Zuckerberg's AI Developer Fear Factory: Following Up On Comments

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what is up it's Thursday night heading over from the office we got to talk about the last video or one of the last videos I made on the The Mark Zuckerberg AI stuff because I think uh lot of comments rolled in from that so really awesome to read through all that thanks if uh if you watched that um and had some thoughts uh thanks for thanks for your perspective I think it's pretty cool that we can chat through that um I think most of the comments I were I was reading through were so far uh pretty much on the same page uh so if the and and someone corrected me thank you I had acknowledged I hadn't actually watch the uh Mark Zuckerberg Joe Rogan podcast where he talked about this um and so I I had made the claim or said that it was

within 5 years that Zuckerberg says uh mid software Engineers will be replaced um but it's this year in 2025 or that we won't need to hire them or whatever I still don't know exactly what it is but someone had corrected me uh thank you very much uh I had a super busy day so I've only kind of scanned through some comments uh and I still have not gone back and watched the video but I wanted to talk about this because I think it is a really important topic I think it's worth kind of reiterating some things maybe diving into a few different elements um so we're going to do that on the drive home today uh if you're new to this Channel and you're like this guy Rambles too much it's literally a vlog Channel if you don't like it that's totally cool don't watch

it you can check out my other channel which is called Dev leader and uh on that channel I have edited YouTube videos so I talk about similar topics in terms of software engineering uh programming tutorials and things like that they're way more succinct they're like I said they're edited they even got thumbnails this one this channel doesn't um so if you want your questions and stuff answered on this channel let me know in the comments or send a message to Dev leer on social media happy to go through that and um you can also check out the live stream that I have on that main channel it's Mondays at 700 p.m. Pacific so check that out similar stuff that we talk about here except there's chat uh so if you want to uh go back and forth in the chat and we can talk about

things I can answer questions before you happen to do that so um the background that I'll give you before I dive into some of this discussion on the Zuckerberg stuff and Ai and software Engineers is that uh I am a principal software engineering manager at Microsoft I've been managing engineering teams for uh just over 12 years now and used to work at a startup before Microsoft but I've been a Microsoft for about 5 years now uh so that's some of my history I still write code every single day outside of work so I still am a developer um at heart so it's not like it's kind of funny when I read through comments ments and stuff or when people respond to me it's like uh I don't know what impression they get of me which is kind of interesting like is this guy a programmer

is this guy a manager is this guy just some random dude on the internet I'm all the above which is great um so so when I talk about my experiences or my perspective uh I'm trying to share it from multiple angles and uh of course when I share my perspective not trying to tell you that my way is the right way or that it's the only way I'm just trying to share with you my perspective um if that didn't sound wory enough or rambly enough then um buckle up because the rest of the video is going to be kind of like that uh we got on the highway they can't drive properly so you'll hear more about that here we go we got to get out of the the crappy driver Zone um I can't stand that people try to merge on the highways and

uh aren't yet at the speed limit doesn't work too well and then you're stuck behind them okay now that we're at steady state on the highway um I think one of my big takeaways from Reading comments and stuff on that last video is that it's good to see that there are people acknowledging that like a lot of what's being put out is I don't know if it's necessarily like fear mongering on purpose but like it's at least like the side effect there is a ton of fear right and I think people are acknowledging that a lot of it is perpetuated by Media or it's perpetuated by companies um you know like I I I think we're kind of joking like in the video I made on the on the Mark Zuckerberg comments before and in the comments it's like like I don't hate Mark Zuckerberg

it's kind of like an irrational thing for me to claim I just don't agree uh with with a statement that says like we will replace all software Engineers um mid-level or senior whatever it is um with AI this year and I don't even think within the next five years and then I'm going to come back to that in just a second and like I was making a joke uh that I was going to ask acally say Elon and like I also don't like necessarily hate Elon I think Elon says and does some stuff that I think is pretty stupid come on buddy come on get in here thank you okay um but like so like some things that he does I'm like hey it's like it's really impressive it's cool it's but other things I'm like I don't like agree with that at all but

