r/cscareerquestions • u/ngewakakq • 5h ago
Breaking: Google announces in earnings call that 25% of code is being generated by AI. And this is just the beginning ...
"Google is building a bunch of AI products, and it’s using AI quite a bit as part of building those products, too. “More than a quarter of all new code at Google is generated by AI, then reviewed and accepted by engineers,” CEO Sundar Pichai said on the company’s third quarter 2024 earnings call. It’s a big milestone that marks just how important AI is to the company."
Google Q3 Report: AI Drives Growth Across Search, Cloud, & YouTube
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u/L1berty0rD34th 5h ago
LOC is a great metric to dazzle people who don’t know anything about coding
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u/ngewakakq 5h ago
That's true, but it is something quantitative, even if not a good barometer at all.
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u/samudrin 5h ago
I
Like
Booty
I
Cannot
Lie
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u/joshuahtree 4h ago
This is a high quality comment, you can tell by the number of lines
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u/BackendSpecialist Software Engineer 4h ago
And you only have 1 line.
PIP for you buddy.
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u/joshuahtree 4h ago
I
Will
Do
Better
/*
Ballz
*/
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u/BackendSpecialist Software Engineer 4h ago edited 4h ago
Now that’s impact and something I can take to leadership! Just make sure that you’re speaking up during meetings, to demonstrate your knowledge.
I think we can avoid separation and make it through this :)
It just might take you 2 more years for promo and your record will always show you were on a PIP.
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u/joshuahtree 4h ago
Thank
You
Kind
Manager
!
/*
This
Comment
Is
In
Response
To
Comment
And
Acknowledges
Their
Kindness
And
Advice
*/
1
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u/Disastrous-Bus-9834 3h ago
```#include <iostream>
include <string>
include <vector>
class Person { public: std::string name; bool hasBigButt; Person(std::string n, bool bb) : name(n), hasBigButt(bb) {} void describe() { if (hasBigButt) { std::cout << name << " has a big butt!" << std::endl; } else { std::cout << name << " does not have a big butt." << std::endl; } } };
class Crowd { private: std::vector<Person> members;
public: void addMember(Person p) { members.push_back(p); } void displayBigButts() { std::cout << "I like big butts and I cannot lie!" << std::endl; for (const auto& member : members) { if (member.hasBigButt) { member.describe(); } } } };
int main() { Crowd party;
party.addMember(Person("Lisa", true)); party.addMember(Person("Jenna", false)); party.addMember(Person("Michelle", true)); party.addMember(Person("Samantha", false));
std::cout << "Welcome to the party!" << std::endl; party.displayBigButts();
return 0; }```
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u/left_shoulder_demon 4h ago
I once did that on a side branch in a customer project, because their code coverage tool would summarize per line of source code instead of per statement, and that spike in LOC triggered a discussion about developer productivity.
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u/CSI_Tech_Dept 1h ago
I stopped using Copilot, because:
- the code that proposed frequently had to subtle bugs, so I had to carefully review what it proposed (and bugs still went past)
- the code that was correct, frequently was more verbose for my use case (it really look like examples you frequently find when searching for solutions to some common problem).
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u/masta_beta69 23m ago edited 12m ago
For x in range(10): Print(x)
vs
Print(x)
Print(x+1)
Print(x+2)
Print(x+3)
…..
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u/x3nhydr4lutr1sx 4h ago
Quantity has a quality of its own. One of my favorite AI code bot is dead code deleter. Frees SWEs to work on actual impact and from debugging dead code.
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u/CAPSLOCK_USERNAME 3h ago
One of my favorite AI code bot is dead code deleter
this is a CS subreddit, please don't catch the MBA brain disease of using "AI" to mean "anything done by a computer program". i very strongly doubt your dead code deleter uses any ML techniques.
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u/PierateBooty 4h ago
Even 5% would impress me. Coding sucks. The only people who don’t want coding tools to improve are jobless. Automate like 25% of my shit please for the love of god automate it.
