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Title: Is AI Turning Coders Into Bystanders in Their Own Jobs?

Link: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/25/05/2...

AI's downside for software engineers for now seems to be a change in the
quality of their work," reports the New York Times. "Some say it is becoming
more routine, less thoughtful and, crucially, much faster paced... The new
approach to coding at many companies has, in effect, eliminated much of the
time the developer spends reflecting on his or her work." And Amazon CEO Andy
Jassy even recently told shareholders Amazon would "change the norms" for
programming by how they used AI. Those changing norms have not always been
eagerly embraced. Three Amazon engineers said managers had increasingly
pushed them to use AI in their work over the past year. The engineers said
the company had raised output goals [which affect performance reviews] and
had become less forgiving about deadlines. It has even encouraged coders to
gin up new AI productivity tools at an upcoming hackathon, an internal coding
competition. One Amazon engineer said his team was roughly half the size it
was last year, but it was expected to produce roughly the same amount of code
by using AI. Other tech companies are moving in the same direction. In a memo
to employees in April, the CEO of Shopify, a company that helps entrepreneurs
build and manage e-commerce websites, announced that "AI usage is now a
baseline expectation" and that the company would "add AI usage questions" to
performance reviews. Google recently told employees that it would soon hold a
companywide hackathon in which one category would be creating AI tools that
could "enhance their overall daily productivity," according to an internal
announcement. Winning teams will receive $10,000. The shift has not been all
negative for workers. At Amazon and other companies, managers argue that AI
can relieve employees of tedious tasks and enable them to perform more
interesting work. Jassy wrote last year that the company had saved "the
equivalent of 4,500 developer-years" by using AI to do the thankless work of
upgrading old software... As at Microsoft, many Amazon engineers use an AI
assistant that suggests lines of code. But the company has more recently
rolled out AI tools that can generate large portions of a program on its own.
One engineer called the tools "scarily good." The engineers said that many
colleagues have been reluctant to use these new tools because they require a
lot of double-checking and because the engineers want more control. "It's
more fun to write code than to read code," said Simon Willison, an AI fan who
is a longtime programmer and blogger, channelling the objections of other
programmers. "If you're told you have to do a code review, it's never a fun
part of the job. When you're working with these tools, it's most of the job."
"This shift from writing to reading code can make engineers feel like
bystanders in their own jobs," the article points out (adding "The automation
of coding has special resonance for Amazon engineers, who have watched their
blue-collar counterparts undergo a similar transition..." "While there is no
rush to form a union for coders at Amazon, such a move would not be unheard
of. When General Motors workers went on strike in 1936 to demand recognition
of their union, the United Auto Workers, it was the dreaded speedup that
spurred them on."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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