and work to ensure that outcome happens), because that's the very best way that I know how to make the overall situation, including the benefits for me and my family, continue.
If you think I'm being conned in this exchange, thanks for the concern, but I'll tell you that I'm working hard to ensure that it keeps happening.
> they are able and willing to pay me a well-above median salary in exchange.
AI is what they're doing to try to stop this, when we work on AI we're enabling it.
They are making much more money for themselves than they are for you. Your salary is overhead. They will stop paying you if they can and they are trying to use AI to do it.
In a fair agreement you would have more time to spend with your family because you would earn a higher share of the profit and need to work less for it.
If I wanted to keep all of the value I created for myself, I'd start my own business and own all of it.
I don't, because I highly value the structure and capital that others have put up to create the company I work for. They offload an enormous amount of risk and overhead and, so long as they pay me what we've agreed, I'm happy for them to keep the portion of value that is above what they pay out to me and my colleagues.
The agreement is fair to my eyes, because I've agreed to it and both sides have kept up their ends. If yours is not fair to your eyes, perhaps you should change it, possibly up to striking out on your own and keeping 100% of the surplus value you create.
> it will increase productivity to the point where things that can’t be affordably addressed by software will now be able to be addressed with software
employing humans is something that couldn't be affordably addressed by software, and is what they're trying to now address with software
this is good for owners, and bad for workers
thusly AI is bad for workers as a class, and you're betting that you're one of the workers they decide to keep
all I have left to say on the matter is, good luck
I mean, I get what everyone's saying. But, just Devil's Advocate, what would be so terrible about software developers having to find some other line of work?
We've used our software development skills to automate other people out of work for what can be argued to be literally decades. Each time we did it, we certainly expected that the people affected would find other work. New jobs were created. The world didn't end. I honestly don't think it would be that much worse this time.
> We've used our software development skills to automate other people out of work for what can be argued to be literally decades.
And that's the shitty part of the job, and everyone should be uncomfortable with it. I haven't literally automated anyone out of a job (that I know), but I definitely did not like finding out (after the fact) that one project was meant to enable a large offshoring effort.
> Each time we did it, we certainly expected that the people affected would find other work.
I do not expect that. That's a comforting lie people tell themselves.
> New jobs were created. The world didn't end. I honestly don't think it would be that much worse this time.
It didn't end, but it often got significantly worse for some. If the AI hype pans out, it's going to get significantly worse for software engineers. Your "newly created job," if it exists, will likely pay out a lot less that you're used to. At best, you'll get knocked down to the bottom of the career ladder.
It's a mistake to think about things in aggregate like you're doing. It's easy to hide inconvenient truths.
> what would be so terrible about software developers having to find some other line of work
Uh.. I'm having trouble considering this as a serious question. It's objectively going to lead to them being in a worse situation. Mostly irrelevant resume and needing to re-skill into something and start from the bottom.. out of a well paid career that many enjoy and find fulfilling
My question wasn't an ethical one. It's why are the people that are the target of this automation happy about the progress, to the point of trying to push it forward faster, cheering it on
> It's mind blowing to me how many developers are happy about the developments here.. as if they're going to eventually be paid to just sit there while agents do everything. Ah, work is now so easy!