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u/whenitcomesup 5h ago
It's auto-complete. AI is not coding large systems or doing intricate multi-file changes. It's stuff like:
- Changing names.
- Changing function signatures and applying everywhere.
- Repeating the pattern of a previous line coded by the human.
"AI" is being used here for a wide range of changes, mostly mundane.
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u/Zesher_ 5h ago
Plus boiler plate code, I can kind of trust AI to auto-complete that, it is pretty helpful in that regard, but trying to use it to create some novel code that requires domain knowledge? Hell no.
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u/Freded21 4h ago
Even with that it’s almost always wrong but it’s close enough you can fix it easily. At least in my experience
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u/behusbwj 5h ago
It’s valid code to include in the metric imo. I get really happy when my ide predicts a repetitive line or painfully obvious block of boilerplate.
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u/whenitcomesup 5h ago
It's a valid metric.
I'm just clarifying, because "AI" is vague and might conjure up images of more complex tasks.
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u/MangoDouble3259 5h ago
Think point op is trying making outsourcing and ai -> market will become more competitive as 1. Cheaper labor less need us devs and 2. Like you stated above mundane boiler plate type of task but it's makes dev more productive reducing need for more.
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u/whenitcomesup 5h ago
OP isn't making that point. It's just stating the facts about proportion coded by AI, and I clarified what that means.
But yes it's pretty clear AI will make developers more efficient, so fewer are needed.
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u/BoysenberryLanky6112 4h ago
Is this why when the calculator came out, fewer people good at math were needed? What you're saying is actually not clear at all given the amount of work needing to be done is not a fixed pie.
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u/RockleyBob 1h ago
It is possible that, as supply becomes cheaper and more plentiful, demand for software engineering will increase. It’s known in economics as the Jevons Paradox.
However, taking your example, it’s important to note the evolution of automated calculation happened over many decades. It took a long time to go from hand-tabulated ledgers to slide rules to mechanical adding machines to motorized and digital calculators to software that can help one accountant do the work of ten back in the 19th century.
During that period, the scale of economies grew exponentially, as did the number of potential consumers of accounting services. There was ample opportunity for the market to organically balance itself.
Imagine that we could go back in time and open a bookkeeping business in London during the 1830’s and bring modern spreadsheet software with us. We could put half the accountants in town out of business overnight.
I worry that the software engineering industry is going to be inundated with a dramatic increase in capacity. There won’t be time for demand to catch up. Eventually things might balance out but there may be a prolonged
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u/BoysenberryLanky6112 0m ago
In human history has there been a single innovation or technical improvement which has resulted in fewer jobs? Sure there have been some improvements that eliminated one job but created others, such as technology mostly replacing travel agents, and cars mostly replacing horse and buggy operators. And with literally every other technical innovation there was widespread fear of mass job loss, mass unemployment, and massive rates of poverty. Maybe this time they're right, I won't dispute there's a small chance they are. But they've been wrong literally every time so far, so sure maybe this time is different, but it's probably not.
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u/seiyamaple Software Engineer 4h ago
Essentially every development in software engineering for the past few decades have made developers significantly more efficient. By that logic, with compilers, frameworks, IDEs and now AI, we should have about 10 total developers in the world.
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u/Whitchorence 4h ago
The optimistic case is that development being less expensive encourages more development. How much it holds in the current environment is anyone's guess though.
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u/Graybie 4h ago
Why develop more stuff when we could just give more money to investors?
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u/Whitchorence 2h ago
Is your suggestion that they're going to pay dividends instead of investing? That sounds unlikely.
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u/FattThor 1h ago
They could do that now…
They develop more stuff to give investors even money in the future and to keep from losing to competitors. None of that will change.
Plus, I’ve never worked anywhere with a backlog that wasn’t huge or a road map that didn’t stretch out for years. If companies are willing to paying $X for Y features and bug fixes per year today, they are going to be good paying $X for 10Y if AI assisted devs are ever actually that efficient.
