alt Hacker NewsIt seems that as the tools available to developers have become more abstracted allowing them to do more with less, their ability to command higher salaries and prestige has only grown and grown. LLM's are just a continuation of this trend.
The naive view considers only the small scale ease of completing a task in isolation and expects compensation to be proportional to it. But that's not how things work. Yes abstraction makes individual tasks easier to complete, but with the extra time available more can be done, and as more is done and can be done, new complexities emerge. And as an individual can do more, the importance of trust grows as well. This is why CEO's make disproportionately more than their employees, because while the complexity of their work may scale only linearly with their position, or not at all even beyond a certain point, the impact of their decisions grows exponentially.
LLM's are just going to enhance the power and influence of software developers.
OK, so what do I hear about LLMs? Oh, it's just like having an intern. A fresh graduate. Now you're not building the thing yourself, you're giving directives and delegating the actual building of the thing. What does this sound like?
The managerial class believes that all the value in a business comes from managerial work. LLMs are being hyped by the managerial class because they are turning software development into managerial work and eliminating "programmer" as a professional category. The key insight Milt Bryce had with PRIDE is that software is a product that can be manufactured just like any other product. The ideal software production workflow is that of a factory, and the ideal factory is staffed by no more than a man and a dog—in other words, fully automated.
So the rules of business in your father's or grandfather's time prevail once again. It's up or out. Learn people skills, learn the business, and take on more responsibilities putting those skills to use and fewer responsibilities involving code. Or find yourself increasingly irrelevant.