vingtcinqunvingtcinq's recent activity

  1. Comment on Software engineers / programmers: how’s it going? in ~comp

    vingtcinqunvingtcinq
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    I'm a college graduate with a non-CS degree who got hired out of college into a Software Engineering Role. I have "senior" level experience and work in a city with a large tech industry. I perform...

    I'm a college graduate with a non-CS degree who got hired out of college into a Software Engineering Role. I have "senior" level experience and work in a city with a large tech industry. I perform well at my company, but I don't work at a FAANG or adjacent company. I don't consider myself to be an excellent engineer, but I try my best with my work.

    1. How has your work changed in the past year? How much of your daily work now involves LLM tools?: There is more pressure to use AI, but I haven't experienced it making things much faster because I still have to vet and understand everything. It does help with getting the ball rolling on new things, quick lookups, or scoping out major architectural changes and generating docs from that for review. It mainly contributes to a sense of urgency around my work that I didn't really need, and makes the effort I put into my work feel devalued. I would be elated for Anthropic & co. to run out of compute. I miss coding more hands-on.
    2. Are you enjoying your work more, less, or the same? Has your relationship with work changed in general?: Less, but part of it was that I was at the inflection point career-wise where your differentiator is less about code quality (because, as AI proves, there's limits to how much people give a damn). Leadership qualities, mentorship, investigating issues, following up 2-3 steps into an issue instead of just one, etc. are what took up more and more time. I think if AI impacted that, it was in part because you could fuck around much harder not knowing much about the language (we had a lot of newly joined engineers using AI primarily as their means to write in this 'new' language). So there was more need to put my foot down. The other thing is that nothing delivered is impressive to people unless AI did it or is part of it, I think.
    3. Do you feel like you’re working more or less now? The same?: The same, maybe less. AI gives the illusion of work but is nothing compared to a flow state. But coding work, where you're the primary bottleneck, moves at a different pace than work where you're dealing with people.
    4. Are you hopeful or fearful of the future (let’s say next 5 years) of SWE? Mixed?: Fearful / mixed. When I stop thinking about what others think, I don't really know what the future holds. Will code be less important? Well, maybe, but I don't see why we wouldn't lean into product skills and replace the PMs. Will designers be more important? I don't think people need rivetingly original designs and UX, nor a team for it. Will engineering still be important? I don't know, but I guess I don't see how it wouldn't take away every other 'email job' first. That would indeed decimate the shit out of the economy. I wonder if Rails killed more jobs than it created. I have had to come to terms with the fact that I have possibly peaked earnings; I don't see FAANGs as viable jobs right now with layoffs and the stock valuations feelings uncertain.
    5. Have you found any useful tips or advice for thriving in the current landscape?: Err, no, except that not getting familiar with it will probably not endear you in the job market either. Conversely, I have yet to be sold on the value of trying to "engineer AI" outcomes; there are entire companies tasked with making the models better so I don't see any point in turning optimizing AI into work for myself. But I also don't care enough about AI to optimize token use. Most of what seems valuable was valuable before AI too: be very smart, improve at systems design, know shit about databases, and do your own tiny projects for extra $$.
    6. Has your career trajectory changed? Do you plan on seeking out different types of roles? Not really. I am more averse to being a manager, but I also see how 'proximity to management' gives you more salience with people doing the layoffs. I do think more about moving in with my parents and staying in the area (versus moving to a weaker job market). I do think often about an exit plan (buy something extremely modest with savings, do a modest job to eat.)
    3 votes

  2. Comment on Are others finding themselves spending less and less time online? in ~tech

    vingtcinqunvingtcinq
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    On 2-- I think once Trump passes, this really has to go the way of Godwin's Law lol.

    On 2-- I think once Trump passes, this really has to go the way of Godwin's Law lol.

  3. Comment on Are others finding themselves spending less and less time online? in ~tech

    vingtcinqunvingtcinq
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    Yes. I think for me it was more some kind of anxiety or tenseness. It felt like work. (I left Instagram 2 years ago, which I liked as "bridge" social media to make friends-- people wouldn't ask...

    I still have the urges, but now when I indulge it doesn't feel like an effortless dopamine hit, I feel like I'm fighting the platforms for something, anything engaging.

    For lack of a better phrase, I'm just constantly feeling the "ick" being online. I'm actively trying to search out things to engage with, anything even remotely genuine or authentic, and running up against a wall.

    Yes. I think for me it was more some kind of anxiety or tenseness. It felt like work. (I left Instagram 2 years ago, which I liked as "bridge" social media to make friends-- people wouldn't ask for your numbers irl, they'd ask for your Insta.)