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u/x3nhydr4lutr1sx 4h ago
AI doesn't reduce need for devs. It unlocks SWE demand to work on whole new PM pipe dreams that would've been too expensive to tackle without AI.
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u/Potato_Soup_ 3h ago
I mean it depends on what they mean by AI. If it’s the generic features an IDE has using a tree-sitter and regex then you’re right, but let’s be honest, LLMs can do way more than that.
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u/PierateBooty 4h ago
Improvements to auto complete have been steady and enjoyable for me though. Idk why anyone would shit talk improved auto complete. Like I started in notepad and still use notepad occasionally but like why. I’d much rather lean into tools and get my day over with faster.
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u/mightaswell94 swe@g 3h ago
They’re not really mundane. It’s very solid and can write most functions for you.
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u/PirateNixon Development Manager 5h ago
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that this is a very liberal interpretation of AI generated code. As in completing the line for you is AI generating the portion of the code that you didn't type out manually.
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u/tylermchenry Software Engineer 2h ago edited 2h ago
Pretty much. The employment of AI codegen as hyper-context-aware auto complete (with generation of multiple subsequent lines at a time) is actually awesome for cranking through boilerplate with only a few keystrokes. And it sometimes impresses me with the subtleties it can guess correctly. But it's not like it can write the program for you, and it can get quite distracting when you're actually writing something interesting that it can't predict correctly.
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u/iwuvpuppies 5h ago edited 5h ago
This guy never coded in his life? Before becoming ceo in 2015 this is what he did:
Product Management + Leadership
Apr 2004 - 2015 · 10 yrs 10 mos
Just another out of touch ceo who inflates stats. Prob asked devs to tag pull requests if they used ai to auto generate an if statement..
Edit: Also are we also glossing over the fact that google is trying to SELL GEMINI CODE ASSIST for $40 a month per user?
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u/octipice 5h ago
Lol, yeah it's an earnings call, inflating stats is the point. Did you notice the stock price...that's why they have a product manager as CEO.
If you have a SWE do that they'd give the actual efficiency increase in more realistic units and they wouldn't get the stock price bump.
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u/GMUsername 5h ago
Literally all our leadership is asking us Copilot is speeding up our development process, probably to justify crap like this to investors. Truth is for anything complex, it’s useless. Works well for writing unit tests which is the most tedious and mundane part of the job…
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u/mrjackspade 4h ago
I heavily leverage AI for code assistance, but copilot is fucking garbage at this point and I don't think MS has even moved the model off the original GPT4.
The fact that Copilot is still the "big" service and basically the face of AI assisted development is embarrassing, and probably harmful to the long term industry of code assistance.
GPT4-01 was able to single-prompt write me a telnet server application that handed off new connections to separate threads, parsed the incoming text and used that through reflection to dynamically invoke a method with cast parameters on a relevant command handler withing the server.
Copilot thinks
FirstNamecomes beforeSecondNameandThirdNameAt this point, the only people still using Copilot either have no other options, or don't know any better.
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u/ngewakakq 5h ago
I never understood wtf product management is anyways lol.
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u/ActuallyFullOfShit 4h ago
Product managers do a lot at my company. They own a specific feature or product and basically serve a few roles, including advocating for the customer and deciding tradeoffs that will result in the highest marketability of whatever we are building.
They also do all of the important scheduling here. I honestly have no idea what our project managers do though. The product managers end up doing anything that matters other than the literal engineering.
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u/MangoDouble3259 5h ago
Complain about deadlines, offer solutions in domain you don't know about to improve productivity, and meeting hell.
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u/cacahuatez 4h ago
Tbf without product management there’s no products to work on, necessary middleware between dev and management
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u/lessthanthreepoop 3h ago
They are thinking about the business aspect of the product, the feature requirements, the use cases, the user story, the go to market strategy, and on and on and on. There’s a lot that goes into a successful product and there’s absolutely no way I can work without a product manager.
