Ask HN: Do we need a support group for developers alienated by LLMs?

17 points by sph 5 hours ago | 15 comments

Surely I must not be the only one developer that doesn't recognize this field any more, and would rather do anything else than become a glorified code reviewer for machine generated code.

Seeing my career crumble in front of my eyes, seeing my identity as software engineer questioned in the span of a few years has been, to me, traumatic, and utterly alienating because non-tech people are not unaware of how world-shattering this technology is to our niche, and many of our fellow peers either collectively shrug, or are ecstatic not to have to write code any more.

I have been trying to reinvent myself, to set out on a path where I'm no longer a professional software engineer; where I will still enjoy coding software for myself, by hand, but the emotional turmoil at this radical change has not lessened, and I have been wondering if other people are feeling the same kind of alienation, and just feel lost and a bit aimless these days.

(Please, this is meant to be a serious post about emotions some of us might be going through, and we could do without comments saying this is just an overreaction and to just embrace the future)

hash0 4 hours ago |

Seems like the need for a support group depends on whether the recent advent of LLMs in your specific workplace has led you to become a Centaur ("I'm now a 10x SWE") or a Reverse Centaur ("this is rapidly sucking the joy this job once held for me"). So, yes, there is very definitely a need for this as there are definitely people seeing themselves cast as the latter.

spzb 2 hours ago | |

The 10x Centaur doesn't exist. They're just ten times as fast at creating tech debt.

adamtaylor_13 1 hour ago | | |

It's so intriguing to me how confidently people state this.

Millions of programmers out there, and you're saying there's not even a 1% chance that a single one of them is moving 10x faster?

hash0 1 hour ago | | |

I wouldn't consider myself an SWE, just an amateur programmer, so this is an honest question: In your opinion, is there such a case where the usage of AI in software engineering has either sped up the dev time or improved product reliability (or even both)?

baggy_trough 18 minutes ago | | |

I don't know if it's 10x, but there's definitely a huge acceleration in productivity. Attempts to deny that are basically just cope, or perhaps from people not using the tools correctly.

simgt 2 hours ago |

I have also lost all sense of pride in my work. As well as all interest in learning anything new related to software, knowing it'll be of zero value to me personally. For many of us our job has always been a craft, being able to perfect our skills while delivering a product was part of the deal when working on a hard problem. All skilled workers who saw their job moved by the side of a conveyor belt in the past two centuries were alienated in the same way.

sph 2 hours ago | |

> interest in learning anything new related to software

I reckon the last large piece of technology I have learned is Kubernetes, and I doubt I’ll ever go any further.

On the other hand, I’ve sought some comfort in digital art, and learned a lot about Blender, level design, architecture, but it’s hard to feel like an impostor, after seeing myself as a programmer since I was in my teens. I wish I could find the strength and recklessness to just jump into the unknown and embrace a totally new career. I would have done it in a heartbeat in my 20s, now that I’m reaching 40 years old it is existentially terrifying.

luciana1u 4 hours ago |

the first rule of LLM support group is you do not ask the LLM to summarize the support group meeting

ben_w 5 hours ago |

Yeah, there's definitely a lot of people in the same boat as you.

I was already getting annoyed with the profession and its CV-driven development, and mostly saw code as a means to an end rather than an end in itself, but that only means I've not lost a sense of identity: I am absolutely also struggling to figure out what to do next.

ayayaweird 5 hours ago | |

> means to an end rather

Is that not what writing code is for? achieving a need?

If I want to feel the art or gaze upon my code masterpieces, I'll do that in my own side projects, no?

ben_w 3 hours ago | | |

Lots of people have very strong opinions about how code should look, often mutually incompatible with each other. Sometimes it's closer to cargo-culting a design pattern or other "best practice" than anything else, doing what they see others do without understanding why, even if they can emit words that are shaped like an explanation. On occasion, such people have made their preferences into my problem.

Because I'm relaxed about which style is used so long as it's not actively wrong, I'm also fairly relaxed about LLMs making code in a style I find weird… so long as it's not actively wrong, which it sometimes still is.

khurs 4 hours ago |

1. Create a support group

2. Create agents to crawl the internet and invite anyone who has posted such sentiments

3. Best not to tell them that they were contacted via ai

More seriously if you set one up, it will likely attract many people.

aykay76 3 hours ago |

I'm sure a lot of engineers feel the same way, especially those who love programming and aren't just in it for the money. I have mixed feelings on the topic - on the one hand i'm quite happy not to write boilerplate code again and again, AI is good at that especially with the right instructions/skills so i'm not mad. It means that I think more in systems than in low-level code, and my cognitive load is lighter not having to remember all the details of different packages and libraries etc. I still enjoy the process of creating software, i'm just not as involved in the coding step. AI has also opened up a lot of opportunities to create things that would have taken me months, in a matter of days.

On the other hand I definitely feel like AI makes developers lazier, and if they're not properly reviewing the code it can have some disastrous consequences. It seems to have calmed down a bit but we went through a phase of swimming in a deluge of AI slop, I guess the temperature has been turned down a bit as I no longer get three emoji-filled documents for every change I introduce. It definitely feels like the last 30 years of my career have been swept away, but the past is gone and we can't get it back, and I have a wealth of experience that is still useful.

I don't know about other companies and industries but certainly the message from our leadership is that AI is here, and it's staying, so it's either a case of get on board or look for another job. I'm currently building AI augmented tools to stay relevant and hopefully survive the next round of job cuts.

tomerlir 4 hours ago |

Why do you feel that way? I'm a SWE and LLMs have 10x me as a developer

addedGone 16 minutes ago | |

yeah, but it also made us slaves of LLMs, let's be real, we will not do anything else than query AIs soon enough.