“Better at coding” as defined by seniority levels: GPT4 - an intern; GPT5 - a junior developer; GPT6 - a senior developer.
Yes, GPT5 will do a lot of damage, as it will be the first model replacing actual human coders. But GPT6 should be able to fix most of the issues. During this transition period I expect human senior developers mostly doing code reviews.
I think this is not actually a reasonable marker to compare against in this case.
Neither of these are actually needed, all that is needed is to be able to disrupt the pipeline of jobs that interns/junior developers would normally build their initial skills on before moving on to more senior positions. Cutting these entry positions out means continually fewer replacements, and less talent (a deflationary trend, the limited number of positions acts as a filter, and its not necessarily merit based).
Without replacement, eventually older more senior developers will age out, retire, and then everyone will panic but by then it will be far too late (its already cascaded).
If it is not economical to develop or maintain a skill set, the knowledge involved becomes lost knowledge when that population dies out (as we all do given sufficient time).
A perfect corollary is the repair of electronics in the US. There might be 1 person per population of 100-200,000 that goes into business for this sector. If they get hit by a bus, its no longer locally available, and mortality happens to us all.
This is one of the main structural problems with burning bridges in blind marches towards some idealized progress.
How can you go back when all your competitors do the same thing and its no longer economic to run the business except by following the same doom loop as your competitors.
Yes. It will go like that: “should we hire a senior dev and a junior dev? Nah, a senior dev plus GPT5 subscription should be enough to do the workload”. And it will be enough.
I think you're wrong honestly. I think the nature of Software Engineering is something else. Automation and increasing efficiency. All the tools are for this. AI is just a tool. Basically it will increase expectations for all of the levels (Juniors to Principals). There won't be less roles. It's just SWE will be required to do more.
I really hope I’m wrong. Can you imagine the massive unemployment and social chaos if I’m not? I’m rarely wrong about AI though. For example, five years ago I predicted (in a comment here on HN) Turing test will be passed within two years. People called me bat shit crazy, said “in 50 years“, “not in my lifetime”, only one said “in 10 years”. GPT3 happened a year later, and after GPT3.5 people suddenly forgot about the importance of TT as a milestone. I guess it no longer requires “AI”.
I’m a Principal level SWE, and a team lead. I have junior devs on my team. I only need a similar increase of intelligence from GPT4 as 3.5–>4.0 to replace them.
It's strange. I'm in a similar position. I need more of them with more of a tools like GPT-N-whatever just to achieve more. Maybe your market niche is a bit small that you'll get to the ceiling and no development needed. Which is ok.
Anyways I hope you're right to be honest. And let's see.
I would love to the industry to have a higher entrance barrier.
I would love to be able to solve more with less.
I would love industry to deliver more value with a higher speed.
Progress is inevitable. So I would love to start adapting faster and be on top of it even if it will require me to leave my current role and maybe switch to another one.
I've seen too many people here in IT doing the things they don't like or coming to the job simply because "it pays bills". I've seen 25 yoe engineers who know literally nothing because they were doing literally nothing for the last 20 years. I've seen junior developers who barely know fundamentals and I'm speaking of some really dummy things. I hope industry will naturally heal itself even if it'll make me leave or switch.