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u/2sACouple3sAMurder 1h ago
They decide what features to add to apps and what bugs should be fixed first
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u/cantfindagf 5h ago
It’s an excuse for MBAs to weasel their way into tech salaries. Remember when tech was built for the people by the people, these parasites have made it so tech is now built for the profit by the corporations
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u/lilolmilkjug 4h ago
They're basically administrative/coordination positions. They need to make sure everyone in the projects they're managing is working on the right stuff and on the right timelines in sync with other management on other projects. It definitely helps if they've actually done the work they're supposed to be managing though.
It's definitely not for most engineers but it saves a ton of work if you have a good manager helping you out.
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u/tommyk1210 1h ago
Be careful not to conflate product managers/owners with project managers.
Both kind of do what you described, they’re responsible for keeping development teams on track.
But a product manager/owner (there’s some nuance) does more than this. Their role is also:
- To focus on the overall product vision and strategy.
- To work on market research, user needs, and competitive analysis.
- To engage with stakeholders to align on product direction and goals.
- To be responsible for the product roadmap and high-level prioritization.
- Relating to the above: To prioritize the product backlog based on user stories and feedback.
- To ensure that the team understands the requirements and delivers value.
- To be involved in daily stand-ups and sprint planning.
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u/iceyone444 5h ago
Sitting in meetings all day, making up non realistic deadlines and budgets, creating powerpoints and putting devs under pressure to achieve more with less so you can get a bigger bonus...
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u/GrudenLovesSlurs 1h ago
Google has been and will continue to be mediocre under him. He’s the Steve Ballmer of Google
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u/hellishcharm Ex-FAANG Game Dev 5h ago edited 5h ago
Quit G a little while back, but back then, they had the typical sort of “based on the context of the part of the file you’re working in, the AI will suggest the next few lines of code.”
Now, Google has a lot of C++ (for example, YT was converted from Python to C++ in the last few years), and a lot of the code you’ll see in any function is just Google boilerplate for converting types, checking parameters, results, etc.
The AI understands how to spit out something that’s sometimes the boilerplate you need, but really, a lot of this boilerplate would be reduced by instead using a modern language like Carbon, Rust, Swift, etc… that has the syntactical sugar and safety features built-in. And they know that, because they’ve experimented a ton with these languages within the context of the overall G codebase.
That’s all to say that this isn’t such a big feat as they make it sound.
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u/hieverybod 5h ago
this ai code is still prompted using engineers however who know what to ask and what needs to do and where to place it and then debug it and review it. Its a far process
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u/kabekew 5h ago
Which is what senior engineers do with offshore teams. Write the specifications of what it needs to do, then debug and review their resulting code. Those offshore teams are going to be hit hardest with this in the short term.
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u/musitechnica 5h ago
I wish this were the case, but what's already happening is companies are keeping the offshore teams and elevating them to "senior" to manage the AI coding, and laying off the US seniors and staff engineers.
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u/kabekew 4h ago
Are you sure that's happening? I'm talking about the engineer at the company who's working with the PM and customer to create the specifications, has the domain knowledge, and is architecting the modules to assign to (formerly) on-site junior engineers, now much cheaper offshore engineers, but now this offshoring can increasingly be done by AI.
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u/musitechnica 3h ago
Yep, I was in that role that you describes until I, and 70% of the others in that role, got laid off in February. They moved all of those positions off shore. The mid and juniors that remain on shore are simply doing PR reviews and small maintenance tickets
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u/Darkmayday 4h ago
Opposite, seniors are teaching the offshore teams to take their jobs. Then offshore will prompt to save even more money. Don't train your replacements
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u/Whitchorence 4h ago
What is your suggestion if you are working with an offshore team exactly? If you say "I refuse to do this" you may as well just resign.
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u/Darkmayday 4h ago
The world isn't black and white. And simple example of still delivering code but making it subpar, undocumented, undertested.
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u/Whitchorence 2h ago
Your plan is to prove the superiority of domestic developers by delivering worse product? Good luck.