    Or maybe I'm reaching a different stage of life and no longer the target demographic. In any case I just feel myself reaching for my laptop less and less and less. For most folks I think that would be a good thing, but when it's dark out, and I'm too burnt out from work to make progress on whatever home or art project I'm doing it was a really nice way to turn off my brain.

    I also agree with this. With the new Reddit, I still browse super occasionally (think <10 min a week now; niche illness subreddit for family member and local city subreddit) but it feels like I'm fighting a sense of grossness because of how shitty the UI makes me feel. And like you say, most of what I want to do with free time is exhausting with regular adult commitments in the mix. Through a mixture of intention and things being "taken away," I find myself opening up fewer and fewer sites, reading less and less of it, and caring less and less about it. I'm bored more often, which I think is good and healthy and desirable. But it is disheartening to be this bored by things I used to like.

    I think the internet was more fun when the communities preexisted, if it makes sense. I liked connecting with people based on ideas and interests rather than feelings. (Maybe this is precisely the problem with a lot of social apps-- it is more about who we are and how we feel, rather than what we choose and voluntarily think about.) And then from that general forum, you'd stumble upon a community of regulars offtopic-ing. They would invite you into your circle, and you'd end up with weird fun internet friends you heard from at a less overwhelming cadence online. Everything was basically chronological, only kept alive if it were pinned or had new posts, not if it had a lot of "points" or reputation. It was a bit ephemeral in that way, in that it really did live and die, whereas I think most things never really get attention when posted (if the wild stats can be believed).

    I think those communities died out, the security concerns felt more perilous, and I grew out of needing that. I had tried hard for years to become less of a "geek" and to adopt 'normie' interests and frankly it's really fucking nice being a 'normal' person. Like working out, being healthy, and trying to address everything I was ashamed of by 'being better' did shut my brain down from dwelling so hard on stuff that made me doom and gloom. On top of that, I am trying to build my offline community (and basically everything offline, because clearly everything online is a security / privacy issue). (Somewhat off-topic, but I was toying with the idea of making a meetup thread for Tildes for this reason-- though I found I mainly just wanted to meet locals, so at that point maybe I did not need a thread.)

    AI has also completely ruined my ability to care about a lot of text-based stuff. Is this person really feeling this way about politics / current events / being a woman, or is it just some weird bot trying to build up karma and advertise some shit to me? Does it make sense for me to even post this message for AI to train on it and steal my voice? The influx of text and the lack of editing also makes reading more of a chore -- if it's not written incisively or deliberately in some way, I skim that much harder to gain the information faster. I can feel the anxiety of the wasted time as I do.

    The news makes me feel like this too. What was once a 'hobby' now feels like a coordinated brainwashing effort to force a pop / unified and hegemonic culture that disappeared and self-torture exercise where we read about preventable tragedies. When it's not that, it feels like all I see are articles about AI (people circling the drain on topics saying "yes but code was the easy part, Y is what makes you a real Z" x infinity) and how I will have no job in 5 years. Why do I want more 'information' on that, really? It doesn't make me smarter, happier, or think harder.

    10 votes

  4. What was it like for you and your partner when one of you was losing a parent "slowly"?

    ~life Ask (advice)
    Without going into details, my partner's parent is sick with an unknown prognosis (1-5 years; 1 year has passed). I admire how they've come to support their parent and have tried to both be...

    Without going into details, my partner's parent is sick with an unknown prognosis (1-5 years; 1 year has passed). I admire how they've come to support their parent and have tried to both be supportive and keep myself busy so my partner could focus. Still, it's created a lot of distance for me. Where I see the future as exciting and exploratory for us, for my partner, they imagine their family in shambles and their favorite person gone. With the uncertain prognosis and the aftermath, it's hard to imagine that really changing for the foreseeable future.

    I am looking for insight from people who have been in similar situations. Perhaps it's the sort of ridiculousness of how selfish this is or sounds, but I don't know if I've ever heard much about how this affects romantic relationships.

    20 votes

  5. What are the "white spaces" or "breathing rooms" in your life?

    ~talk Ask
    It's easy to be wired all the time. Checking messages, performing tasks, planning for the future, making the most of every second with obvious output. But do you have any intentional inefficiency...

    It's easy to be wired all the time. Checking messages, performing tasks, planning for the future, making the most of every second with obvious output. But do you have any intentional inefficiency in your life? Breaks? Breaths between tasks? If so, what are they?

    39 votes