[mobiuscog]

For many of us, we took those jobs because they aligned with our existing identities... we went into coding jobs because we enjoyed coding.

Unfortunately, most of the jobs (and the industry as a whole) evolved into something else that was all about money and growth and image, and not at all about the craft of programming or the creative nature it provided.

[lacedeconstruct]

> evolved into something else that was all about money and growth and image

I feel like this happened long before LLMs became a thing

[linguae]

Definitely. I left the industry and became a community college professor two years ago, partly because I felt disillusioned with the industry. This decision had nothing to do with LLMs.

As someone who was inspired by people like Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Dennis Ritchie, Ken Thompson, Alan Kay, and other major figures of computing, I’m not inspired by Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, and other current tech leaders. But the current leadership is the current leadership, and they have set the tone not only for our industry, but society as a whole.

While I am not opposed to LLMs per se, LLMs in software development, in my opinion, have made the relationship between the employer and the employee crystal clear: employers own the means of production and can dictate how they want their employees to work. Despite the limitations of LLMs, if employers want them to be used because they feel they could ship faster, then employees at those companies have no choice but to use them if they want to keep their jobs. Some employees might not even have the option of using LLMs since they may get outright replaced by them.

The employer has always dictated the terms of employment, but software engineers have enjoyed many decades of relative freedom and negotiating power due to their in-demand, hard-to-replace skills. Indeed, there are many companies where engineers had significant influence regarding the company’s software.

LLMs, combined with other economic factors (the end of ZIRP, the software industry being dominated by a tiny handful of powerful players), are threatening to change this by reasserting the power of business owners and managers to set the agenda.

Even before LLMs, I felt the software industry has moved away from craftsmanship, quality, and creativity. LLMs in software development may accelerate this, since there may be fewer opportunities for engineers to push back.

I think software craftsmanship is going to end up becoming just like art. Unfortunately it will be paid for accordingly, and that’s the unsettling thing that many of us need to adjust to.

[sho_hn]

For sure. "I hear coding makes money" is the Bootcamp era.