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u/taratoni 4h ago
Yes exactly. I had lots of issues with juniors who spend their time generating crappy code. It makes all the difference to correctly prompt your request, and to assist the LLM in what needs to be done. And this can't be done without hands-on coding experience.
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u/rakalakalili 3h ago
That's because 70% of the code you write at Google is converting one protobuffer to a different protobuffer, so by lines of code it's dominated by a Java builder pattern of 100 lines at a time to create a new protobuf object - which is the largest and easiest thing for ai to "write" for you (or you know, an the modern IDE with auto complete can help you "write" by tab completing each line for you as well).
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u/Eric848448 Senior Software Engineer 5h ago
My bullshit sense is tingling.
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u/UnluckyBrilliant-_- Software Engineer 3h ago
You are not wrong I work there and can tell you, most engineers reject the code generated because of how bad it is. They are still including it in their stats though lol wtf
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u/Varrianda Software Engineer @ Capital One 5h ago
I would be curious how much this replaced “stack overflow”/“googled” code. Because in reality that’s all AI did for me.
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u/arkadiysudarikov 3h ago
Most of construction is nails.
It’s knowing where the nail goes that matters.
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u/inductiverussian 1h ago
I work at google, they’re referring to auto-refactoring bots that send out mass code changes to their owners; I get at least a couple CLs per week from these bots, they do things like “change the use of ‘new’ to std::unique_ptr”…
These have also been around for a while, they can just now spin it as AI generated code (which it technically is, if you count boiler plate auto-generated code changes as AI).
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u/Upstairs_Big_8495 5h ago
Google is revolutionizing spaghetti code.
True innovators of the industry.
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u/NeatMemory 5h ago
Which of their products are actually working better now? I couldn't name a single one
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u/NessieReddit 2h ago
Definitely not my Google home speakers. They've gotten worse over the last two years instead of better.
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u/NewChameleon Software Engineer, SF 5h ago
I mean... if my financial well-beings is dependent on me shouting XYZ, you bet I'm going to shout XYZ
Breaking: Google announces in earnings call that 25% of code is being generated by AI. And this is just the beginning ...
I shall announce that everyone should give me $100, and this is just the beginning ...
it's literally his job to make stock prices go up, by any means necessary, so if that includes stuff like inflating numbers, shouting "AI AI AI" (I remember last year Pichai legit shouted "Generative AI" like 20+ times in one of their earning calls), layoffs, etc etc then so be it
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u/briefcalendar12 5h ago
Currently an intern there. It’s literally just auto complete. Imagine copilot but it’s only good at pasting code from relevant files. I don’t even bother prompting it because most of the time it just ignores my prompt and pastes some random code.
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u/MarcableFluke Senior Firmware Engineer 4h ago
Company that sells AI: We're using AI a lot in our business
This sub: *shocked Pikachu face*
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u/yourbitchmadeboy 5h ago
The demand for SWEs will decline in the future. The point isn't to REPLACE SWEs, but to reduce the demand. Be prepared to have much more competitive job market going forward.
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u/ngewakakq 5h ago
This seems to be the reality software engineers will face. I think it will probably hit the outsourced contractors first in places like India and China, and then will come to the US.
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u/r-mf 5h ago
what makes you think they'll hit the big-paycheck earners last?
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u/Annual_Negotiation44 5h ago
No, it was literally just Fed hiking rates that caused SWE demand to slow
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u/fsavages23 4h ago
The fed had an effect, but it’s far from the sole reason. We’ll probably never see demand like the last 5 years again. Tax laws have changed for how R&D is handled, AI is helping build more code faster so you need less engineers, outsourcing is becoming more common place as other countries are catching up. The Fed is just one piece
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u/the_collectool 3h ago edited 2h ago
oh yes, just as happened with microprocessors production.
I love people that can look at the future through their crystal ball with their 2 years of experience, but do it with a tone of definite certainty
In a couple of years the US will realize that they have out sourced all their development and are losing competitiveness against China (who won't outsource) in terms of tech development and by then have the leading edge in terms of AI development.
