Comment by re-thc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by re-thc | Hacker News Reader

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> Work for business people who want fast results. Agentic coding gets you to something presentable much faster at the cost of code quality. I have never seen a customer or business person care about that.

That's always false. It's like people want their meals delivered fast. They say they don't care about taste or how it is done. Watch when they get sick or don't like it and the drama that happens.

People don't care until they do. They don't know what to care (in this case code quality) or say that because you're not explaining it. People also "gamble" and you take the blame. Long term impacts? Nah doesn't matter. Weeks later and things break -- what did you do?

This is like the first rule of working with clients -- what the client says they want is often not what they truly want.

In my country we have very protective labor laws, but what you describe is one of the few reasons that allow for instant termination: You refuse a direct order. If your boss says that he does not care about long term consequences and he want things done a certain way, you do it that way. Everything else is unprofessional. Your opinion on what you think he wants is legally irrelevant.

> You refuse a direct order.

I never said. It's not about outright refuse. It's how to deliver better outcomes. It's not a win or lose situation. Don't treat it like that.

> If your boss says that he does not care about long term consequences and he want things done a certain way

As suggested in my previous comment it could be you didn't explain it well. If you say code quality they might not care. Say it will crash randomly and can't fix it then they might. There's some art to it.

> Your opinion on what you think he wants is legally irrelevant.

No it's not. So you're saying if you got told to do something illegal you'd also do it anyway? I doubt it. You need to at least cover your back and document it as such. I'd say termination is better than jail.

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