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Senior Engineers Are the Next DRAM Shortage (blog.herlein.com)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by to c/experienced_devs@programming.dev
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ETA: summary…

Author describes how agentic coding tools have disincentivized the developer training and mentorship pipeline that the software industry has implicitly relied on to produce seasoned developers, predicting that once the shortage is fully realized it could take years to reverse.

The solution proposed is for managers and senior developers to get ahead of this shortage by foregoing the immediate yet shortlived productivity maximization offered by the agent-multiplied-senior structure in favor of longterm sustainability by deliberately facilitating experience fan-out to juniors.

The methodology proposed is based on a successful nuclear engineering apprenticeship program carried out on active service naval submarines.

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[–] 24 points 1 week ago (5 children)

40 + year greybeard here. I never touch AI. When I am told I must use it, I say No. When I am told my use will be measured and part of my yearly review,, I say 'record 0 usage now'

I am the only senior left with 20 snot nosed kids using AI to code, create IaaS scripts.

I can say No to AI because the company cannot have me quit...

Staying in tech today is soil crushing. Me and my fellow techs would get excited about trying stuff, experimenting with new software, ooohing and aaahing because someone got a fancy keyboard.....

Now everything sucks.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    Can you sabotage the access to their tools, like with an DNS block or whatever would be feasible. And then suddenly have a very serious groundshaking issue come up that needs immediate attention. Something along this line. Just to see what's going to happen. Not to give you bad ideas, just being a little creative.

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  • [–] 8 points 6 days ago (1 child)

    They have called me while on vacation for really stupid stuff. Sometimes they called and I didn't answer,planning to say I was snorkeling all day..... The. The calls started coming from other peoples phones to see if I would answer.

    Stupud games.

    Can't wait until I can retire from this shit and disconnect to a log cabin or something

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  • [–] 7 points 6 days ago

    I had a kind of friend, late friend, he was a senior. Very old school. Whenever there was a difficult issue to solve he would sink into this kind of meditative state of mind, where he would just stare for a long time ruminating. You couldn't speak to him really. I mean he would still hear you, but not react or answer. Eventually he snapped out after a good while and reliably always came up with a hilariously good solution. And then afterwards answer whatever else you said while he was "off". Miss him sometimes, great to work with. Incomparable to LLMs. I can see the hype calming down in a few years though, being a little optimistic.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    Maybe your juniors just don't give the same amount of fucks about working for some big faceless corp who doesn't give a shit about them (20 juniors eh? Sounds pretty big), and no promise of a better future.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 days ago

    It big enough. I don't know how they feel about the corp, but if I was bright eyed at one point, I'm now a cynical old bastard who will tell you to stop talking because I can't listen to stupid shit.

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