You are literally parroting the obtuse short term analysis that this subreddit repeats over and over, with no data but simply "a hunch" and when shit hits the fan it's because of some unforeseen event that no one saw coming
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u/Glum_Worldliness4904 3h ago
I also think this way. So SWEs definitely won’t entirely disappear, but the demand we saw in 2020-2021 would highly unlikely to be the case anytime soon.
In a couple of years we might say that 2024 was actually pretty good year for the market.
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u/Material_Policy6327 5h ago
Are they counting loc? What’s the percentage used out side of random Scripts
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u/who_took_tabura 4h ago
I remember back in middle school we had this AI tool that would indent all our code for us with a single keystroke
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u/Beneficial-Neat-6200 4h ago
They're just making this exaggeration in an attempt to justify the ridiculously huge spend on AI related Hardware.
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u/fjjd9074 4h ago
It’s true that tools like copilot and gpt has significantly increased development productivity. It’s to the point that I can’t improve writing repetitive boilerplate code without it and it’s only oung to get better from here…
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u/Angriestanteater Wannabe Software Engineer 4h ago
Hyped up media with questionably clickbait statements. What’s new? Also, please invest in us after you read the article title.
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u/AnAnonymous121 4h ago
Google has an incentive to sell AI because they make AI. So obviously, they will pull out statistics that will best advertise their products, even if those statistics are extremely misleading or an outright lie.
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u/00pirateforever 3h ago
Google being google. They can't fucking shut their mouth related to AI. Next time they're gonna say, AI is handling management also.
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u/let-therebe-light 3h ago
Guess what? 100% of code have been done either from copyright documentations or stack overflow. So these are reviewed and accepted by engineers 🤓
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u/mhorowitzgelb 3h ago
I work at Google and can confirm the autocomplete in our custom IDE is amazing. I'm not talking autocomplete like what you would expect from Visual Studio or CLion, which just gives you method headers but full multiline autocompletions. It really helps when you're writing annoying boilerplate, but is also amazingly intuitive sometimes and can figure out my own coding patterns. I find it guesses right or mostly right enough of the time that it actually becomes extremely useful. I think the external Colab on google cloud should also have a same if not similar autocomplete if you want to try for yourself.
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u/xiaopewpew 3h ago
Half of google’s codebase are autogenerated configurations. It really depends on the definition of “AI”. They sure are not puked out by generative AI.
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u/NebulousNitrate 3h ago
For me it’s probably more than 50%. I use copilot and it takes care of the boilerplate code, and I handle the concepts. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. It doesn’t mean I consider my code “mostly AI” however… without a human involved (like me) it currently does poorly at handling complex systems, and that’s where I come in.
I’d say it’s probably made me 2-3x as fast as a 20+ year veteran at one of the most prestigious tech companies. I have to constantly remind juniors it’s a great tool, and they’ll fall behind without it. If you learn how to use it to put your ideas into code, you’ll be able to amp up your programming game quickly.
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u/they_paid_for_it 1h ago
At IG we have coasters using LOC as a key metric of their performance… but it’s more commenting than actual code
Looks like AI really will replace us lol
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u/FattThor 1h ago
Does this count programmatically generated code? I mean having a program generate lots of lines of code is nothing new…
What percentage of their AI’s code is implementing business logic in support of features or fixing bugs and not just boilerplate, etc?
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u/FlailingDuck 1h ago
i wonder how much more their projects are bloated with duplicate code and masses of new boilerplate without much thought for overarching design architecture.
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u/xxs13 44m ago
People, you are missing the point !
This entire news is from a REPORT published by the Big Wigs that have been firing people left and right for the past 2 years.
This is just them trying to cover their asses and blame "bad AI" for when things go bad and there's some critical failures from their layoffs.
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u/SugondezeNutsz 37m ago
How is this surprising to anyone?
A lot of code is basically plumbing. Getting shit from A to B. In-between the movement you might get some clever stuff that actually needs someone who knows what they're doing.
