from Hacker News

Mark Zuckerberg says AI could soon do the work of Meta's midlevel engineers

by cryptoz on 1/13/25, 6:48 PM with 103 comments

• by tombert on 1/13/25, 7:10 PM

  https://archive.is/SHoY9

  Maybe. It's certainly possible that this is the case, but I'm hesitant to believe anything Zuckerberg says during a hype-train, especially when saying that has a non-zero chance of boosting the stock.

  But let's suppose that this is true, I don't think it necessarily implies that fewer engineers are actually hired. It could be that this "AI mid-level" engineer frees up resources for the remaining engineers to work on something more interesting.

• by Kapura on 1/13/25, 7:13 PM

  The point of an engineer isn't just "to write code." You pay engineers to understand the systems they work with. Code is incidental.

• by seatac76 on 1/13/25, 7:10 PM

  I don’t know how they think that’s going to work. The best AI has been able to do for me is smarter Auto Complete, I doubt it can just fit into larger code bases without the searching a human can do.

  I know the job market has been rough which has emboldened these CEO’s but we are starting to see hiring pick up again, and not just Staff+, interns, SDE 1 and 2 as well, which bodes well for 2025.

• by retskrad on 1/13/25, 7:05 PM

  From hunter gatherer society to day, every time a new technology comes along that claims to make life ‘easier,’ it pushes us further into being slave-adjacent. We have phones, ChatGPT, Google, and smartphones—but for what? We end up working more and more. The greater the technological progress, the more our lives are exploited to generate profits for our corporate overlords.

  ChatGPT will save you time but your boss will now demand you to greatly up your productivity to match this fabulous new technology. Now you’re working even more for the same or less pay!

  AGI, in its final form, will turn us into slaves in its final form, and yet we’re cheering it on. This is madness.

• by flareback on 1/13/25, 7:04 PM

  One day they're going to want only senior engineers, but with AI taking all the mid-level jobs there won't be any seniors.

• by bsaul on 1/13/25, 7:22 PM

  i'm quite surprised by the level of skepticism in this thread. I've been developping my website + webservice + db only using cursor "composer" mode, not typing a single line of code, and i'm already with something fully functional. I am voluntarely refraining from fixing the bugs myself by digging into the code, just to see how far someone with 0 coding skill can go. And this answer is : as far as a junior / midlevel software developer can.

  Obviously, not on its own. I still needed to give it guidelines and feedback on what to do next. But i could improve my site while watching TV. This was science-fiction just 2 years ago.

• by throwaway48476 on 1/13/25, 7:00 PM

  The future for programmers is not bright. Consequently the future for bug hunters and security professionals is very bright.

• by myth_drannon on 1/13/25, 7:05 PM

  That is the same person who renamed his company to Meta and went all in into the metaverse and how we all be working in the metaverse. The guy got lucky once, that's all, he is not the modern Oracle.

• by akmarinov on 1/13/25, 9:04 PM

  He’s missing the bigger story here.

  B2B SaaS platforms like Salesforce/CRMs, etc are dead.

  Let’s say you’re a big company able to afford quite a bit of mid level AI engineers - why bother paying millions to Salesforce, when you can direct your 24/7 mid engineers to just replicate the Salesforce offering?

  Code quality doesn’t matter, it can be copy paste after copy paste, as long as the AI devs manage it.

  The death of these types of companies are going to erase billions in the stock market.

• by clvx on 1/13/25, 7:06 PM

  There's going to be a whole new industry on reliability if this becomes reality. I wonder how "you build it you run it" would evolve. Would we end up with ops figuring out how to remediate the code?. Would the remediation be done by whoever opened the ticket? Would the person who accepted the PR/MR be held accountable for this?.

• by nyrikki on 1/13/25, 7:58 PM

  How to tell everyone that you don't know what SWEs do...

  They aren't slinging pig iron into train cars.

  If you are in the C* suite and believe this you need to find someone to feed context up to you stat.

  Probably why lean, Toyota, agile failed too...

  History will be far more likely to remember you as a tulip salesman than an innovator.

  Hint, the code isn't your problem.

• by resource_waste on 1/13/25, 7:06 PM

  Great, more midlevel engineers for me.

  I genuinely cannot see how AI is going to be bad for programmers. It doesnt do the entire job. It does snippits and you must integrate everything. (And if it does the entire job, amazing! Maybe we can spend extra time on a good UI or extra unit tests)

  AI could reduce our staff by half, but that isnt what happens. Instead we just get more work done. The productivity increase seems to warrent spending more money on programmers. If we made our company 500k/yr profit before, AI makes us 1M/yr profit now. What if we bring on 2x as many programmers, do we make 2M/yr profit?

  I understand not all jobs scale like this, but at least my industry has demand go up since we are more efficient.

• by a-arbabian on 1/13/25, 7:16 PM

  This whole "AI replacing engineers" statement would bear a lot more weight if it came from a company that doesn't have in-house model development teams like Shopify and Meta.

• by perrygeo on 1/14/25, 2:51 PM

  I think we're headed for an industry where "everybody is above average". What we think of today as work for junior/mid level engineers will be completely done by AI agents (multiple), all under the direction of a few experienced engineers.

  How do we train up the next generation of software engineers if nobody is hiring newbies? This is going to be the fundamental question for the industry over the next decade. The answer, I'm afraid, is going to look something like Musk's Twitter - 80% drop in head count, only the highly motivated remain.

