The Death of the Junior Developer, and Other Lessons Learned
Summary
TLDRIn this insightful talk, Steve Yi discusses the transformative impact of AI on the workforce, particularly in software development. He highlights how AI is disproportionately benefiting senior professionals, which has significant implications for junior developers. Yi shares his experiences from building a coding assistant at Sourcegraph and emphasizes the need for companies to adapt to the changing landscape of programming, where AI tools like LLMs are becoming central to code generation and review processes.
Takeaways
- 😀 Steve Yi shared stories on how AI is helping senior professionals disproportionately, impacting juniors in many fields.
- 📰 Steve's post on 'The death of the junior developer' was inspired by his work at Sourcegraph building a coding assistant.
- 🚀 AI is changing the landscape of software development, with a shift towards valuing senior contributors more due to their experience.
- 💼 The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a rise in 'entitlement' and 'anxiety' among software engineers, affecting productivity.
- 📈 There's a trend where AI tools are making it easier for senior developers to be more productive, potentially leaving junior developers behind.
- 🛠️ Tools like coding assistants and AI models are becoming integral parts of the software development process.
- 🔍 Companies need to focus on improving discoverability of their codebases to leverage the full potential of AI.
- 🏢 There's a significant disparity among companies in how they are adopting and preparing for AI in software development.
- 👨💻 The role of junior developers is becoming increasingly challenging due to the influx of AI tools that favor more experienced developers.
- 🔑 For companies to stay competitive, they need to embrace AI and align their engineering teams to work effectively with these new tools.
Q & A
Who is Steve Yi and what is his connection to Amazon and Google?
-Steve Yi is a notable figure known for his inside account of Jeff Bezos' 'Thou shalt communicate only by APIs' memo. He has worked with both Amazon and Google, and his experiences and insights into these companies are well-regarded in the tech industry.
What did Steve Yi discuss with the audience about AI's impact on work?
-Steve Yi shared stories and observations on how AI is disproportionately helping senior professionals in their careers, regardless of the profession, and the consequential impacts this has on junior professionals, including software developers.
What is the 'death of the junior developer' post by Steve Yi about?
-The 'death of the junior developer' post by Steve Yi is based on his observations while helping build a coding assistant at Sourcegraph. It discusses the changing landscape of software development due to AI, potentially leading to less coding work for junior developers.
What is Steve Yi's opinion on the current state of software engineering jobs?
-Steve Yi believes that the software engineering job market has been significantly impacted by factors like zero interest rate policy and economic stimulus, leading to an influx of jobs and subsequently entitlement and anxiety among engineers.
What does Steve Yi think about the future of coding with AI?
-Steve Yi predicts that within 18 to 24 months, all code will be written by Large Language Models (LLMs), and this shift will require a focus on senior contributors who can effectively use these AI tools.
What is 'chat-oriented programming' as mentioned by Steve Yi?
-Chat-oriented programming is a technique where developers use LLMs to write code through interactive chat interfaces. It's an evolving method that is becoming more practical and efficient with the advancement of AI models like GPT.
Why is Steve Yi encouraging companies to start using coding assistants?
-Steve Yi encourages the use of coding assistants because they can significantly speed up the coding process and help with tasks like code reviews and auditing. They also help with the discovery and retrieval of code in large codebases.
What does Steve Yi suggest companies do to prepare for the AI revolution in coding?
-Steve Yi suggests that companies should get their house in order by aligning their engineers, starting to use coding assistance, and preparing for the use of self-hosted models that are secure and legal for their intellectual property.
What is the significance of the 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' reference in Steve Yi's talk?
-The reference to 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' is used by Steve Yi to illustrate the vast amount of intellectual property that companies have in the form of code repositories, wikis, and issues trackers. He stresses that this data needs to be processed by AI for better discoverability.
What is 'rag' in the context of Steve Yi's discussion on AI in coding?
-In the context of Steve Yi's discussion, 'rag' stands for Retrieval Augmented Generation. It refers to the need for intelligent systems to index and provide searchable indexes of codebases to aid developers in finding and using relevant code efficiently.
