Comment by bwfan123
3 days ago
Looks like the AWS CEO has changed religion. A year back, he was aboard the ai-train - saying AI will do all coding in 2 years [1]
Finally, the c-suite is getting it.
3 days ago
Looks like the AWS CEO has changed religion. A year back, he was aboard the ai-train - saying AI will do all coding in 2 years [1]
Finally, the c-suite is getting it.
He didn't actually say that. He said it's possible that within 2 years developers won't be writing much code, but he goes on to say:
"It just means that each of us has to get more in tune with what our customers need and what the actual end thing is that we're going to try to go build, because that's going to be more and more of what the work is as opposed to sitting down and actually writing code...."
https://www.businessinsider.com/aws-ceo-developers-stop-codi...
If you read the full remarks they're consistent with what he says here. He says "writing code" may be a skill that's less useful, which is why it's important to hire junior devs and teach them how to learn so they learn the skills that are useful.
He is talking his book. Management thinks it adds value in the non-coding aspects of the product - such as figuring out what customers need etc. I suggest management stays in their lanes, and not make claims on how coding needs to be done, leave that to the craftsmen actually coding.
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Theoretically, a large part of Amazon's worth is the skill of its workforce.
Some subset of the population likes to pretend their workforce is a cost that provides less than zero value or utility, and all the value and utility comes from shareholders.
But if this isn't true, and collective skill is worth value, then saying anyone can have that with AI at least has some headwind on your share price - which is all they care about.
Does that offset a potential tailwind from slightly higher margins?
I don't think any established company should be cheerleading that anyone can easily upset their monopoly with a couple of carefully crafted prompts.
It was always kind of strange to me, and seemed as though they were telling everyone, our moat is gone, and that is good.
If you really believed anyone could do anything with AI, then the risk of PEs collapsing would be high, which would be bad for the capital class. Now you have to correctly guess what's the next best thing constantly to keep your ROI instead of just parking it in save havens - like FAANG.
Amazon doesn't really work this way.
Bedrock/Q is a great example of how Amazon works. If we throw $XXX at the problem and YYY SDEs at the problem we should be able to build Github Copilot, GPT-3, OpenRouter and Cursor ourselves instead of trying to competitively acquire and attract talent. The fact that Codewhisperer, Q and Titan barely get spoken about on HN or Twitter tells you how successful this is.
But if you have that perspective then the equation is simple. If S3 can make 5 XXL features per year with 20 SDEs then if we adopt “Agentic AI” we should be able to build 10 XXL features with 10 SDEs.
Little care is given to organizational knowledge, experience, vision etc. that is the value (in their mind) of leadership not ICs.
What do you mean, “Amazon doesn’t really work that way”?
Parent is talking about how C-Suite doesn’t want to trumpet something that implies their entire corporate structure is extremely disadvantaged vs new entrants and your response is “Amazon wants to build everything themselves”?
Amazon isn’t some behaviorally deterministic entity, and it could (and should?) want to both preserve goodwill and build more internally vs pay multiples to acquire.
I guess it could be that people inside are not people they have to compete with, but it doesn’t seem like that’s what you're saying.
Amazon would probably say its worth is the machinery around workers that allows it to plug in arbitrary numbers of interchangeable people and have them be productive.
It’s a requirement for the C-suite to always be aware of which way the wind is currently blowing.
It’s one thing to be aware of which way the wind is blowing, and quite another to let yourself be blown by the wind.
Not to say that‘s what the AWS CEO is doing—maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, I haven’t checked—I’m just commenting on the general idea.
An LLM would be more efficient at this task, truth be told.
it could be if a new model was released every day where the training set included everything that happened yesterday.
That's not necessarily inconsistent though - if you need people to guide or instruct the autonomy, then you need a pipeline of people including juniors to do that. Big companies worry about the pipeline, small companies can take that subsidy and only hire senior+, no interns, etc., if they want.
There is no pipeline though. The average tenure of a junior developer even at AWS is 3 years. Everyone knows that you make less money getting promoted to an L5 (mid) than getting hired in as one. Salary compression is real. The best play is always to jump ship after 3 years. Even if you like Amazon, “boomeranging” is still the right play.
that's interesting because that's how the consulting world works too. Start at a big firm, work for a few years, then jump to a small firm two levels above where you were. The after two years, come back to the big firm and get hired one level up from where you left. Rinse/repeat. It's the fastest promotion path in consulting.
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But that's fine, that's why I say for big companies - the pipeline is the entire industry, everyone potentially in the job market, not just those currently at AWS. Companies like Amazon have a large enough work force to care that there's people coming up even if they don't work there yet (or never do, but by working elsewhere free someone else to work at AWS).
They have an interest in getting those grads turned into would-be-L5s even if they leave for a different company. If they 'boomerang back' at L7 that's great. They can't if they never got a grad job.
> That's not necessarily inconsistent though
Pasting the quote for reference:
> Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman claims that in 2 years coding by humans won't really be a thing, and it will all be done by networks of AI's who are far smarter, cheaper, and more reliable than human coders.
Unless this guy speaks exclusively in riddles, this seems incredibly inconsistent.
To be fair, the two statements are not inconsistent. He can continue to hire junior devs, but their job might involve much less actual coding.
There's definitely a vibe shift underway. C-Suites are seeing that AI as a drop-in replacement for engineers is a lot farther off than initial hype suggested. They know that they'll need to attract good engineers if they want to stay competitive and that it's probably a bad idea to scare off your staff with saying that they'll be made irrelevant.
I'm not sure those are mutually exclusive? Modern coders don't touch Assembly or deal with memory directly anymore. It's entirely possible that AI leads to a world where typing code by hand is dramatically reduced too (it already has in a few domains and company sizes)
>Finally, the c-suite is getting it.
It can only mean one thing: the music is about to stop.
He was right tho. AI is doing all the coding. That doesn’t mean you fire junior staff. Both can be true at once- you need juniors, and pretty much all code this days is AI-generated.
Man how would we live without these folks and their sensational acumen. Millions well spent!
"Oh, how terrible" - he exclaims while counting dollar bills.
He should face consequences for his cargo-cult thinking in the first place. The C-Suite isn't "getting" anything. They are simply bending like reeds in today's winds.