MangoCats

The quality of your recruiter matters quite a bit

Absolutely, but in a big company you don't get to choose which recruiters you use - corporate just sends you candidates.

In 2006 I had a hard time finding C++ programmers in a university town. 9/10 who responded to the ads were just clueless. Of the remainder, we had a simple test - here's sample code in an IDE that draws a straight line on the screen (you'll be doing graphics programming in the role) - take that code and turn it into a program that draws a sine-wave in the same space... Everyone put computer graphic on their resume's, expressed confidence in their ability to perform in the role, deep former experience, but 5/6 who passed the clueless test couldn't manage that, given unlimited time and resources - the computer has internet access and a browser window open right there beside the IDE- USE IT!!!

Sadly, today we'd probably have to shut off the internet access aspect, or make the test much more difficult. Even AI can draw a sine wave.

That's what's happening, and it's diminishing the quality of candidates - dramatically. Getting past HR isn't a valuable skill except for getting hired.

You were at screening level #1. When I applied for work in Manhattan in 1988 it was like that: 9/10 jobs you applied to weren't the actual employer, they were agents building a pool of candidates to be able to present to the actual employers at a moment's notice if the employer should ever actually call asking for candidates.

Today I bet it's rare to get hired without at least 3 screenings before you actually meet the people you might be working with.

now it takes 6 rounds of interviews for an entry level position at a startup.

I think it was 1996 vs 2002... 1996 we advertised in the Miami Herald for an engineer and got about a dozen applicants, 3 worth interviewing, none worth hiring and had to continue to search through personal networking to fill the role. 2002 we placed a nearly identical ad in the same classified section of the same paper, but by this time the Miami Herald was "online." We even added the line "only local candidates will be considered." Within the first week I had over 300 resumes on my desk, half of them from far afield - even overseas, so they were easy to sort... Still, plowing through the remainder, after about 50 quick scans I found one former employee of a company we did regular business with for over a decade, the question to his ex-manager was "if you had the chance, would you rehire him?" That yes shot down the rest of the applications dead - we just didn't have the resources to even read all the applications, much less sort or answer or interview them.

I can only imagine the flood of candidates applying for every opening today. Take your resume, e-mail it to 30 recruiters, they each apply to 30 positions for you...

I like to understand what I work with, but I also like to keep my tools (like: Docker container images) as close to "stock" as possible, because that way they benefit the most from security testing and patching that others do, and make as little work for me as possible when I install upgrades.

Having said that, some tech (especially Bluetooth) is best "reinvented locally" IMO, simply because so much effort is being put into breaking Bluetooth security, and nobody really cares to break our products, but if we use Bluetooth we will be slapped with CVEs to patch constantly. So, yeah, use the Bluetooth supporting hardware, but roll your own reasonable security appropriate for your applications and get the hell out of the firehose of whack-a-mole security patches.

To be fair, when you're in Gambukistan and you don't even know what languages are spoken, a smart phone can bail you out and get you communicating basic needs much faster and better than waving your hands and speaking English LOUDLY AND S L O W L Y . A good human translator, you can trust, should be better - depending on their grasp of English, but there's another point... who do you choose to pick your hotel for you? Google, or a local kid who spotted you from across the street and ran over to "help you out"? That's a tossup, both are out to make a profit out of you, but which one is likely to hurt you more?

Always keep an open mind. I stuck around in my first job until the sad and pathetic end for everyone, and when I finally did start looking the economy was worse than it had been when the writing was first on the wall.

I’ve had too many arguments with management about letting them merge and I’m not letting that ruin my code base

I guess I'm lucky, before here I always had 100% control of the code I was responsible for. Here (last 12 years) we have a big team, but nobody merges to master/main without a review and screwups in the section of the repository I am primarily responsible for have been rare.

We have a new VP collecting metrics on everyone, including lines of code, number of merge requests, times per day using ai, days per week in the office vs at home

I have been getting actively recruited - six figures+ - for multiple openings right here in town (not a huge market here, either...) this may be the time...

It's not the purpose of LLMs to lower human skills' value, it's just the inevitable outcome.

Transcriptionist? Industry died with good voice recognition 10-20 years ago.

Ditch digging shovel crew? Dramatically de-valued with the advent of the steam-shovel...

and on and on... The theory goes that it gives people more free time, but the way wealth is distributed it is dividing people into those with jobs serving the wealthy and those who live on handouts.

I think: non-stigmatized "handouts" for everybody are the way of a brighter future. UBI FTW.

I've always had problems with junior engineers (self included) going down bad paths, since before there was Google search - let alone AI.

So far ai overall creates more mess faster.

Maybe it is moving faster, maybe they do bother the senior engineers less often than they used to, but for throw-away proof of concept and similar stuff, the juniors+AI are getting better than the juniors without senior support used to be... Is that a good direction? No. When the seniors are over-tasked with "Priority 1" deadlines (nothing new) does this mean the juniors can get a little further on their own and some of them learn from their own mistakes? I think so.

Where I started, it was actually the case that the PhD senior engineers needed help from me fresh out of school - maybe that was a rare circumstance, but the shop was trying to use cutting edge stuff that I knew more about than the seniors. Basically, everything in 1991 was cutting edge and it made the difference between getting something that worked or having nothing if you didn't use it. My mentor was expert in another field, so we were complimentary that way.

My company (now) wants metrics on a lot of things, but they also understand how meaningless those metrics can be.

I have to spend more time helping the junior guys out of the holes dug by ai, making it net negative

https://clip.cafe/monsters-inc-2001/all-right-mr-bile-it/

Shame. There was a time that people dug out of their own messes, I think you learn more, faster that way. Still, I agree - since 2005 I have spend a lot of time taking piles of Matlab, Fortran, Python that have been developed over years to reach critical mass - add anything else to them and they'll go BOOM - and translating those into commercially salable / maintainable / extensible Qt/C++ apps, and I don't think I ever had one "mentee" through that process who was learning how to follow in my footsteps, the organizations were always just interested in having one thing they could sell, not really a team that could build more like it in the future.

it’s just another tool.

Yep.

If you had to answer how much time autocomplete saved you, could you provide any sort of meaningful answer?

Speaking of meaningless metrics, how many people ask you for Lines Of Code counts, even today?___

Like search engines, and libraries...