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0 pointsVerdex10mo ago0 comments

The "left behind" mantra that I've been hearing for a while now is the strange one to me.

Like, I need to start smashing my face into a keyboard for 10000 hours or else I won't be able to use LLM tools effectively.

If LLM is this tool that is more intuitive than normal programming and adds all this productivity, then surely I can just wait for a bunch of others to wear themselves out smashing the faces on a keyboard for 10000 hours and then skim the cream off of the top, no worse for wear.

On the other hand, if using LLMs is a neverending nightmare of chaos and misery that's 10x harder than programming (but with the benefit that I don't actually have to learn something that might accidentally be useful), then yeah I guess I can see why I would need to get in my hours to use it. But maybe I could just not use it.

"Left behind" really only makes sense to me if my KPIs have been linked with LLM flavor aid style participation.

Ultimately, though, physics doesn't care about social conformity and last I checked the machine is running on physics.

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spiffytech10mo ago

There's a third way things might go: on the way to "superpower for everyone", we go through an extended phase where AI is only a superpower in skilled hands. The job market bifurcates around this. People who make strong use of it get first pick of the good jobs. People not making effective use of AI get whatever's left.

Kinda like how word processing used to be an important career skill people put on their resumes. Assuming AI becomes as that commonplace and accessible, will it happen fast enough that devs who want good jobs can afford to just wait that out?

VerdexOP10mo ago

I'm willing to accept this as a possibility but the case analysis still doesn't make much sense to me.

If LLM usage is easy then I can't be left behind because it's easy. I'll pick it up in a weekend.

If LLM usage is hard AND I can otherwise do the hard things that LLMs are doing then I can't be left behind if I just do the hard things.

Still the only way I can be left behind is if LLM usage is nonsense or the same as just doing it yourself AND the important thing is telling managers that you've been using it for a long time.

Is the superpower bamboozling management with story time?

mquander10mo ago

The obvious case in which you would be "left behind" is the one in which LLM usage is hard, and you cannot otherwise do the hard things that LLMs are doing (or you can do them, but much slower and/or to a lower standard of quality.)

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djhn10mo ago

To be fair, word processing is a skill that that a majority of professionals continue to lack.

Law, civil service, academia and those who learnt enough LaTeX and HTML to understand text documents are in the minority.

smodo10mo ago

Yeah and now people who can’t even write and never put in the effort to learn it are flooding the zone (my inbox) with useless 10 page memo’s.

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