Microsoft and CMU Team Up to Train Early Career Software Engineers (cs.cmu.edu)
27 points by azhenley 3 hours ago
layer8 an hour ago
> "With so many companies worldwide faced with upheaval due to AI in software development, I believe this program will become a template for rapidly leveling up new developers across the industry."
This seems cognitively dissonant with the AI upheaval resulting in the industry needing fewer developers. Maybe they want cheaper developers?
LanceH 25 minutes ago
It feels like it's all senior developers now and nobody new. At some point they will want someone new and won't be able to find them.
petcat 18 minutes ago
"software engineer" is likely a career long gone. "Product engineer" and architect is probably the only software-adjacent title that will have consistent demand for awhile.
Basically still just a prompt jockey but knows the difference between outputs that are good and bad.
rfgplk 11 minutes ago
Yep. If you think your job involves "writing code" as the core part of your responsibilities, write yourself off immediately. That career is dead and dusted. Sadly most companies still haven't realized this, given how few Architect openings exist (and those that do, most are asking for 20+ years of exp lol)
bradfa an hour ago
Curious how realistic the skills learned in such a program are still applicable in 1-2 years. This industry is moving very fast, it feels like the self motivated, self starter, self learner has been thriving. Probably a good thing to have such a program, but I have doubts.
avaer 15 minutes ago
The YC meta model is probably a better school than school now. I'm sure YC knows that.
If you need to be told what to do, it's a short step to your AI replacement being told what to do; money will ensure it. If your job is to discover and capture new things in an exploding possibility space, that's a career.
Schools should teach hacking, but it doesn't seem that's what this program is doing.
geraldwhen 23 minutes ago
Microsoft? Maybe they’re hopeful the next admin will make OPT cheap labor again.
thadk 20 minutes ago
Can anyone share syllabi for these?
BatchJob 11 minutes ago
Im sorry for being so negative but MS sold software engineers (and US high school and college students) down the river so long ago, the nerve of them now even pretending to care is just so offensive. This business has gotten so rotten, the best thing I can tell anyone is to find something rewarding to do with your life.
coolThingsFirst an hour ago
Now that you have learnt Software Engineering, hunting for a job is easy just make 10^10^10^10 job applications.
dyauspitr 2 hours ago
“So you type your request into this chat window…”
flowerlad an hour ago
The assumption here is that senior engineers are still needed to review AI-generated code. That assumption might not be valid for very long. I find myself reviewing AI-generated code less and less because the code quality is very good -- and getting better every month. Soon reviewing AI-generated code will be like manually verifying the results of a calculator--it is a waste of time. At that point all you need is an architect. I predict senior software engineers will be obsolete within a year.
lelanthran 25 minutes ago
> At that point all you need is an architect.
What value would an architect provide that a SOTA LLM can't?
flowerlad a few seconds ago
As of now it is insufficient to outline the end-user requirements, AI will ask you a bunch of questions that requires you to make architectural decisions. I think within 3 to 5 years that might change as well.
BoggleOhYeah an hour ago
As a principal, I still catch people submitting shitty AI code on a weekly basis. Their brains are rotting to the point that they can't tell if the code is doing the correct thing or not.
LanceH 19 minutes ago
I've found myself engaging more with AI writing code. There is no easy time during the work day. I'm talking to product about what they want, communicating with AI to write it, and verifying that it covers what was asked for. And the better I get at it, the more of the product I need to learn at a faster pace. If I find some downtime, I work on additional features at the same time, something I wouldn't do on my own.
Quite simply, I'm more mentally drained at the end of a day working with AI than I am a normal day of coding. There is still a lot of energy and thought that needs to go into what needs to be written.
frank00001 an hour ago
Just left my programming job due to this. Stopped thinking, stopped caring. AI destroyed my coding joy, so I’m finished with that. Leadership challenges next - hope to use my brain a bit more.
deadbabe an hour ago
throwaway_45 42 minutes ago
The issue is the higher ups don't even seem to care. You just turn into the guy that's yelling at the clouds. I don't know what the future of this industry is.