that's not the point I just thought that I was going to confuse the names and then embarrass myself uh tremendous amount which wasn't so bad but uh okay let me get over one more Lane excellent okay um I wanted to go back to the point around AI replacing engineers and um like I said I have not watched it still and someone added into the comments on the other video saying I don't think that he's necessarily suggesting we will literally replace the engineers with AI but that AI will be able to do the work of those Engineers as in if you wanted to continue to build out a team you could start introducing AI to in like to basically add capacity to a team uh or that if you look at your overall effectiveness of a team it would be like having uh more engineers at

that level and I think like that's actually a statement that I think is a lot more interesting and a lot more plausible and a lot less fearmongering is right um I still don't believe it like this year um and the reason is that like at least not uh it's like a I I couldn't say that with a high degree of confidence in many in many companies and that's because someone else said it pretty well in a comment like I think people uh underestimate like a lot of the complexity that exists in actual software engineering uh and I added yeah compared to just like write a program that does some task um that's not like that's not software engineering like that's a a small part of what happens in software engineering so I think that we're a long way off from that still like a very

far off from that and uh I'm not like I'm not opposed or like afraid of AI getting to that point like I'm I think it's cool I think it's exciting uh so I as all this stuff is coming out and they're talking about AI advancements personally I'm not sitting here like oh my God my job is in Jeopardy like I'm an engineering manager what happens when all of the engineers are replaced by AI like what do I do right like I'm not I'm not worried about that at all and one of the things I was trying to get across in the other video was like even if that does happened someone else said it really well in the comments I'm just trying to like you know uh iterate on some of the comments that came up but let's assume that happens okay let's assume that

in 202 companies are stopping hiring Engineers of certain levels or under certain levels whatever it happens to be it doesn't mean that those Engineers are no longer valid or valuable right there's always going to be software that needs to be built always so someone had said like what's to stop those Engineers the software developers right from being like I want to build soft I'm going to go build software I'm going to go I'm going to start there's going to be more people starting companies because they're more able to um I just think that there's there's a lot of different directions this can go but one of the the key takeaways is like it absolutely is going to be changing how software development looks it already is and I think this is one of those things where it's like you know like whether you like it

or not like unfortunately but I think it's a reality whether you like it or not software development will be permanently affected by this and by extension I would say probably many jobs are going to be permanently affected or or already have been permanently affected by this but I think a lot of times people look at this like it's a terrifying thing right I see it all of the time online as a content creator or someone that's getting questions from Junior Engineers or people that are like like well I'm Giving Up on being a software developer there's no hope in this career like it doesn't make sense like I'm part partway through college or university like I just give up I can see tons of people are afraid of this and I think it's because there is this message that's like AI will literally just remove

the need for software development jobs like if AI exists therefore software developer does not need to exist and I just don't think that that's like a an accurate statement at all um I think AI exists and that will affect how software is developed is a true statement I think that AI exists and uh how you develop software in terms of I don't know uh your your throughput or your capabilities and stuff like that being changed is a true statement but like to say that we just don't need software developers I think is uh is misleading um one of the other things that gets compounded here is that I know a lot of people are struggling in the job market and then they have this layered on top so it's like a a double whammy like this feels like absolute kind of thing and I think

there's a lot of a lot of connecting these two things like they're coupled together then you layer on one more thing which is they see layoffs happening at companies right companies are laying people off and we have ai and it's already super competitive like it's the end of the world and it's just like I don't know at what point I stop I like stop trying to like I don't know bring visibility to this or try to change anyone's mind it's like I kind of said it in the other video but like if you are already hellbent on the fact that you think that there's not going to be software development jobs and it's a waste of time like I guess I guess that's cool man I don't know like it it doesn't really affect me I guess what your opinion is on it um the

only reason I'm trying to talk about this is I mean number one because I don't think that it's accurate personally I don't think it's accurate and number two is like I think there are so many people that have the potential to do um great things as software developers still and they're they're going to basically not pursue a career in it because they think that it will cease to exist and that I think that's the part that kind of bothers me is like for the people that um it's just that they're afraid I would love to like try and reins some confidence that like it's not it's just not it's not going to evaporate it's not going away it will change but all our careers are going to change because of AI and they're going to change because automation they have been changing for forever because

