Reposting a question for Ed Zitron, I'll forward responses.

@ludicity Depends. Rarely professionally, but I did most of my hiring for most of my life and I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe during the interviews.

The worst people were exactly like LLM - stupid, loud and unable to admit they are wrong.

@ondrej @ludicity I used to ask a very open-ended interview question that I could keep making harder/more complicated basically forever, just to see if I could get a candidate to say, “I don’t know”. The ones that can’t say that, you don’t want to hire them, I’ve found.

Reposting a question for Ed Zitron, I'll forward responses. He asked on Bluesky and will get sub-Mastodon-tier answers:

"This is a serious question and I would be delighted if I only hear great things but, software engineers: both before and after LLMs, how often in your professional lives have you run into software engineers that seem completely useless or lacking in basic knowledge? I hope the answer is rarely"

Reposting a question for Ed Zitron, I'll forward responses. He asked on Bluesky and will get sub-Mastodon-tier answers:

"This is a serious question and I would be delighted if I only hear great things but, software engineers: both before and after LLMs, how often in your professional lives have you run into software engineers that seem completely useless or lacking in basic knowledge? I hope the answer is rarely"

@ludicity For the record, I work at a software company that employs ~10k developers.

Before LLMs, I'd encounter such engineers a couple of times a month, but I interact with a lot of engineers, specifically the ones that need help or are new at the company or industry at large, so it's a selected sample. Even the most inexperienced ones are willing and able to learn with some guidance.

After LLMs, there's been a significant uptick, and these new ones are grossly incompetent, incurious, impatient, and behave like addicts if their supply of tokens is at all interrupted. If they run out of prompt credits, its an emergency because they claim they can't do any work at all. They can't even explain the architecture of what they are making anymore, and can't even file tickets or send emails without an LLM writing it for them, and they certainly lack in any kind of reading comprehension.

It's bleak and depressing, and makes me want to quit the industry altogether.

@ludicity For the record, I work at a software company that employs ~10k developers.

Before LLMs, I'd encounter such engineers a couple of times a month, but I interact with a lot of engineers, specifically the ones that need help or are new at the company or industry at large, so it's a selected sample. Even the most inexperienced ones are willing and able to learn with some guidance.

After LLMs, there's been a significant uptick, and these new ones are grossly incompetent, incurious, impatient, and behave like addicts if their supply of tokens is at all interrupted. If they run out of prompt credits, its an emergency because they claim they can't do any work at all. They can't even explain the architecture of what they are making anymore, and can't even file tickets or send emails without an LLM writing it for them, and they certainly lack in any kind of reading comprehension.

It's bleak and depressing, and makes me want to quit the industry altogether.

@ludicity Ask me how many times someone other than me has, in my presence, used or mentioned using a debugger (As contrary to inserting a bunch of debug prints in the code).

Zero. It’s zero times.

@ludicity For the record, I work at a software company that employs ~10k developers.

Before LLMs, I'd encounter such engineers a couple of times a month, but I interact with a lot of engineers, specifically the ones that need help or are new at the company or industry at large, so it's a selected sample. Even the most inexperienced ones are willing and able to learn with some guidance.

After LLMs, there's been a significant uptick, and these new ones are grossly incompetent, incurious, impatient, and behave like addicts if their supply of tokens is at all interrupted. If they run out of prompt credits, its an emergency because they claim they can't do any work at all. They can't even explain the architecture of what they are making anymore, and can't even file tickets or send emails without an LLM writing it for them, and they certainly lack in any kind of reading comprehension.

It's bleak and depressing, and makes me want to quit the industry altogether.

@ludicity For the record, I work at a software company that employs ~10k developers.

Before LLMs, I'd encounter such engineers a couple of times a month, but I interact with a lot of engineers, specifically the ones that need help or are new at the company or industry at large, so it's a selected sample. Even the most inexperienced ones are willing and able to learn with some guidance.

After LLMs, there's been a significant uptick, and these new ones are grossly incompetent, incurious, impatient, and behave like addicts if their supply of tokens is at all interrupted. If they run out of prompt credits, its an emergency because they claim they can't do any work at all. They can't even explain the architecture of what they are making anymore, and can't even file tickets or send emails without an LLM writing it for them, and they certainly lack in any kind of reading comprehension.

It's bleak and depressing, and makes me want to quit the industry altogether.

Reposting a question for Ed Zitron, I'll forward responses. He asked on Bluesky and will get sub-Mastodon-tier answers:

"This is a serious question and I would be delighted if I only hear great things but, software engineers: both before and after LLMs, how often in your professional lives have you run into software engineers that seem completely useless or lacking in basic knowledge? I hope the answer is rarely"

@drikanis @ludicity It's notable that, if these useless meat sacks are in the US, someone likely either borrowed $250K or spent their own money for them to cheat their way to a degree using AI. Some days, I'm comforted by the fact that I'm old.

Reposting a question for Ed Zitron, I'll forward responses. He asked on Bluesky and will get sub-Mastodon-tier answers:

"This is a serious question and I would be delighted if I only hear great things but, software engineers: both before and after LLMs, how often in your professional lives have you run into software engineers that seem completely useless or lacking in basic knowledge? I hope the answer is rarely"

@Patrickoldhiker @drikanis @ludicity Amen to that. The fact that I'm so close to retirement is a great source of comfort to me. Yeah, I enjoy my job, and I know I'm good at it. I do not need to use an LLM for anything.

But should I get that dreaded conversation tomorrow and a disappointing redundancy package, it would no longer be a cause for concern.

Reposting a question for Ed Zitron, I'll forward responses. He asked on Bluesky and will get sub-Mastodon-tier answers:

"This is a serious question and I would be delighted if I only hear great things but, software engineers: both before and after LLMs, how often in your professional lives have you run into software engineers that seem completely useless or lacking in basic knowledge? I hope the answer is rarely"

@ludicity I've done technical interviews of 100+ candidates for software engineering roles over the years. Around 90% of them didn't pass muster. And that's after a CV screening by HR (for whatever that's worth) and a preliminary interview with a teamlead.

It is RIDICULOUS how many career programmers are, in fact, not able to program anything in their language of choice. I'm not talking about having to google how to open a socket, but about how to write a god damned loop ... Awful incompetence.

@ludicity For the record, I work at a software company that employs ~10k developers.

Before LLMs, I'd encounter such engineers a couple of times a month, but I interact with a lot of engineers, specifically the ones that need help or are new at the company or industry at large, so it's a selected sample. Even the most inexperienced ones are willing and able to learn with some guidance.

After LLMs, there's been a significant uptick, and these new ones are grossly incompetent, incurious, impatient, and behave like addicts if their supply of tokens is at all interrupted. If they run out of prompt credits, its an emergency because they claim they can't do any work at all. They can't even explain the architecture of what they are making anymore, and can't even file tickets or send emails without an LLM writing it for them, and they certainly lack in any kind of reading comprehension.

It's bleak and depressing, and makes me want to quit the industry altogether.

@drikanis @ludicity

Tangential, I have noticed a trend with customer emails (wide spread, many multiples companies) that makes me believe more people are using LLMs to write reply emails & not reading at all.

there's a 'jje ne sais quoi' to not just them not answering questions but *how* they're not answering questions.

I can't put my finger on it, but it's tripping my spidy-sense / pattern recognition.

Reposting a question for Ed Zitron, I'll forward responses. He asked on Bluesky and will get sub-Mastodon-tier answers:

"This is a serious question and I would be delighted if I only hear great things but, software engineers: both before and after LLMs, how often in your professional lives have you run into software engineers that seem completely useless or lacking in basic knowledge? I hope the answer is rarely"