Engineer-mentor says AI use is masking junior engineers' skill gaps
4 Sep 19 11:53 AM · 6d ago · 5 comments · 1 source · development 4 of 6
A self-described mentoring engineer describes juniors asking LLMs to explain documentation but failing to internalize concepts, arguing the failure mode only shows up later at the career level.
“You can't ask it to do things you don't know exist. You can't tell it to use methods you never tried. You can't recognize abstractions you have never seen or experien…”
start_selectjenniferplusplus Software engineer, Mastodon posterBrett Codes (brettcodes.bsky.social) Bluesky postervasko Hacker News posterstart_select Reddit commenter, mentoring engineerChemical_Job7027 Reddit poster, IT student
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I use Claude all day long. I understand it. I have repeatedly watched juniors not read docs when asked. At best they ask LLMs to explain it to them. But they glaze over what it says. Asking them what they do and don’t understand so I can help gets a “I don’t know”. They are adults with college degrees and that is a simple normal question from a…
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The problem I see is that repeats at the career level. Like it or not the problems you see in college are simplified to one or two dimensions. A software project that can be solved in 1 hour to a week doesn’t have the same dimensionality as a project that takes 5 years to build. If you aren’t learning to internalize concepts and vocabulary and…
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That’s exactly what I do. I’m a mentoring engineer. I’m there to help them get better. It’s not like I’m just dropping a textbook in front of them and walking away. “You just need to try it, this is how you learn and it’s how you get awesome. I’m trying to teach you how to solve every problem, not how to implement this single dropdown. Read the…
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I teach an AI course at work. I developed the course with AI, and I encourage my coworkers to follow up with AI for further questions. Yesterday some team members were having trouble following instructions for updating a new skill that was handed to us. I popped up a screen share, typed in the question, and solved the problem immediately. I told…
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You've already got a ton of comments on here explaining "how" (or why) people disagree. Just because you can use it beneficially (for now) doesn't make it universally good.
All 6 developments of Online sentiment splits sharply over whether AI helps or… →
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