Senior Engineers Are the Next DRAM Shortage(blog.herlein.com)

17 pointsby gherlein4 hours ago5 comments

daymanstep3 hours ago
Why does this article read like it's AI-generated?
- imwally3 hours ago
  Lots of em dashes.
  “Read that clause again”
  “That’s the whole thing in one sentence”
  “Here’s why that breaks”
  “Same shape, exactly”
  “Here’s the cruel part”
  “But look at the shape of it”
- jawilson23 hours ago
  Here's the honest truth: it's AI-generated.
  80% of this is AI-prose-tropes. The tropes are load bearing.
  (Any other ai-isms I can blast in? Probably)
- genericone3 hours ago
  It's not only AI that uses em-dashes, but AI only seems to use em-dashes. And there's an ellipsis ascii char in there too (not 3 periods in sequence, a single ellipsis char), somewhat of another AI tell.
  - nagaiaida3 hours ago
    phones let you type … effortlessly
    IsTom2 hours ago
    Yeah, and it's alt+k on my default keyboard layout on debian… I think some punctuation is available on macos as well — so perhaps it's a windows-ism that «only AI can use punctuation».
- thrill3 hours ago
  Why do the immediate complaints that something is AI generated feel like they're AI generated?
  - Dibes3 hours ago
    I usually don't complain about stuff being AI generated. But in this case, regardless of HOW it was written/generated, it reads exactly like claudese and frankly I am so exhausted of reading that particular voice that I made it half way through this article before I just couldn't do it anymore. I really don't care if AI was used, I care that it is readable. And frankly, it isn't.
    AnimalMuppetan hour ago
    "That particular voice".
    Yeah. Different authors should have different voices. Having them all sound the same is like having all your food taste the same. It makes you want to throw up after a while.
  - jawilson23 hours ago
    What about that comment sounds AI generated?
- harladsinsteden3 hours ago
  Why is that important? If the point is well made, if the content is interesting, why should I care whether a human or an LLM wrote it?
  Most of us don't seem to care anymore if the _code_ is written by AI, so why should we care if other _content_ is written by AI?
  - operatingthetan3 hours ago
    Because I don't care what a machine "thinks" I care what a real human thinks. We are losing the internet's remaining culture by consuming this type of content.
  - Dibes3 hours ago
    To restate what I put elsewhere, I genuinely don't think I care much for how it was written. The problem is that it felt exhausting to read and was chock full of the same claudese voice that makes claude so infuriatingly exhausting to read. I gave it a try and gave up halfway through. If it was AI generated but was a good read that conveyed a central point/theme, I wouldn't be complaining. This at least is trying to argue a single point, but it does so in what feels like at least 10x the word count.
- jchw3 hours ago
  The answer to your question is very simple.
saulpw3 hours ago
So let's think one more step out. You're supposed to train your juniors so that you have seniors when everyone else is scrambling. But when everyone is scrambling, the biggest and most-funded/most-profitable companies will be offering a lot more money than you can afford to pay your now-senior devs. Now I suppose you think those former juniors would be so grateful that you trained them, that they would be loyal to your company and continue working for what you're paying them, right? ...right?
benoau3 hours ago
I think these thoughts on what happens without the junior-to-senior pipeline have been circulating for a while, long before the conversation even shifted to agents.
What it boils down to is AI staying just bad enough to always need a developer to make the important calls. Meanwhile every effort is being made to improve it. If there's a ceiling that preserves our jobs and the value we bring to companies it will be a bitter pill to swallow for everyone else.
gonzalohm2 hours ago
> Every company on earth is about to want one who can drive a fleet of agents with judgment
Maybe seniors are seniors because they care about their work so they won't be using AI crap for serious projects
- ChiperSoftan hour ago
  And maybe the reason there will be a senior shortage is because we all got pissed off and left.
brucer422 hours ago
Your French is showing; isolable s.b. isolatable.