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Comment by ekjhgkejhgk | Hacker News Reader

Software engineers are laborers. If you're a capital owner, a laborer is something that weights down your returns.

It's not rocket science.

Yes this has been the motivation for decades. There has always been a language, methodology, or system being hyped that promised to eliminate the need for trained programmers. Why? Because they are expensive.

Digital computers were cheaper than the legions of human "calculators" that they replaced, but once those savings were realized, the next step was to attack the smaller number but still expensive per head staff of programmers you needed to get the most value out of a computer.

I had the feeling that the promise was higher productivity and better quality. Like, we wanted to implement more and faster. Maybe now we have run out of more and faster things to implement, so the optimization is on the costs?

Why not all of the above? Reducing costs and improving quality.

I agree but I'd also note that a capital owner actually has a couple motivations to get rid of high paid labors.

1) Cost

2) Flexibility. If you can hire random laborers to do most of your tasks, you can quickly scale up whereas if you depend on highly skilled and trained workers, starting a new operation elsewhere is hard. Similar, you can shift activity around, are less impeded by the opinions of workers, etc. Significantly, this may allow you to "franchise" your operations in various ways.

From what I am seeing in the consulting space for enterprisey companies is that there is an extreme push to normalize /standardize all tools/platforms not even talking about AI tools to be able to replace tribal knowledge with cheaper workers. The narrative and in some cases reality of AI is just bringing the badhavior to the forefront

Counterpoint -- capital owners see SWEs as their asset, and owners do not like to see their assets go away (with intellectual property in their heads). So they nurture and give a lot of freedom to their SWEs.

I've seen both ways, and don't share the "capital owners BAD" sentiment. The first thing to join a company is to see whether they assign Eng department to Costs or to Assets mentally.

> Counterpoint -- capital owners see SWEs as their asset, and owners do not like to see their assets go away (with intellectual property in their heads).

The same is true for other knowledge workers, not just programmers. That doesn't mean that if corporate owners and managers had a magic wand that could replicate the worker on demand they wouldn't use it and toss the knowledge worker aside. They would do so happily, especially if it saved them money.

The reason that programmers (few are actually engineers, no reason to bullshit we're among friends and can be honest) have been treated so well is that they were hard to replace. If that barrier gets lifted, or is perceived to have been lifted, they'll get rid of the programmers in a heartbeat.

If the intellectual property can be captured inside an LLM that is cheaper, tireless, compliant, not demanding, does not require HR, and will not jump to a competitor for higher pay, why would capital owners look at SWEs as assets?

You could say LLMs can't "keep intellectual property in their heads", but even today they don't need to. They just need to capture everything in a bunch of artifacts -- code, docs, spreadsheets, etc. -- which is already possible. The same things we do but to a limited extent because we're human. LLMs, being tireless, can do so with much more meticulous detail. Whatever an LLM cannot do can be done by a fraction of the workforce.

Yes, enlightened companies used to value their engineers, but the calculus has shifted. Look around -- layoffs, RTO mandates, AI mandates, offshoring, under-leveling, record levels of burnout -- even before AI has been widely adopted! The tech industry overall is been telling us what their stance is with their actions louder than any amount of perks or "we are all family" ever could.

It's not "because capital owners BAD", it's just "because Capitalism."

Our primary edge at this point is creativity and innovation that creates new intellectual property. I think that will be safe for a while, but that requires a pretty high level of skill and experience, which excludes a majority of the workforce. This is where I suspect a lot of pain will be felt.

> The first thing to join a company is to see whether they assign Eng department to Costs or to Assets mentally.

Workers are costs. Always have been. If you don't own them, they're not assets.

"SWEs are assets" is HR propaganda so you think you're valued.

Hard disagree, I've seen how it can be otherwise. Try looking at smaller companies, they can be much better OR much worse than large companies, more variation.

You can disagree all you want, but it's really a matter of defining basic concepts. If you don't own it it's not an asset. It's not a matter of opinion.

Yup, that's why stock prices increase in value when companies announce massive layoffs because they know their operating costs got much lower.

And software engineers and IT staff are notoriously expensive, so hearing about a way to get rid of them would excite any investor.

> Software engineers are laborers. If you're a capital owner, a laborer is something that weights down your returns.

> It's not rocket science.

It's far above the heads of many supposedly "smart" software engineers, who looked at their high salaries and 401ks, forgot they were disposable laborers, and confused themselves for capitalist tycoons.

Drop the libertarianism and form a labor union before it's too late. You're not smart if you're parroting your boss's talking points like an idiot.

> forgot they were disposable laborers, and confused themselves for capitalists.

I agree with this, but it isn't just limited to software engineers. Most of the supposed "middle class" in the US fits this description.

We currently have the highest level of wealth inequality in history which is still growing at runaway rates and plenty of laborers who view themselves as "temporarily embarrassed billionaires" willing to prop up the system, seemingly unaware that those at the top will gladly wipe them off their boot when given the chance.

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