Outlines
🚀 The Impact of AI on Senior and Junior Developers
Steve Yi, known for his insights into Amazon and Google, discusses the effects of AI on the workforce, particularly how it benefits senior professionals across various fields, including software development. He shares anecdotes from his meetings with industry leaders and his own experiences at Sourcegraph, where he observed a significant shift towards AI assistance in coding. This trend, he warns, could lead to the 'death of the junior developer' as AI tools become more integrated, potentially disadvantaging those early in their careers.
🛠️ The Changing Landscape of Software Engineering
Steve Yi delves into the transformation of software engineering due to AI, emphasizing the rise of 'coding assistants' and the challenges it poses for junior developers. He reflects on his career, noting the industry's shift from building in-house software to adopting SaaS models. Yi humorously compares his role to a 'cable guy', gaining insights into various companies' operations and challenges. He also touches on the industry's struggle with entitlement and anxiety, exacerbated by market fluctuations and the COVID-19 pandemic.
📈 The Emergence of AI in Coding and its Implications
Yi discusses the rapid evolution of AI in coding, suggesting that within 18 to 24 months, AI will dominate code writing. He highlights the divide in the industry's response to this change, with some companies aggressively adopting AI and others lagging behind. The pressure is mounting on junior developers as tools and expectations evolve, and Yi emphasizes the need for companies to adapt and prepare for the influx of AI-generated code and the challenges of managing vast amounts of intellectual property.
🔍 Embracing AI in Coding: Tools and Strategies
In the final paragraph, Steve Yi focuses on practical steps companies can take to integrate AI into their coding processes. He advocates for the use of coding assistants and the importance of context in AI-generated code. Yi stresses the need for better discovery and retrieval systems to manage the vast amounts of data that AI will process. He encourages the audience to pivot from traditional coding methods to embrace AI, suggesting that those who fail to adapt risk being left behind in this new era of software development.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡APIs
💡AI
💡Coding Assistant
💡LLMs
💡CHAT-Oriented Programming
💡Entitlement
💡Anxiety
💡Innovator's Dilemma
💡Discovery Problem
💡RAG
Highlights
Steve Yi shared insights on AI's impact on work, particularly benefiting senior professionals.
AI is disproportionately aiding senior individuals in their careers, affecting juniors across professions.
Steve Yi's experience building a coding assistant at Sourcegraph revealed AI's significant role in software development.
AI is changing the dynamics of software engineering, potentially leading to the 'death of the junior developer'.
Steve Yi's career spans 30 years, with a focus on companies that build their own software.
The transition to SaaS was initially daunting for Steve Yi, but it turned out to be an enlightening experience.
Steve Yi observed a pattern of increased difficulty in software engineering, with CEOs reporting productivity loss.
The COVID-19 pandemic and economic stimulus have led to a job market surge and subsequent entitlement and anxiety among engineers.
There's a cultural shift towards not allowing engineers to become entitled, as observed by Walmart and Amazon.
Steve Yi predicts that within 18 to 24 months, all code will be written by AI, a controversial stance that sparked debate.
The role of AI in coding is evolving, with a focus on senior contributors and a shift away from junior developers.
Coding is becoming chat-oriented, with developers using AI to generate and refine code.
The importance of using coding assistants and the potential for self-hosted models to address security and legal concerns.
The need for companies to prepare for AI processing of intellectual property, as current discovery methods are insufficient.
The disparity between companies that are ahead in AI adoption and those that are lagging, with some not even starting their evaluation.
The imperative for companies to get their house in order, align engineers, and start using coding assistance to stay competitive.
Steve Yi's recommendation to use any available coding assistant to improve developer productivity and code quality.
The future of coding lies in 'chop' and chat-oriented programming, necessitating a shift in focus from completion rates to context.
