How long can you afford to stay in this phase? Is there some framework you can suggest where this path works?

My existence is defined not but what I adopted but what I sabotaged or refused to deal with. 30 years in I haven't made a mistake and I don't think I am making one here. The positive bets I made have been spot on as well. I think I have a handle on what works for society and humanity at least.

When I say AI, I mean specifically LLMs. There isn't a single future position where all the risks are suitably managed, there is a return of investment and there is not a net loss to society. Faith, hope, lies, fraud and inflated expectations don't cut it and that is what the whole shebang is built on. On top of that, we are entering a time of serious geopolitical instability. Creating more dependencies on large amounts of capital and regional control is totally unacceptable and puts us all at risk.

My integrity is worth more than sucking this teat.

When you say sabotage, how exactly?

Or is it limited to refusal to use LLM, which is a strategy, but more like becoming a hobbyist programmer then.

Well it's mostly making sure the risks are properly traded off with suitable demonstrations.

I guess a long way from "fucking loom smashing" then. Makes this whole thread moot.

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

— George Bernard Shaw

The antidote to runaway hype is for someone to push back, not to just relent and accept your fate. Who cares about affording to. We need more people with ideals stronger than the desire to make a lot of money.

Sure, hype pushback is fine.

the original post is an example of how. Every programmer is discovering slowly, for their own usecases, that the agent can actually do it. This happens to an individual when they give it a shot without reservation..

No this is still the "bargaining/negotiating" phase thinking. After this is when depression hits when for your usecases you see that the code quality and security audit is very good.

The author has arrived at resentful acceptance of the models power(eg: "negative externalities", "condemn those who choose").

But the next step for many is championing acceptance. Eg "that the same kind of success is available outside the world of highly structured language" .. it actually is visible when you engage with people. I'm myself going through this transition.

The response I get offline is that there's millions of seniors right now that can last a couple decades.

I don’t know about the rest of them, but my rates keep going up. And the more I read takes like this the more I ask for

Buy Now, Pay Later

How much are you willing to pay? Is there any expectation of payoff?

Dude, the time for work is going down drastically, about a third of before. Are you not facing it?

If you're experiencing this you're either a very junior dev or you're not as senior as your title might suggest...

They’re not facing this. They’re just lying.

Dude, no I’m not. The bottle neck was never producing code.

To give you the benefit of doubt - you're not paying attention. The 100$ claude account is profitable inference wise, and performs better than 80% of engineers with upto 5YOE. Architects I speak with want to delegate to this 100$ agent rather than 10000$ engineer.

It is absolutely more cost efficient. Junior engineers are done for.

I have first hand and second hand seen more failure from this line of reasoning _as of today_, in the French/European tech sector, than successes. Not even talking about those executives that expect to use Gen AI to "help" in their process and financial reporting - at least the flag is bright red.

I've also met enough architects (or so called) in consulting, service companies as well as startups, from both a founder and a tech lead point of view, in the past 25 years not to entrust them too much with their hunches, long-term wise.

Especially because, from a sustainability point of view, saying "junior engineers are done for" is like saying "kids are done for": not that wise. Unless what you account/bet for is the drastic reduction/disappearance of humains (and then, a lot starts to make more sense).

Sending you empathy. I think we have to get used to the lower pay expectation. This is the biggest negative, which does not make up for all of the AI's upsides.

I've dropped my pay requirement into the basement. 60-70% pay decrease and it isn't enough. At some point I'm going to wonder if I'm ever going to work again.

It does not exclude. But the expectation of larger money has to go. They're literally competing with 100 dollars a month.

That is more a sign of our messed up society. Yes, techies earn middle class salaries that are hard for everyone else to earn, but the issue was everyone else falling behind, not techies racing ahead (our salaries are extravagant becuase…we can buy a house like our very normal salary parents could).

I agree it definitely distorts the market because what else are kids to do?