Comment by gf000
19 days ago
A junior dev is (most often) a bright human being, with not much coding experience yet. They can certainly execute instructions and solve novel problems on their own, and they most certainly don't need 100k PRs to pick up new skills.
Equating LLMs to humans is pretty damn.. stupid. It's not even close (otherwise how come all the litany of office jobs that require far less reasoning than software development are not replaced?).
A junior dev may also swap jobs, require vacation days, perks and can't be scaled up at a the click of a button. There are no such issues with an agent. So, if I were a FANG higher-up, I'd invest quite a bit into training LLM-agents who make pesky humans redundant.
Doing so has low risk, the senior devs may perhaps get fed up and quit, and the company might be a laughing stock on public PRs. But the potential value for is huge.
It's probably easier to make the higher up redundant than to actually achieve high speed and predictable outcomes that satisfy real business needs and integrations in a cost effective way.
I mean, a Furby could respond to you all day, each hour, but that doesn't make them any more useful..
Not saying that LLMs are useless, but that's a false equivalency. Sure, my auto complete is also working 0-24, but I would rather visit my actual doctor who is only available in a very limited time frame.