Are human database related jobs going to disappear?

[WWGD]

TL;DR Summary

New program Postgres.new ( link in post below) , allows the creation of full-fledged, complex databases , schemas, etc., through a mix of natural language and AI. Querying these databases is similarly user-friendly.

Hi, new tool, Postgres.new
https://postgres.new/
Allows the creation of databases, schemas, tables; the querying of said tables, through natural language and some AI.
Will there be a need for many current database-related jobs? @jedishrfu @newjerseyrunner

 

[jedishrfu]

Database management is a funny kind of job. You are like a caretaker of the database while it is in production mode:

- doing periodic backups
- developing disaster recovery plans
- managing backup storage
- optimizing database usage
- security management and database credentials
- investigating slowdowns
- investigating data corruption or accidental deletion of data
- security management
- working with developers to make better schemas for the business
- maintaining detailed (ISO 9000 compliant) plans and procedures for all facets of database management
- setting up new hardware for database expansion
...

I'm sure some of their work can be helped by AI, but more in an advisory mode, where the AI might assist in diagnosing an issue and then provide recommendations to resolve it.

However, I think most, if not all, companies would want a full-time person at the helm and not an AI who decides how to handle backups and other critical tasks such as database recovery.

 

[FactChecker]

While AI might be a good tool for starting a database, I think that there will still be a lot of work for humans to control and perfect the AI results. If the results are fast and reliable there might even be more demand for humans to work on it.

PS. I was "tweaking" assembly code and auto-generated C code up to the day I retired.

 

[Vanadium 50]

I remember when 4GLs were going to do the same thing. That would have been around 1985.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Maybe someday, but anyone who's been in a serious data science/engineering position knows the field is much more complicated than just creating tables and queries.

 

[jedishrfu]

Maybe someday, but anyone who's been in a serious data science/engineering position knows the field is much more complicated than just creating tables and queries.

Yes, they also create index tables and views to. :-)

 

[harborsparrow]

AI generated database code will prolly not be able to meet security requirements of some databases. Setting up security plans is quite tricky, especially where there is a legal requirement to be able to track and log who did every transaction and when.

Also, when a database grows large and complex, having kept to strict naming standards for everything would be essential to maintaining the ability of programmers to understand things quickly. One of the functions of corporate dB admins has been to inspect any new dB code prior to its being installed, not just for naming but for performance, security, logging, and to set permission parameters.

While unwise managers could downplay the importance of these dB admin roles temporarily, it might catch up to them probably sooner than later in unmanageability in many environments.

AI can help with basic coding but will still require human oversight to get all the details handled.

 

[Vanadium 50]

To lowest order, approximately 99% of the time and effort is spent figuring what you want to do, and 1% coding it up. AI can maybe speed up that second part.

 

[PeroK]

To lowest order, approximately 99% of the time and effort is spent figuring what you want to do, and 1% coding it up. AI can maybe speed up that second part.

There's a difference between personal software development and large scale (application) software development. In the latter case, a project team consists of many different specialists (from the client/users who specify the system, through business analysts, architects, designers, software devolopers, testers and implementation and support staff).

The figure that was bandied about when I was working that it took ten times the effort per function point in the latter case.

I've seen projects with hundreds of development staff working over several years.

The code generation engines that were available in the 1990's were abandoned and superseded for reasons that I never understood. It's years since I thought or wrote about this (I've been retired for over ten years), but I was suspicious that the techies in the IT industry had pulled the wool over everyone's eyes and kept IT as labour-intensive as possible.

It wasn't as simple as that, of course, but even before AI, I believed that the world would have been better served if more effort had gone into the automation of IT development.

AI could decimate the labour required for software development and support generally. In precisely the way that IT itself obliterated the need for many clerical jobs. Whether those IT people will move on to other jobs is a different question. But, IMO, there is no reason that the bulk of what goes on to develop software cannot be automated once AI is in the picture. Starting with requirements gathering and management!

PS if we are thinking radically, then many of the end users would be replaced as well. The requirements would be a communication between a business-specialist AI and a software-analyst AI and thence to the software development AI. That may not happen, but I wouldn't bet against it.

Note that for small-scale projects, where a small group of people can do everything from requirements specification to development, there is perhaps no advantage of AI.

I'd be cautious of going into software development as a graduate in 2024.

 

[Vanadium 50]

I'd be cautious of going into software development as a graduate in 2024.

I don't know. My crystal ball suggests that there will be room for software engineering for some time to come. (Engineers weren't replaced by slide rules, nor calculators, nor computers) but the jobs for people who can hack together some spaghetti Python will go away.

 

[russ_watters]

AI could decimate the labour required for software development and support generally. In precisely the way that IT itself obliterated the need for many clerical jobs. Whether those IT people will move on to other jobs is a different question. But, IMO, there is no reason that the bulk of what goes on to develop software cannot be automated once AI is in the picture. Starting with requirements gathering and management!

You had me until the last part. I'm a mechanical engineer, not a software engineer, but in clerical work it was almost exclusively the low-end content creation and storage management jobs that went away(typing, filing). In engineering (building design specifically for me), it's the people making manual drawings that went away with CAD, and the next step is likely to be the CAD drawings being automated by AI. Today they are made by junior engineers.

Management - as in, humans deciding what to design for other humans to buy and use (lead engineers and their businessperson bosses) seem to me like an unlikely candidate for AI. Even though it is actually likely AI could make better decisions, I don't think either owners nor customers would accept a major decision made without human oversight.

Anyway, what I do foresee is a doughnut hole experience gap. When draftsmen went away it wasn't that big a deal because they were replaced by an increasing number of junior engineers. CAD drafting for junior engineers takes far less effort than for manual drafting, and that time (5-10 years) is spent as an engineering apprentice, learning what you need to know to make the bigger decisions. If the CAD drafting goes away, the job description for a junior engineer becomes less clear. If you need senior engineers but not junior engineers, that creates a gap. This might be what is in store for software engineers - soon.

On the other hand, when the pyramid was broader 40 years ago you did have young engineers leading teams of draftsmen, so maybe we'll go back to that sort of structure and just be vastly more productive.

 

[DaveC426913]

Also, don't forget that job roles evolve just as tools do.

Sldie rules and calculators didn't put Engineers and number crunchers out of work, they just incorprate these new tools into their roles so they can do more, faster.

4th Gen software being superceded by 5th Gen software didn't put programmers out of work, it just meant there were a whole lot of new jobs in 5th Gen Software Dev (and still a lot in 4th Gen software).

Now you'll just be an AI-database Admin.

 

[Glenstr]

As a DBA I'll say not any time soon, if at all.

I play with ChatGPT with various scenarios & while it can be a real time saver for writing SQL & helping find issues, I'm amazed at the amount of mistakes it keeps making and that it misses.