Transcripts
so anyone who has studied Amazon and or
Google probably knows the name Steve Yi
uh he notoriously gave the world an
inside account of the famous Jeff Bezos
Thou shalt communicate only by api's
memo this accidental public post led him
to being on the front page of the Wall
Street Journal I finally got to meet him
a couple of weeks ago and he is as
hilarious irreverent as brilliant as you
might expect but we shared some stories
on how AI is affecting work uh and and
one particular theme one particular
theme emerged AI seems to
disproportionately help senior people in
their careers regardless of profession
uh and this has some very real and
consequential impacts on Junior people
in so many professions including
software one of the outcomes of that
conversation was another epic Yi post
called the death of the junior developer
based on what his observations helping
build a Cod coding assistant at source
graph I'm so excited that he'll be
sharing not what he's learned but his
perspectives on why gen why he thinks
gen gen is so important here's
[Music]
[Applause]
Steve my mic on all
right all right hey thanks thanks for
the kind words Jean it's good to be uh
back on stage I haven't been on stage in
15 years and it'll probably be another
15 years before I get invited back
because I'm going to say something
that's going to get me in
trouble and I just finished my slides an
hour
ago it's also it's also great to be back
in the industry after a little Hiatus
during covid if you look at this gold
box here this represent 30 years of my
career and during that 30 years those
four companies they all built their own
software they didn't buy yeah probably
most of you work for companies like that
too they make procurement really hard
yeah and and and they they like to build
their own stuff because it scales or for
whatever reason and so when I went to
Source graph you know I went into SAS I
was like oh no you know this is going to
be terrible right I got I got to sell
software but it turns out to be
absolutely amazing okay why because I
get to go into all of your houses I mean
not your literal houses thank God but
your your places of business and I get
to see your architecture and your hopes
and your dreams and your Ambitions and
your problems and you all open up to me
and it's pretty awesome I mean I'm
basically like the cable guy yeah just
going house to house I even get barked
at by security and legal
teams you know but it's really really
really cool because people you know they
kind of open up to their cable guy kind
of like their hairdresser and they tell
me all the problems that they have and I
get to see patterns yeah and oh my God
this is a very old version of my slide
deck
um a very old version I'm just going to
an can you please fix my slide deck
thank you all right so all of you are um
unfortunately telling me that this is
harder this time
around now I know a lot of you have been
doing this for a long time right 10
years 15 years 20 years in these
leadership positions and I'm hearing a
consistent theme which is that
something's different and you can't
quite put your finger on it like you you
hear CEOs you know talking about
productivity loss and they all think
it's RTO and they're all frustrated cuz
that's not helping
why why is everything so hard I think
there are some forces going on here I'm
going to talk about them really briefly
before we get to the fun stuff because I
think you all need to know this all
right oh my God this is a very very
outdated version of my slide I'm going
to have to wing it here um so what
happened was you all got
zered zero interest rate policy yeah and
a$2 trillion doll economic stimulus
package and what happened was everybody
had free
money and jobs jobs jobs software
engineering jobs yeah and in my old
slide deck I can try to find some stuff
here here it is here it is this is what
happened you can actually see covid
starts and then Zer happens in March
2020 and it starts to climb up you can
see when chat GPT came out it Peaks and
then Zer end in March 2022 and it's
tumbling down this had two really
serious effects on our industry and on
our engineering organizations all of
them all
right one of them
strangely enough from this horrific AI
drawing which is horrifically accurate
actually the first problem I actually
got warned about by Walmart in 1999 is
that weird that's weird yeah because
what they said was the fully 10% of
Amazon at the time was ex Walmart senior
Executives they got sued over this and
all this and they brought their culture
and their culture was basically one
message it was do not allow your
engineers to become entitled and we were
like what right cuz like at Amazon for
reasons I probably explained before we
were not very entitled but that's
because Bezos took his entire Playbook
from Walmart and it wasn't until I went
to Google in 2005 that I finally
understood what entitlement meant
huh right because they're four Engineers
by Engineers they were princesses
everyone got a pony it was it was
awesome and I became one of the most
entitled people there I mean I'm not
proud of it anybody who knew me there
right it happens it's a real phenomenon
and it happened to the entire industry
because of Zer when the jobs were going
up and then on the way down the
phenomenon that had started with the
lockdown I had PMS telling me that gpms
telling me their PMS were going mad
during lockdown because their sense of
self-worth and validation came from
in-person interactions their little
glowing screen wasn't doing it that
phenomenon continued as the job started
to plummet wherever that slide is and
and and now anxiety set in and so those
are the two gifts gifts that Co gave us
oh my God the slide's gone but anyway
this two the two gifts are entitlement
and anxiety and you're all dealing with
