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Comment by herval | Hacker News Reader

> effective management requires that you're able to trust that the person tells you when they've hit a snag or anything else you may need to know

Nope, effective management is on YOU, not them. If everyone you’re managing is completely transparent and immediately tells you stuff, you’re playing in easy mode

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So the role of a coding agent is to challenge me to play in hard mode?

And suppose getting developers to not lie or hide important information is on me, what should I do to get an LLM to not do that?

no, the point is LLMs will behave the same way humans you have to manage do (there's obviously differences - eg LLMs tend to forget context more often than most humans, but also they tend to know a lot more than the average human). So some of the same skills that'll help you manage humans will also help you get more consistency out of LLMs.

I don't know of anyone who would like to work with someone who lies to them over and over, and will never stop. LLMs do certain things better than people, but my point is that there's nothing you can trust them to do. That's fine for research (we don't trust, and don't need to trust, any human or tool to do a fully exhaustive research, anyway), but not for most other work tasks. That's not to say that LLMs can't be utilised usefully, but something that can never be trusted behaves like neither person nor tool.

Anthropomorphizing LLMs is not going to help anyone. They're not "lying" to you. There's no intent to deceive.

I really think that the people who have the hardest time adapting to AI tools are the ones that take everything personally.

It's just a text generator, not a colleague.

> It's just a text generator, not a colleague.

The person you are responding to is quite literally making the same point. This entire thread of conversation is in response to the post's author stating that using a coding agent is strongly akin to collaborating with a colleague.

Yes, I want to play in easy mode. Why would I want to play in hard mode?

You're trying to sell AI here, right? And the argument is that AI is like hard mode... which developers are already in, but might not be.

It's just not a very good sales pitch.

The point you missed entirely, young padawan

Are you going to say the point or are you just going to dance around it?

> Yes, I want to play in easy mode. Why would I want to play in hard mode?

Working alone can be much easier than managing others in a team. But also, working in a team can be far more effective if you can figure out how to pull it off.

It's much the same as working with agents. Working alone, without the agents, it's easier to make exactly what you want happen. But working with agents, you can get a lot more done a lot faster-- if you can figure out how to make it happen. This is why you might want hard mode.

> If everyone you’re managing is completely transparent and immediately tells you stuff, you’re playing in easy mode

So much this. There are many managers who are effective at managing people who do not need management.

The vast majority of managers, much like most engineers, only has to deal with “maintenance mode” throughout most of their career. Particularly common in people whose experience has been in large corporations - you simply don’t realize how much was built for you and “works” (even if badly)

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