• by davesque on 1/13/25, 7:39 PM

  The whole debate about whether or not he can realistically do this based on the state of the technology seems like a side issue to me. What really stands out is that he and CEOs like him would imply that a large, critical segment of their work force is not especially valuable to them, and also that they don't really see them as people. Rather, they are things that can be set aside as soon as they aren't needed.

  These business owners aren't going to see us as people until we force them to. Unionize and strike.

• by trnambn on 1/13/25, 7:21 PM

  This appears to be the next hype train after the Metaverse, of which we hear very little these days.

  The logical AI consequence for Facebook is not that they'll be able to save on salaries, it is that people will (and already are) getting tired of the Internet and will visit Facebook less.

  But it fits with the coordinated effort between Starmer's AI hype and the new fake MAGA team of Musk, Sacks, etc.

  I'm sure that replacing workers is exactly what Trump voters hoped for! Let us see how the Bannon/Musk row plays out.

• by mrkramer on 1/13/25, 7:23 PM

  So lowlevel engineers are already replaced by AI? Lowlevel meaning low tier no low level/hardware software engineers?

• by PittleyDunkin on 1/13/25, 7:11 PM

  Sure, for some meaning of "work" we've been there already for decades. I don't think anyone is doubting that AI can increase productivity (and in this sense, displace midlevel engineers) but I don't see any reason to suspect that AI can replace a given engineer.

• by anonzzzies on 1/13/25, 7:27 PM

  My company makes a boatload of money fixing urgent stuff companies cannot fix fast enough while losing money because it is broken. Without AI this type of thing is on the quick rise since we started end of the 90s and there is so much work we can just keep upping the hourlies and only pick the stuff we like. The last year or so, we have been finding naively generated AI code as a kind of incident multiplier. I think we will need to find more people as this is going to make us a lot more $.

  Even if this is all bullshit and just hyping, it will cause more naive / lazy AI code to flood the market, that's for sure.

• by quantified on 1/13/25, 8:18 PM

  In the Metaverse, no doubt.

• by latchkey on 1/13/25, 7:15 PM

  Does this mean it has already replaced their bottom level engineers?

• by pdelboca on 1/13/25, 7:27 PM

  So the plan would be to have your most brilliant engineers reviewing code that was generated by AI? Next step will be having AI writing LGTM! and automatically merging PRs.

• by asdefghyk on 1/13/25, 7:16 PM

  RE Zuckerberg - How about AI to replace his own role?

• by rad_gruchalski on 1/13/25, 7:15 PM

  There’s so much mumbo jumbo on that platform that it might as well be the case?

  Would be great to know what’s the day of a mid-level engineer at meta like.

• by zer0night on 1/14/25, 9:01 AM

  I don't think there is enough energy and compute resources to replace all mid level engineers.

• by freehorse on 1/13/25, 7:28 PM

  Maybe this is good, less engineers in meta may mean more engineers solving actual world's problems.

• by mike_d on 1/13/25, 7:36 PM

  Can we have a Meta where AI replaces Zuckerberg and makes better decisions?

• by pupppet on 1/13/25, 9:06 PM

  Sounds like he doesn't have a high opinion of his midlevel engineers.

• by warmcat on 1/13/25, 7:50 PM

  I just have one question.........Are they replacing Junior Engineers yet?

• by henning on 1/13/25, 7:03 PM

  This says as much about the kind of tasks these people are being given and the whole organization of the company as it does AI's capabilities. This does not make rat penis implant recipient Mark Zuckerberg look as good as he probably thinks it does.

• by jasdi on 1/13/25, 7:23 PM

  Forget about Midlevel engineers.

  Social Media itself can be replaced if ChatGPT or what ever just takes everyone's chat history and connects us directly to people who care about similar interests.

  I don't give a shit about getting the worlds Attention if only 6 people in the world actually care about the things I care about. Social Media's current architecture is pure shit.

• by rvz on 1/13/25, 7:25 PM

  It has been admitted and not even Zuckerberg is hiding it.

  First it was 'juniors', then 'mid-level' and it WILL especially be seniors next (as they are already expensive). There is a high certainty that there will be a significant job displacement with the introduction of these "AI Agents".

  Once again as predicted in other threads before [0] with increased proposals to run to the AGI scam it is after complete job displacement with no alternative for those lost jobs.

  2030 is their deadline. I'm giving you 5 years early to prepare as I already am doing this year. [1]

  [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42651672

  [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42563239

• by HellDunkel on 1/13/25, 7:47 PM

  direct translation: „we at meta are a super innovation company and among the leaders in AI. our valuation will go through the roof this year.“ (buy stocks now i need to catch up with my billionaire „friends“.

• by alex1138 on 1/19/25, 11:03 PM

  Is this not exactly what one would expect from "If you need info on anyone at Harvard just ask, they 'trust me', dumb fucks"

• by paxys on 1/13/25, 7:17 PM

  I'll believe it when I see it. As it stands Zuck and Meta directly benefit from hyping up AI to the moon.

• by GiorgioG on 1/13/25, 7:03 PM

  If you believe that I've got a bridge to sell you.

• by gunian on 1/13/25, 7:18 PM

  lol zuck couldn't even match tiktok tech talking about AI smh