it many of you not very well okay you've
still got people teams telling you don't
scare the engineers there's going to be
a wave of attrition all right I can tell
you right now they're going to they're
going to thank you when you get your
house in order your engineers will thank
you because Engineers only love one
thing more than everything else right
they love to work together as a team to
launch something amazing and if you have
a misalignment problem which many of you
do hey I'm the cable guy I'm just
echoing back what you've all told be all
right if you have an alignment problem
your engineers are not happy
fundamentally and they will be happy as
soon as you fix it yeah so I just wanted
to like talk about that and put it in
context for this because you're all
stuck in the innovator's
Dilemma all of you maybe some of you
think oh Jenna I didn't really affect as
much but remember in order to get
disrupted either your competitor has to
build the same product as you for 10
times cheaper or they have to make a
product that's 10 times more accessible
well they can build it 10 times cheaper
if they can figure out a way to get gen
to accelerate the developers and they
can make their product 10 times more
accessible if they can use gen in a
clever way right so there's two ways
that any one of your competitors could
disrupt you right this is a serious
problem and I blogged about it in May
right and uh because because coding
itself is changing and this post was
hilarious it's split people right down
the middle people were divided over this
post the post was a really simple
premise a really simple premise the
premise was within 18 to 24
months all code is going to be written
by
llms a lot of people didn't like that
they didn't like that premise right by
the way Gan helped me co-write this blog
post yeah Jean Kim and and he's the
reason I'm so he's part of the reason
I'm so confident about it because we
researched the hell out of it before I
posted it it's happening in multiple
Industries llms are taking over the sort
of the creative work right the lowlevel
creative work and all you need is sort
of supervis it's like a it's like a
kitchen imagine you know you're a you're
a cook and you've just been elevated to
a Master Chef and you've got a bunch of
robots that can do the prep cook and all
the work and you just have to like turn
it into a good meal that's how it's
changing right and that's why there's
this Focus shifting towards senior
contributors because if you're a bad
cook and I give you a bunch of robots
you're just going to make a big bad meal
right that I mean this is just common
sense so people were calling me out of
retirement people who retired and
they're like you're wrong right because
because the the consequences would be
inconvenient that's why I'm wrong right
actually it turned out a lot of them
were calling me they're angry because
their kids just graduated with computer
science degrees and they're like you're
poisoning the well right fine I'm
poisoning the well
but this right here is how programming
is changing and many of you most of you
are still stuck in like
February that's how that's how far
that's how fast it changes all right
you're probably thinking about
completion acceptance rates right and
token counting and trying to like
compute what percentage of the code is
written by AI versus people a lot of you
are doing that it's dumb all right it's
ancient history completions are a
gimmick the way coding has changed and
by the way the people who called me to
tell me right that I was wrong none of
them write code every day like my title
as you'll see on my my badge is engineer
I'm a grunt I'm the cable guy yeah the
people who code every day are telling me
this is happening all right chat
oriented
programming you do everything with the
llm
yeah it's an evolving technique
I know a lot of senior people who are
using it I don't know a lot of Junior
people who are using it why it's it's
the chef thing I just told you but
there's there's a bunch of things that
you can do with chop right with chop oh
my God here here here's a picture of it
all right you're literally in the llm
and you're just like ah this method's
wrong right and it'll give you a bunch
of suggestions and then it'll give you
some code and you've got to like find a
way to get back that back into your code
base right it's an iterative digging
cycle and you can go to different llms
and you can go to different coding
assistants and you can go to different
sources right but eventually you get it
to write the code and you're five to 10
times faster this way it's
counterintuitive because you're spending
a lot of time just typing right what
you're what you're what you what you
want but you have an infinitely fast
generator
right so what is really changing here
right because people were really really
freaked out about this by the way I got
calls from comp big companies okay a few
big companies where you would hear their
name and you'd be like oh that's that's
money money's not a problem for them and
they said that they have been they've
been witnessing this phenomenon un
unfolding in their engineering Orcs the
pressure towards senior developers and
Senior contributors and and it's tough
to be a junior developer right now
there's a huge wave of tooling coming in
your IDE doesn't even begin to scratch
the surfice of what you can do with Gen
in in code production you'll probably
hear from some of our friends at like
GitHub about this like the idees are
actually somewhat limiting the tools
that are coming are all going to require
llms to process your intellectual
property now I had a wonderful wonderful
slide in here that unfortunately is not
here anymore it was a picture from
Raiders of the last dark the very last
scene where they're pushing the box into
