Comment by sanderjd
6 days ago
How does "person who makes software" imply "managing"?
I understand that "coding" is the fun part for lots of people, especially younger people. This is me as well, so I'm definitely sympathetic to it, and feel quite a bit of sadness about this.
Lots of people also enjoy woodworking and machining by hand, but that's not how most furniture or machines are made.
If I were independently wealthy, I might well spend some of my time making artisan software, but as a professional and entrepreneur, I'm going to try to use efficient tools for the job.
This relates to the analogy that an LLM is like a junior developer that you have to instruct and guide, and whose work you have supervise and review. Working with an LLM is similar to managing people as a tech lead. And once LLM agents get smart enough and reliable enough, the work will be similar to that of a product manager, project leader, CTO, or even CEO.
If you like being an entrepreneur, you’re already different from most professional software developers.
I'm aware of that analogy, and thought that might be what you were alluding to, but I don't think it's a good analogy.
I agree with you that most professional software developers don't like being entrepreneurs, but I think that has more to do with disliking the parts of entrepreneurship that don't fit into "person who makes software", like fundraising and marketing.
But I think many - maybe most, but not all - professional software engineers actually do enjoy "making software", generally, and not just "coding", narrowly.
I agree that they enjoy "making software", but typically not if it involves a lot of instructing LLMs with natural language and reviewing their output. Again, this will become very similar to the job of a project or product manager who doesn't do any coding themselves. Developers tend to not like that kind of role.
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