Critique of Becoming a Senior Engineer, I & II
The robots are coming.
Jasper’s Take
This was the third prompt. I selected the following options within One-Shot Blog Post:
Blog Topic: “Becoming a senior software engineer”
Tone of voice: “colloquial and witty”
Intended Audience: “engineers”
Overall, I think it captured a lot of the general points, but only went skin deep. For soft skills it mentioned communication, but didn’t touch on getting alignment between stakeholders, team leadership, or managing up. It mentioned problem solving skills under “time management & planning” which seemed odd since that is more of a “hard skill”, given the context. It also made some grammar errors such as “team rely” rather than “team to rely” in “The ability for others within your organization or team rely on you”.
All that said, I think it did a pretty good job of assisting me as a writer. I would use the output as a template or outline for the article that I actually want to write, rather than as a rough draft. Jasper seems to be an excellent general-purpose blog post tool, especially given I spent about 15 minutes setting up my account, tweaking the inputs, and reading the output.
Getting started on a blog post is often the hardest part, and Jasper let me jump right in.
ChatGPT’s Take
This was the first take, and I provided the following prompt:
Prompt: “write a blog on becoming a senior software engineer using a colloquial and witty tone. the audience is other engineers”
Overall, I really enjoyed reading this version. It captured a lot of general points, but it also had personality (or robotality? what do we want to call this?). It almost read like this HP commercial and has a distinctive tone.
As for content, I think a lot of the bases were covered. It mentioned the technicals but it also got into the intangibles — an engineer’s attitude and willingness to take risks. It called out being a mentor, and the feedback cycle. Nothing ChatGPT wrote really seemed off, if that makes sense.
How they compare
If I could only use one tool, it’d be ChatGPT. Not only is it (currently) free, but I think it did a better job of capturing the essence of becoming a senior software engineer. I think Jasper’s take read a bit more like a checklist or spec sheet. It called out things that ChatGPT missed, such as time management and communicating up and down the chain of command, but it didn’t feel like it took me on as much of a journey. I don’t speak (write) for everyone, but the ChatGPT article seemed a bit more human.
That said, in an ideal world I’d be using both as a starting point, and creatively combining information and themes from each. I’ve also only spent a few minutes with each tool, and I’m sure I could condition each tool to yield different results with a bit of practice.
Wrapping Up
This whole project took maybe 1 hour, tops. And that’s great! Both tools were able to write reasonable pieces on the basics of becoming a senior software engineer with little user education required.
I wouldn’t say either technology is scary good at this, just like I wouldn’t describe a hammer as scary good at putting in nails. This is just that — another tool that we humans can add to our tool belt and weild as needed, when appropriate. I think this can help remove a lot of writers block, particularly around outlining the topics that will make their way into the final work. It’s also a great way to quickly get up to speed on a particular topic (just don’t trust everything you read).
