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Comment by voidUpdate | Hacker News Reader

What's interesting to me is how many people have found out with the LLM boom that they don't want to be developers/engineers, they want to be managers, delegating all the work to another entity and checking in occasionally to see how the coding is coming along

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I’ve found it interesting too.

It’s like I spent 20 years mastering painting in watercolour… nerding out on other painters, canvas options, even the backstory on some guy that makes a specific paint etc.

And I don’t regret any of that. but now I’m just loving creating my art 100x faster.

I thought I loved the craft (and I did) but more, I loved the product.

So, in your metaphor, you never were an artist. You were just a poser.

What I find cringeworthy is that it seems the entire industry is filled with posers and I didn’t learn this fact until now.

As mentioned previously, I just wish the ‘posers’ chose a new job title for themselves rather than coopting the name of software engineer, so there is an easy way to tell each other apart. But passing for someone one really isn’t is the modus operandi of the poser.

I don't want to be a manager, but I also don't want to be a technician (for the most part). I want to be an engineer, which means my job is to solve problems. LLMs help me solve problems faster, so I use them.

Sometimes I get the urge to write code by hand and I do it, though. Less frequently, the LLM is inept at solving my problem, so I have to resort to the old fashioned way.

Three quarters of my university class couldn’t code properly, like seriously struggled with basic coding tasks but still made their way through the course.

You then get into the work environment where despite hiring efforts you still find those numbers hold.

I’m not surprised LLM usage has taken off.

You seem to think you can only be an engineer if you are holding the shovel yourself.

Building software consists of many parts. I love each individually. I was always a bit dissatisfied about how they interact and how they block each other. I love puzzle solving, I love debugging, but I kinda hated building software because it depended on those elements and I'm not fond of context switching.

I can love building software now. And I didn't become a manager because people bs never interested me. LLM doesn't feel like a person. It feels way better.

Maybe engineer was the wrong word. Developer/programmer, where I'd say that yes, you need to wield the tools yourself rather than telling someone/thing else to

Agent is not someone. It is a tool. Just a one that you operate using natural language. You don't have to use software developer vocabulary, but it really helps if you want to achieve specific things regarding software development.

Which is why I said someone/thing. Someone or Something, an LLM falling under Something, but other manager jobs use people, hence Someone

> LLM doesn't feel like a person. It feels way better

Somebody trademark this! :D

It seems clear to me that micromanaging a machine will hit less resistance than with a person.

Yeah, it's very clear that the person that wrote the above comment didn't actually grok what the purpose of the article was. Thanks for providing a counterpoint that I think actually summarizes the article correctly.

I think it's a symptom of software jobs paying really well for multiple decades. It attracted many people who are in it for the money only, and not the process or result (nothing wrong with that, imo). These are the people who fully embrace the vibe coding model and enjoy managing an AI more than developing anything by hand.

I do not manage LLMs, I manage people.

I always considered myself a builder, a creator. The end result is interesting and it's important for me the end result to be just as I envisioned it.

Typing code isn't exciting. Thinking, planning, finding solutions and driving the LLM to implement the finished product is.

I'm happy for you that you enjoy being a manager. I'm just saying that a lot of people seem to have found they prefer managing another system writing the code for them asking it nicely to do things, rather than writing code myself. I'm in the camp of enjoying typing code, and I do not want to become a manager, either of LLMs or people

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