of automation you know like that's just a reality so you can like my take on this is like you can be paralyzed by the fear and say well I'm just not going to do anything about it and remain fearful you can say I'm so afraid of it that I will just move away from it entirely and like I think that sucks cuz I don't want that for you if you were very interested in software development you enjoy it you think it's interesting but like at the end of the day like I can't do anything about that um aside from just like try and re reins some confidence but like I'm still going to be either managing teams of Engineers or if if the AI replaces all of them like I will be doing something related to building software and why do I say that with

confidence and it's because I fully intend on riding the wave of whatever AI is bringing instead of just being fearful of it changing things I think that's one of the scarier Parts about all of this is like there's always going to be things that disrupt always there will always be things that disrupt so what do you do do you just say well screw it I guess like I guess we give up or do you say okay it's going to be disrupted and we have to adapt change um I don't know like my mentality is always like kind of thinking about how this evolves I got stuck behind a bus for the record I I wanted to bring this up because I'm very upset now I'm in the fast lane stuck behind a bus that is not going the speed limit um I also have to

pay money to be in this Lane which is why it's extra frustrating um so I'm paying money to literally go slow and I can't leave it legally until there's an opening just like want to smash the steering wheel um but yeah I think like I don't know I think it's I think it's uh I think it's overhyped in terms of how much fear there is like that's like through the roof I think people get into like Echo Chambers and they're perpetuating it like not not a good spot um but like I also don't blame new people for it right like you haven't been in the industry I think like so I've been professionally outside of my two years of like two full years of internships I've been I got to pass this oh this guy's passing me first oh come on let's go screw you

bus um so yeah outside of my like two years of internships I've been building software for like over 12 years professionally and it's it's not something that can just be replaced by like literally taking like I don't need this engineer physically I don't need a human being on this and I can just like prompt it out the there are certain parts of the job that yes that yes that could happen but in terms of literally replacing people it's just not it ain't it um and I don't I don't know if I hear people talk about this but I wanted to kind of bring it up I would love to hear from you if you work on a software development team that doesn't have the equivalent to a backlog that's completely like infinite there's always so much damn work to do that it's not like I'm

in a position where I would be like oh man I can finally get rid of the engineers on my team and just replace them with AI haha like no it would be like hey you told me that AI can do the job of these Engineers great how do I spin some of those up because our backlog is ridiculous there's always so much to do it's for me it's not a matter of looking at this like a how do we cut cost and replace the humans it's like how do we enhance what's going on so I I just don't know if people like have a I don't know like an understanding of how complex this stuff gets um it's not just massage the code not just like fix the bug like find the bug it's there's a lot of stuff that goes on but I don't

know like in time I I I can't I can't imagine and I'm not when I say I can't imagine what I'm not saying is it is impossible so please don't interpret it that way I cannot imagine how much AI would have to advance before it would literally make sense to not have people involved in building software so someone else in in the comments of the other video had said so like what what would that actually look like so you have a company whose entire code base is just built using Ai and then you just continue to use AI to build the code and just hope that that it keeps working like I we're I don't think we're we're close to that I don't think we're close to that um now it's worth mentioning that like I have and I'm you know there's more than one

person that's done this I'm sure uh but I have a friend of mine who and I've talked about him before I'm not going to say his name but I've talked about him before he's he's self-proclaimed like I don't know how to build like I'm not a programmer I don't how to build software like not it's just not me man but like he's literally put together entire applications deployed them and and literally has gotten contracts as essentially a solo developer I've given him a little bit of guidance but essentially as a solo developer um to go build software for a company and he used AI for like all of it but the difference is that he didn't say hey chat GPT go build this whole thing he had to go like understand the system that he wanted to build he had to go understand the requirements

he had to go iterate on those he had to go interpret what the customer was asking for make sense of it in terms of how to build that in a system he had to figure out like I think some people don't realize this too like you're not always just working with perfect state right you might have something deployed in production and you're like hey if this wasn't live the fix for it would be trivial but the fact that it's live and I have to migrate data or I have to you know deploy this thing while this other thing's going like there's so much complexity that comes in and he still had to go figure that stuff out so there's sort of like a different level of thinking through these things and even though this this guy would say he's not a programmer I still think

