> Q: Will ChatGPT reduce the amount of toil associated with software engineering?
> A: Yes. Significantly.
I think the article misses the point. It starts by suggesting that many programmers suffer from burnout, but it builds from the hypothesis that the activity of programming itself is the cause.
I may be wrong, but in my experience, developers suffer burnout because of managerial decisions and bureaucratic stuff piled upon them. Most are happier when they just, well, are writing code.
So will ChatGPT increase the joy of programming? I don't know. But it for sure will not get rid of the annoyances mentioned.
I think you are probably right that a lot of engineering burn-out comes from things managers require engineers to do.
But I think it's also true that a lot of what managers say and do is often a lossy representation of things engineers would need to do anyway if they didn't have management.
Remove the managers and the bureaucracy and the things that make programming hard and likely prone to burn-out still exist.
That doesn't mean managers aren't contributors of their own unique frustrations, but I don't think it accounts for the high amount of burn-out in our field.
manuelabeledo|2 years ago
> A: Yes. Significantly.
I think the article misses the point. It starts by suggesting that many programmers suffer from burnout, but it builds from the hypothesis that the activity of programming itself is the cause.
I may be wrong, but in my experience, developers suffer burnout because of managerial decisions and bureaucratic stuff piled upon them. Most are happier when they just, well, are writing code.
So will ChatGPT increase the joy of programming? I don't know. But it for sure will not get rid of the annoyances mentioned.
terracatta|2 years ago
I think you are probably right that a lot of engineering burn-out comes from things managers require engineers to do.
But I think it's also true that a lot of what managers say and do is often a lossy representation of things engineers would need to do anyway if they didn't have management.
Remove the managers and the bureaucracy and the things that make programming hard and likely prone to burn-out still exist.
That doesn't mean managers aren't contributors of their own unique frustrations, but I don't think it accounts for the high amount of burn-out in our field.