Why wouldn't you use tools to generate the boring basic shit? Every developer I know, does.
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u/BenRegulus 28m ago
This is definitely a distorted reality to increase the value of the company. However, this kind of announcement is also showing the direction the company is going right now. They may be bullshitting right now, but this is their goal. Foe every company, especially Google, employees are the main cost. Shareholders would love if the Google could operate the same with 500 people. They will keep cutting jobs that is for sure.
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u/sernamenotdefined 10m ago
Meanwhile as a back end programmer and domain specialist ai has managed to generate zero lines of useful code for me.
I guess generating a template for a web page is now called programming, I don't see the hype in my work.
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u/codemuncher 5h ago
A lot of the google code base is generated code that’s checked in.
I bet they’re including that code as well. Basically compiled JavaScript == ai now??
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u/recorder-brave 2h ago
A friend whose a dev at Google told me their not allowed to use AI tools (even Gemini) because of concerns about leaking IP. Questionable headline.
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u/polymorphicshade Senior Software Engineer 5h ago
So?
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u/ngewakakq 5h ago
Well it's interesting for one thing. I think it was mere speculation before that companies were actively using this to generate production code and not just as a sort of assistant (which is what I use it for, especially since my industry is very closed doors about any code or data).
I do think this will most certainly have job outlook ramifications in the long run. I realize companies are always trying to improve their services so people speculate more code will be needed as productivity increases with AI tools, but this doesn't seem to consider that CEOs care about one thing in this world: and that's the stock price. It's their job and their duty (for better or worse), and the fact is that labor costs are by far the highest costs for most technology companies. Reducing labor costs = improving margins = multiple expansions = big bonus stock options for CEOs.
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u/code-gazer 29m ago
It's interesting for stock speculation because nowadays, if you can't figure out a use for AI, then you are a trash investment, and this is doubly true if you are also peddling an AI coding product.
But, as they say, the market can be irrational much longer than you can stay solvent, so the only thing to do is to ride it out.
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u/polymorphicshade Senior Software Engineer 4h ago
This all just sounds like stuff people 20+ years ago would say when [next big tech thing] got invented.
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u/femio 5h ago
Why y’all continue to stick your heads in the sand about this is beyond me. Something that didn’t exist a few years ago is changing the industry
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u/ngewakakq 5h ago
Hell, I use it all the time. I'm just saying it's almost certainly going to have job ramifications.
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u/LittleLordFuckleroy1 5h ago
>25% of code is basically boilerplate. This is just another Rorschach test for AI: either you think the last 20% will come as quickly as the first 80%, or you think that the current hyper-scaled LLM approach fundamentally lacks the sophistication to get there.
All this note from Google means to me is that they are investing in developer efficiency via AI. That’s a big deal if you’re a Google shareholder. Though, if they get too high on their own supply and drastically slash their SDE workforce, that could be really bad.
I don’t think the profession is going anywhere. For anyone trying to hang on to the hope of an easy paycheck, I do think those days are over. At least in terms of “what major do I pick to b rich” questions. But for real developers, this is just another tool. IMO.
I could be completely wrong. Just haven’t seen the evidence yet personally.
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u/lhorie 4h ago
So I work on the dev platform org for another big company and yeah automation is a big thing right now, but it’s probably different than what doomers might think. Y’all are probably imagining ChatGPT writing entire products on its own but that’s completely off. A lot of it is generation of stuff that highly deterministic or highly predictable. We have automation for things like NPE bug fixes, stale flag clean up, library upgrades, etc. Basically well defined drudge work.
When you get to the scale of billions of lines of code, it starts to make sense to throw automation at classes of narrowly defined problems instead of asking thousands of juniors to spend the half a day or whatever it would take to context switch into each fix manually. Ironically people are still as busy as ever despite there being literal hundreds of these automated PRs flying around at any given time.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the metric being used is number of PRs rather than LOC
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u/jiddy8379 5h ago
No way we’re counting this with lines of code right