that he has the right thinking that goes along with it and I think it's a perfect example of he's someone that was able to essentially leverage AI to be more effective he couldn't just spin up an agent and say hey agent go build this whole thing and I'll see you in 7 hours when it's all done I don't think we're near that yet but I don't know maybe I don't know anything um I think it's yeah like I I don't know I think it's a shame that people are really afraid of this stuff uh I don't necessarily blame them and uh I'm definitely curious about more people's thoughts on this thing right like you know do do you see it as an inevitable thing that will happen someday because the way I think about it is almost like will it happen someday I kind of

feel like sure why not if it just keeps advancing more and more like why why could it not someday but the caveat there for me is like I think by the time we hit a somay it's like I don't know like the landscape of how humans do work in general is very different I like I don't even know what that would look like um there's a hyper focus on this stuff for software developers right I think I'm I'm trying to channel what the other person's comment was on the previous video on this but they're saying like hey it's like if you think about it programming is sort of in the crosshairs of AI because it's close to it and if you're able to use AI to to focus on programming for AI you can kind of get this like uh this feedback loop where like

you can kind of use AI to enhance AI like I think that was kind of their frame of thought I think that's interesting right um I think that the proximity of like software development to AI is like you have software developers that are making AI things so like why would it why would it not be a thing that they look to start ing like as a first class uh you know set of things to go improve upon like it's right there it makes sense to me but I think this idea of replacing people is uh just pretty far out there and again just to kind of bring it back to what I haven't even heard Zuckerberg actually say is that it may not have been actually focused on we don't we just get rid of humans because we don't need them as as software engineers

at this level but maybe more around like we think that AI could be as productive as and I don't know how you define that necessarily the complexity of work the throughput of work both um may may be an interesting thing like that would be fascinating I just don't believe it for for this year um and the thing that I tried to mention in the other video was really around like how do you how does this look in practice and I think there's a couple people that were like oh you're over complicating it it's like very straightforward but like are you are you telling me that I'm over complicating it as someone who's like run engineering teams for over 12 years like I it's literally what I do for work um and if I don't understand how I would start like incorporating AI at that level

or replacing people I don't know like this is literally what I do uh as my job as managing software Engineers so um I think that that falls apart in my opinion the argument falls apart when it's about replacing people however if you wanted to try and make the claim no it's the equivalent to taking one engineer that when you give them you know AI assistance at this level that they now have the throughput or the capabilities of two Engineers however you want to kind of look at that I think that's a very difficult difficult thing to quantify um sorry someone was pulling up to the left turn lane and like I didn't think they were going to stop to the point where I was like am I running a red light but no they're just uh moving a little bit too far but um I

got I lost it it's gone um talking about replacing people oh uh yeah like I I don't know how you quantify like hey some apparently people have figured it out I and I manage teams and I don't know how you do this exactly but um you know one engineer assisted with AI at this level means that you have the productivity of two Engineers like I I know how you measure it but I think that's a much more feasible thing to try and claim I just think that the timeline is off um and I think there are people right now that are finding and like it's not my experience I guess but people that are finding they are not getting uh productivity Boost from AI some people might say oh skill issue like I don't know like I'm not I'm not here to tell you like

oh you must be stupid you're doing it wrong not for me to say if you're finding that you're developing software and trying to leverage Ai and it's not speeding you up or it's actually slowing you down like that's interesting to me is it truly is it truly you're not comfortable with working with it or like you're doing it in an inefficient in an inefficient way holy that was hard to say um is that is that what's happening or is it really just like you know you're getting you're you're putting actually good prompts and good data in and you're getting garbage out my dude how do you this person tried to turn right except they almost drove over the sidewalk I really have to get this channel to another level so I can have two cameras please help me get there so I can have two

cameras and pay an Editor to stitch this together because I unfortunately have to live these experiences and then tell you them because like it needs to be heard um but I wish he could see it cuz you can't make this up um but anyway I'm parking this is definitely a more of a rant video oh my God someone's coming I can't see anything um not all of them are this ranty but um I just saw a lot of comments I had a super long day at work I got to the office for 6:00 in the morning and it is 7:30 right now so long day for me but other videos I make I try to be a little bit more helpful um I just wanted to respond to comments talk about it a little bit more because there was a lot of uh there's a

lot of back and forth on this stuff so if you have other questions you want answered let me know in the comments like I said send a message to Dev leader on any social media channel you want I will try my best to help thanks for being here thanks for sticking to the end and I will see you next time take care