[rorylaitila]

There are many layers to this. But there is one style of programming that concerns me. Where you neither understand the layer above you (why the product exists and what the goal of the system is) nor the layer below (how to actually implement the behavior). In the past, many developers barely understood the business case, but at least they understood how to translate into code, and could put backpressure on the business. Now however, it's apparently not even necessary to know how the code works!

The argument seems to be, we should float on a thin lubricant of "that's someone else's concern" (either the AI or the PMs) gliding blissfully from one ticket to another. Neither grasping our goal nor our outcome. If the tests are green and the buttons submit, mission accomplished!

Using Claude I can feel my situational awareness slipping from my grasp. It's increasingly clear that this style of development pushes you to stop looking at any of the code at all. My English instructions do not leave any residual growth. I learn nothing to send back up the chain, and I know nothing of what's below. Why should I exist?

[scottLobster]

The irony is "ownership" is a common management talking point, but when you actually try to take ownership you inevitably run into walls of access, a lack of information, and generally a "why are you here?" mentality.

Granted one person can't know/do everything, but large companies in particular seem allergic to granting you any visibility whatsoever. It's particularly annoying when you're given a deadline, bust your ass working overtime to make it, only to discover that said deadline got extended at a meeting you weren't invited to and nobody thought to tell you about it. Or worse, they were doing some dark management technique of "well he's really hauling ass right now, if he makes the original deadline we'll be ahead of schedule, and if he doesn't we have the spare capacity".

If the expectation is I'm a tool for management to use, then I'll perform my duties to the letter and no further. If the expectation is ownership, then I need to at least sit at the cool kids' table and maybe even occasionally speak when I have something relevant to contribute.

[lazystar]

> Granted one person can't know/do everything,

watch me try, at least.

> but large companies in particular seem allergic to granting you any visibility whatsoever. It's particularly annoying

If the blind spot is directly causing customer pain, find metrics that demonstrate the impact. If it ends up driving away your customers, then your company is securing itself to death.

[robocat]

> customer pain > driving away your customers > company death

You are implying efficient market theory, which is bunk.

Example: Our banks have endless painful papercuts yet most of us don't change banks just because of one pain.

We each respond to our own complex of costs and benefits (or risks versus rewards).

Second example: I use an iPhone because I judge it to be more secure yet I'm constantly fighting the same bugs and misfeatures that seem to never get fixed/improved.

Your chain of reasoning is broken? Or is it your model of the world?

[9rx]

> Our banks have endless painful papercuts yet most of us don't change banks just because of one pain.

Only because they're all painful. If there was a bank that was recognized as perfect, people would switch in short order. Switching to another bank that is also painful is not worth the effort.

> I use an iPhone because I judge it to be more secure yet I'm constantly fighting the same bugs and misfeatures that seem to never get fixed/improved.

Only because nobody else sells an iPhone. People would start switching over to other, less buggy iPhone on the market if there was such a thing.

> You are implying efficient market theory, which is bunk.

The efficient market theory says that, in an active market, prices rapidly reflect all publicly available information. How does that apply here, bunk or not?

[its_magic]

> Example: Our banks have endless painful papercuts yet most of us don't change banks just because of one pain.

One bank pissed me off due to an extremely dishonest thing they did. So I overdrafted the account to the max ($500) and left them the bill.

(Not the first time I've done something like that to someone who deserved it. I've done much, much more in some cases. Endless painful papercuts? Nope, I do not accept that.)

They weren't happy about this. I think they hit "my" "credit" with that for years. I never noticed, as I don't borrow money; the machinations of these "credit reporting" agencies are beneath my concern. They have no credit in my eyes. I don't consort with crooks, I just punish them.

> Second example: I use an iPhone because I judge it to be more secure yet I'm constantly fighting the same bugs and misfeatures that seem to never get fixed/improved.

I haven't had a phone in decades at this point. Don't want one. I refused to be tracked, monitored, or abused by anyone. And no, I sure don't give a single fuck about any of the many people (and there have been MANY) who have tried their best to shame, cajole, insult, ridicule, harass, intimidate, or bully me into getting a phone. Fuck em all.

> Your chain of reasoning is broken? Or is it your model of the world?

Maybe it's you who's broken. Why do you accept slavery? Just to fit in?

Since you're hardly the only one with a similar way of thinking, maybe we could say it's the entire society that's broken.

I simply do not tolerate the things that you tolerate.

[robocat]

> I overdrafted the account to the max ($500) and left them the bill

I think theft is a poor answer - although most society accepts your rationalisation when dealing with government or big business.

Even worse is that you can't know what it may cost you in the future. My friend couldn't open a business account the other day. After many phone calls he was lucky enough to find someone that told him it was because he left that bank with an account $67 overdrawn when he was younger. That's in New Zealand: I strongly suspect he never would have found out the reason he was denied in many countries[1]. His only recourse was to use a more expensive provider (maybe $600 per year).

Please don't assume I am tolerant of abuse. I vindictively avoid some brands (and even all products from some countries).

