Reposting a question for Ed Zitron, I'll forward responses.
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Uncommonly, both before and after LLMs.
I’ve generally been fortunate to work for companies that filter out people with low skill pretty well without being terrifying during the interview, and also for being on teams with mostly mid-level and higher developers/engineers.
The commonest “problem” behavior I’ve seen is people (at many levels of technical skill) having significant degrees of learned helplessness when confronted with problems outside their stronger skill sets. The developers I know mostly don’t use LLMs for coding or similar tasks, so I can’t really comment on “before vs. after” there.
@ludicity > The developers I know mostly don’t use LLMs for coding or similar tasks, so I can’t really comment on “before vs. after” there.
One potential exception is a third-party contracting business my team works with from time to time. There was one case about a month ago where one of the developers was essentially frozen out of "AI" software development tools for a project (my company only permits the enterprise version of MS Copilot for internal work, and as contractors, they lacked access to that version) and got all hinky about "likely not having enough time to do this project without AI". My own assessment of the project is that it would have been a challenge for a team *that knew what they were doing*, but not an insuperable one.
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Reposting a question for Ed Zitron, I'll forward responses. He asked on Bluesky and will get sub-Mastodon-tier answers:
"This is a serious question and I would be delighted if I only hear great things but, software engineers: both before and after LLMs, how often in your professional lives have you run into software engineers that seem completely useless or lacking in basic knowledge? I hope the answer is rarely"
@ludicity it comes in waves. Working in SF 1998-2001 anybody that could hack out HTML was a “developer”, then 2010-ish the proliferation of “code camps” where everybody was a “full-stack developer” because they could have a LAMP stack hack out HTML…
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Reposting a question for Ed Zitron, I'll forward responses. He asked on Bluesky and will get sub-Mastodon-tier answers:
"This is a serious question and I would be delighted if I only hear great things but, software engineers: both before and after LLMs, how often in your professional lives have you run into software engineers that seem completely useless or lacking in basic knowledge? I hope the answer is rarely"
@ludicity whats your profile on bluesky?
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Tangential, I have noticed a trend with customer emails (wide spread, many multiples companies) that makes me believe more people are using LLMs to write reply emails & not reading at all.
there's a 'jje ne sais quoi' to not just them not answering questions but *how* they're not answering questions.
I can't put my finger on it, but it's tripping my spidy-sense / pattern recognition.
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@ludicity asking this question speaks inexperience loudly. Incompetence is widespread in all areas of life. Even before LLMs. Especially in enterprise.
Curiously, this confession just popped up on Fesshole, it talks about a technical role but could be about almost any office job
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We must welcome folks with no experience, and not deride them as being “useless”.
Lack of compassion and human engagement, and the capitalists dream of the 10x hero programmer got us into this mess.
It’s your job to develop your team. Train them. Believe in them. Support them.
It’s not a pissing contest.
@knowuh Sure, though we're talking about "Fifteen year veteran that doesn't use Git", not "Fresh grad that doesn't use Git". Like someone that is prima facie not worth their salary, and would surprise their manager if they understood how large the skill gap is.
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@ludicity For the record, I work at a software company that employs ~10k developers.
Before LLMs, I'd encounter such engineers a couple of times a month, but I interact with a lot of engineers, specifically the ones that need help or are new at the company or industry at large, so it's a selected sample. Even the most inexperienced ones are willing and able to learn with some guidance.
After LLMs, there's been a significant uptick, and these new ones are grossly incompetent, incurious, impatient, and behave like addicts if their supply of tokens is at all interrupted. If they run out of prompt credits, its an emergency because they claim they can't do any work at all. They can't even explain the architecture of what they are making anymore, and can't even file tickets or send emails without an LLM writing it for them, and they certainly lack in any kind of reading comprehension.
It's bleak and depressing, and makes me want to quit the industry altogether.
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@ludicity Depends. Rarely professionally, but I did most of my hiring for most of my life and I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe during the interviews.
The worst people were exactly like LLM - stupid, loud and unable to admit they are wrong.
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Reposting a question for Ed Zitron, I'll forward responses. He asked on Bluesky and will get sub-Mastodon-tier answers:
"This is a serious question and I would be delighted if I only hear great things but, software engineers: both before and after LLMs, how often in your professional lives have you run into software engineers that seem completely useless or lacking in basic knowledge? I hope the answer is rarely"
@ludicity i don't quite know how to tell ed that, like basically every other field of endeavor, software is permeable to people who have no useful idea what they're doing.
(or, i guess, that some of the people who lack basic knowledge and have no ability to contribute will probably stay that way forever but that many others eventually figure things out and become pretty effective.)
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Reposting a question for Ed Zitron, I'll forward responses. He asked on Bluesky and will get sub-Mastodon-tier answers:
"This is a serious question and I would be delighted if I only hear great things but, software engineers: both before and after LLMs, how often in your professional lives have you run into software engineers that seem completely useless or lacking in basic knowledge? I hope the answer is rarely"
@ludicity 10 years in data engineering. "Completely useless" is something I've only seen a few times, more often in non-technical managers which wasn't the question.
I do often see engineers who don't understood best practices or good architecture. Or don't understand the frameworks they are using. Or frankly just don't try.
The LLM spell mostly affects the beginner or mediocre engineer. Senior engineers find them mostly frustrating but occasionally useful.
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J jwcph@helvede.net shared this topic
