The future looks to involve a mixture of AI and traditional development. There are things I do with AI that I could never touch the speed of with traditional development. But the vast majority of dev work is just traditional methods with maybe an AI rubber duck and then review before opening the PR to catch the dumb mistakes we all make sometimes. There is a massive difference between a one-off maintenance script or functional skeleton and enterprise code that has been fucked up for 15 years and the AI is never going to understand why you can’t just do the normal best practice thing.
A good developer will be familiar enough with AI to know the difference, but it’ll be a tool they use a couple times a month (highly dependent on the job) in big ways and maybe daily in insignificant ways if they choose.
Companies want a staff prepared for that state, not dragging their heels because they refuse to learn. I’ve been at this for thirty year’s and I’ve had to adapt to a number of changes I didn’t like. But like a lot of job skills we’ve had to develop over the years — such as devops — it’ll be something that you engage for specific purposes, not the whole job.
Even when the AI bubble does burst, AI won’t go away entirely. OpenAI isn’t the only provider and local AI is continuing to close the gap in terms of capability and hardware. In that environment, it may become even more important to know when the tool is a good fit and when it isn’t.
I am aware of that. I occasionally use AI for coding myself if I see fit.
Just the fact that active use of AI tools is listed under job requirement and that I have seen that in more than a few job listings rubs me the wrong way and would definitively be the first question in the interview to clarify what the extent of that is. I just don’t wanna deal with pipelines that break because they are partially rely on AI or an code base nobody knows their way around because nobody actually has written it themselves.
Frankly that’s why I think it’s important for AI centrists to occupy these roles rather than those who are all in. I’m excited about AI and happy to apply it where it makes sense and also very aware of its limitations. And in the part of my role that is encouraging AI adoption, critical thinking is one of the things I try my hardest to communicate.
My leadership is targeting 40-60% efficiency gains. I’m targeting 5-10% with an upward trajectory as we identify the kinds of tasks it is specifically good at within this environment. I expressed mild skepticism about that target to my direct manager during my interview (and he agreed) but also a willingness to do my best and a proven track record of using AI successfully.
I would suggest someone like yourself is perhaps well-suited to that particular duty — though whether the hiring manager sees it that way is another issue.
The future looks to involve a mixture of AI and traditional development. There are things I do with AI that I could never touch the speed of with traditional development. But the vast majority of dev work is just traditional methods with maybe an AI rubber duck and then review before opening the PR to catch the dumb mistakes we all make sometimes. There is a massive difference between a one-off maintenance script or functional skeleton and enterprise code that has been fucked up for 15 years and the AI is never going to understand why you can’t just do the normal best practice thing.
A good developer will be familiar enough with AI to know the difference, but it’ll be a tool they use a couple times a month (highly dependent on the job) in big ways and maybe daily in insignificant ways if they choose.
Companies want a staff prepared for that state, not dragging their heels because they refuse to learn. I’ve been at this for thirty year’s and I’ve had to adapt to a number of changes I didn’t like. But like a lot of job skills we’ve had to develop over the years — such as devops — it’ll be something that you engage for specific purposes, not the whole job.
Even when the AI bubble does burst, AI won’t go away entirely. OpenAI isn’t the only provider and local AI is continuing to close the gap in terms of capability and hardware. In that environment, it may become even more important to know when the tool is a good fit and when it isn’t.
I am aware of that. I occasionally use AI for coding myself if I see fit.
Just the fact that active use of AI tools is listed under job requirement and that I have seen that in more than a few job listings rubs me the wrong way and would definitively be the first question in the interview to clarify what the extent of that is. I just don’t wanna deal with pipelines that break because they are partially rely on AI or an code base nobody knows their way around because nobody actually has written it themselves.
Frankly that’s why I think it’s important for AI centrists to occupy these roles rather than those who are all in. I’m excited about AI and happy to apply it where it makes sense and also very aware of its limitations. And in the part of my role that is encouraging AI adoption, critical thinking is one of the things I try my hardest to communicate.
My leadership is targeting 40-60% efficiency gains. I’m targeting 5-10% with an upward trajectory as we identify the kinds of tasks it is specifically good at within this environment. I expressed mild skepticism about that target to my direct manager during my interview (and he agreed) but also a willingness to do my best and a proven track record of using AI successfully.
I would suggest someone like yourself is perhaps well-suited to that particular duty — though whether the hiring manager sees it that way is another issue.