I just often judge that my changing to a different service has costs I would rather avoid so I stick with a known evil (I'm good at finding workarounds for many niggles).

I also accept annoying papercuts because I believe all services have imperfection and flaws. Too many people count costs without balance.

What is this perfect bank you have discovered without papercuts?

[1] https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/debanking-and-debunki...

[its_magic]

> I think theft is a poor answer

Theft? HA! Nope, they attempted to rob me, on multiple levels. Categorically refused.

> Even worse is that you can't know what it may cost you in the future. My friend couldn't open a business account the other day. After many phone calls he was lucky enough to find someone that told him it was because he left a bank account $67 overdrawn when he was younger.

Oh no! How will I ever conduct business without the government or bank's permission? I guess the only alternative is slavery to some giant corporation, or death! What should I do?

As an American, I would probably like to consult with Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Smedley Butler, Lysander Spooner, Mark Twain, etc and get their thoughts on this matter.

While looking something up just now, this old saved quote from years back popped right into view. Couldn't have said it better myself:

  "Why work at all? Just live off the system. The aristocrats do it lavishly. The welfare rats do it slovenly. Both know that working for an 'honest dollar' in this empire of lies is for suckers. This is why they set up artificial barriers of entry such as needing a 'college degree' for so many jobs so you have to wade through all that propaganda bullshit they spew these days. It's also why they have to make sure property prices stay high to keep the cheese dangling in front of the mouse. The system is designed to keep you churning the wheel while the others sit back, relax, and enjoy a life of leisure at your expense."

> That's in New Zealand

Ah! Found a serious problem. Not the problem, mind you, but a problem. There's a reason the self-described "elites" like to hole up in that place.

(It would be a shame if they never emerged from those holes. What would the world do without their 'leadership'?)

> I strongly suspect he never would have found out the reason in many countries.

Yes, I agree, there are many shithole countries in the world. I live in one, too. One learns to adapt.

> His only recourse was to use a more expensive provider (maybe $600 per year).

Yes, this corrupt country tried to screw me in a similar type of way, years back. I refused to play ball and just did what I wanted instead, very carefully and quietly. Now that problem is permanently resolved, for a fraction of what it would have otherwise cost.

> Please don't assume I am tolerant of abuse. I vindictively avoid some brands (and even all products from some countries).

One time, I went to the local Wal-Mart a couple days before Christmas. I parked at the back of the lot as the place was packed full. No problem, I don't mind walking. But then imagine my displeasure to observe that some complete asshole in a giant lifted pickup truck has double parked near the front of the lot.

That guy was way more important than anyone, in his own mind, clearly. Someone just had to educate him about how so very wrong he was. The job fell to me, as I was the closest warrior at hand.

So I sent a shopping cart sailing at warp 11 into his truck. ("Engage!") It just so happened to impact right on the corner of the cab, behind the door (the worst spot possible--thanks, God), and fucked it all up. Mission Accomplished. I returned home and celebrated.

I know of another funny incident where a similar type of person was similarly unimpressed by some douchebag in a Maserati (this is hillbilly country, home of Chevys and Fords) who likewise felt entitled to take up two parking spots on a busy main street where parking was limited. In this case the guy dumped a tractor bucket load of wet hay into his open convertible top.

The "victim" of that incident was raging on Facebook, offering a reward for whoever turned the guy in, etc, but everyone was just laughing at the SOB.

You'd be surprised what you can get away with, when everyone around you is quietly wishing somebody would do just that thing.

[BobbyTables2]

It’s a lot like the “how shit happens tale”.

The product may take 20 minute to boot - a testament to its complexity and greatness (/s). But pointing that out might end badly when it’s the SVP’s pet. They will not entertain alternatives or efforts that distract from their mental plan.

And if a developer finds themselves getting feedback or communication from customers, things are probably on fire - absolutely literally.

[order-matters]

>Or worse, they were doing some dark management technique of "well he's really hauling ass right now, if he makes the original deadline we'll be ahead of schedule, and if he doesn't we have the spare capacity"

As a business analyst who has worked a lot with executive teams at multiple companies, this is almost always the case (ime). Deadlines are only shortened down the chain, never extended. The assumption is that if it cannot be done then they will simply not administer any consequences and classify it as "not realizing the upside".

The only reason it is almost always and not always, is because sometimes a different thing pops up that needs to get prioritized first, so it is communicated that the first thing isnt actually as important as it was yesterday and this other thing is now the most important.

Now obviously I cant speak for everyone at all teams, but as far as boring corporate default behavior goes this is the safe path for executives. If your boss is doing otherwise, they are going out of their way to do it.

The takeaway as a worker is that you should not treat any business goal or deadline ask of you with the same level of care as you would a personal favor. When something really needs that level of care, your boss should pull you aside and break character and make it a personal favor to them, not the business.

As far as "Ownership" goes, it is just a pissing contest as far as I can tell. if you own a task but cant do the task, you just send an email to someone who can do the task so that the task gets done and you can report the task is done and get your ownership credit. the person who did the task was used as a tool in this regard. So high performing managers just try to get ownership of as much as they possibly can, as there's no meaningful difference between who sends that email.