the giant Warehouse of boxes all right
you remember that's your intellectual
property assets I've been talking to
some of you in the audience here and
you're telling me that Discovery is your
hardest problem you got thousands tens
of thousands of repos you got wikis
you've got issues and project trackers
new bank was ingesting what 50 pedabytes
a day all of that data is going to need
to be processed by
llms and almost none of you are ready
for it in fact some of the companies
that are on the floor aren't doing any
geni I'm not going to name and shame you
know who you are okay but there's a
massive as your cable guy all right I
can tell you there is a massive disp ity
between how the companies in this room
and the companies in our industry are
dealing with Gen we've got the entire
Spectrum I've met some companies that
are like science fiction they're out
there they've got massive gen teams
already and they've got they're
executing on five to 10 year plans okay
seriously I mean they got their act
together and then I got other companies
are like yeah we had to push off our gen
evaluation because we out of migration
blah blah blah blah blah right they're
going to die right this is serious
coding is changing out from underneath
this and they're struggling trying to
figure out whether they whether they can
even use it or not yeah so what are you
going to do about it first get your
house in order get your engineers
aligned yeah start using coding
assistance I know a lot of you have
tried them in February all right they
weren't very good back then okay chop
chat oriented programming wasn't
actually practical until chat GPT 4 came
out and then the foundation models after
that 35 Sonet you know Gemini 1.5 now
they're good enough and they're they're
going to be getting better exponentially
over the next two two years right so
we're going to see more and more and
more code get written but I can tell you
chop is a lot easier with a coding
assistant yeah you can do it with just
GPT now a lot of people were like well
that's never going to work for us
because security legal blah blah blah we
don't want our code sent to llms third
parties yeah I guarantee you self-hosted
models are coming it will be accessible
to all of you in a way that makes your
security and legal teams fine with it
okay so you might as well start prepping
for it cuz that Raiders the Lost Art
picture that I didn't get to show you
right you need to start getting ready
for retrieval augmented generation rag
all of you are now rag shops because of
this this is the killer app for geni
right and you these coding assistants
are going to come in and they're going
to start writing all of your code and
they're going to start doing all kinds
of stuff reviews right and auditing and
all that cool stuff right all those you
basically need batch Ai and then you're
you're off the races right get a coding
assistant because it's all about context
slinging all right in the end you have a
bunch of data the llm can only attend a
token window that's yay big I don't care
if it's a million tokens if you're
taking in 50 pedabytes a day it ain't
going to fit in the context window so
you need an intelligent system that can
go in and index produce indexes of all
of your stuff search indexes knowledge
graphs llm semantic indexes all of that
stuff you need it because otherwise your
engineers are going to ask questions and
they're not going to get the answers
that they need because of your
discoverability problem huh so
congratulations you are all rag folks
now by the way which coding assistant I
had not had my Cody hat on today I'm I'm
working on a coding assistant and we
really like it there's a bunch I the Box
the box sizes are meaningless Cody does
have a bigger box but you know it's
meaningless but seriously any one of
these is
good okay they're all they're all good
some of them are very slick and Polished
and they're turny experiences and and
maybe that's what you need if you're the
kind of company that likes to Tinker you
know you like you build your own cicd
you build your own developer
infrastructure you're taking your
developer productivity into your own
hands you're very interested in gen as a
platform then I I would take a look at
Cody because that that's what we're
doing right we're doing platform plays
and cont slinging that's that's been our
Focus not agents agents are coming right
you probably hear about some of them
today and tomorrow but chop chat
oriented programming is what programmers
are going to do before from now until
the agents actually work and actually
Beyond when the agents start working you
need a human being to supervise it to
push it along even with the agents right
to verify it spot check it all that so
Chop's not going to go away not for not
for a good long time so I would
recommend using any of these all right
hey look they they finally got my slid
fixed on the last slide so help I am
looking
for yeah so you need to Pivot stop
thinking about car completion acceptance
rate stop thinking about completions
right that's it really was a
gimmick what you need to do is start
thinking about how you're going to get
because it's a right we're GNA we'll do
this together we're we're when you know
we or whoever whoever you work with when
they index your code it has to be a
joint effort because you all have really
complicated if you hadn't noticed from
the talks yeah so you know call your
cable
guy hey folks it's been a great great uh
time up here I've been really happy to
um chat with you all uh I look forward
to meeting some of you afterwards I hope
that this was somewhat interesting and
entertaining uh feel free to come up and
uh grab me after and uh and uh introduce
yourself yeah thanks all
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