[BobbyTables2]

Taking ownership is hard but fending it off is even harder.

I’ve been dragged into modifying my team’s product to fix deficiencies in others’ designs.

They didn’t want take ownership and freely pushed it onto us!

[toyg]

Ownership doesn't imply FULL ownership. You get handed ownership of a slice, and expected to be responsible for that bit of land; but you'll never own the farm, and will likely never be consulted on whether that land should become a car park from Tuesday. That's just how capitalism work.

[Jtsummers]

> and will likely never be consulted on whether that land should become a car park from Tuesday.

Then you don't have ownership. What you have is responsibility without ownership or authority if this rug pull can be performed.

[scottLobster]

That's called renting. And even renters have rights per whatever lease they signed and local laws.

It's a simple formula. If you want me to be personally invested in my work and go above and beyond, then I need the motivation to do that. So either you grant me a reasonable level of professional input such that my opinion is valued and I'm helping the mission succeed, or pay me for said extra effort (can be opportunities for promotion, direct overtime pay, career advancement, etc). If you want me super-motivated you can even do both!

If we're playing hardball "you're some lowly IC nerd without an MBA or connections and we're here to make money so fuck you" capitalism, well the only serious leverage I have to is to take my talents where they're most appreciated. So you'll get exactly what you pay for until I find something better, and aside from some professional courtesy I'll be looking. Maybe you're fine with that, but if you start preaching "ownership" of the product just be aware that the entire dev team is going to pay you lip service and then laugh as soon as you're out of the room, and we clock out at 5:00, even if we don't on paper. Except for poor Bob who due to life/family commitments has no option to leave and needs to rationalize his situation even though he agrees with us. Sometimes we'll tone it down just so he doesn't feel too bad about being trapped. Regardless, in that environment we take ownership of our careers, not our work.

I've worked both types of jobs. I'd say the former worked the best for all involved, but the latter has its place and is fine so long as everyone acknowledges what game we're playing and expectations are set appropriately.

[cortesoft]

Strangely, I feel that using Claude helps me stay MORE focused on what I am actually trying to accomplish.

In the prior 30 years of my programming life, so much time was spent "yak shaving"... setting up all the boilerplate, adding basic functionality you always have to do, setting up support systems, etc. With Claude, all of those things are so quick to complete that I can stay focused on what I am actually trying to do, and can therefore keep more of the core functionality I am caring about in my head. I don't have to push the core, novel, parts of my work aside to do the parts that are the same across other projects.

[Insanity]

But apart from side projects these true new setups happen rarely. When working at a company you probably work on an already established codebase with known patterns.

So what you say is true about boilerplate reduction, but that’s not a huge ROI for enterprise software.

(Some exceptions apply, there’s always some setup work for a new microservice etc. But even those don’t happen weekly or even monthly)

[konschubert]

I don't know. Today I had something break because of a uv update on a very legacy piece of code.

(Not complaining - it was a good update that revealed a bug in our code.)

I really don't care to much any more to learn about the histories of python packaging. Claude fixed it for me and that was it.

[ffsm8]

I am still missing something like Claude code that's less "hands-off" and optimizes for small edits instead of full feature development

Like you're sitting in your ide, select a few rows, press (for example) caps lock to activate speech and then just say a short line what it should adjust or similar - which is then staged for the next adjustments to be done with the same UX

Like saying "okay, I need a new usecase here, let's start by making a function to do y. [Function appears] great, we need to wire with object into it [point at class] [LLM backtracking code path via language server until it finds it and passes things through]

The main blocking issue to that UX would likely be the speed of the response, as the transcription would be pretty much instant, but the coding prompt after would still take a few moments to be good... And such an interactive approach would feel a lot better with speed.

Too bad nobody seems to target the combined mouse+voice control for LLMs yet. It would even double as a fantastic accessibility tool for people suffering from various typing related issues

[nsm]

Aider has an ide mode close to this. Check out https://nikhilism.com/post/2026/nudge-skill/ to add similar behavior to certain agents. I too, am waiting for IDEs to do this in a polished way. next tab edit is not quite it

[jmalicki]

In cursor you highlight and hit Ctrl-L, and use the voice prompting - I can do this today!

[devin]

The level of exposition required for a lot of edits you might want to make is what stops this from being a primary method of interaction. If I have to express >= AND <= AND NOT == OR ... then I may as well write the thing myself.

[8note]

the big problem with tools like that is that the agent can read all the existing code and docs when asked, but it cant read your mind.

its always going to do better if you give it a stronger description of the problem, and give it some more freedom on the solution.

if youre sitting more in the solution side, youre going to be dictating those exact functions because theres not enough context for it to just know what the right function you need is

[internet2000]

You should absolutely try your hardest to learn the layer above you. If your organization won't volunteer the info easily that's unfortunate, but you definitely have to try.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Well, to be fair, we've already been there, for many years (dependency hell). In those cases, LLMs are likely to actually improve things.

For myself, I like to know what's going on, to a certain extent, but appreciate abstraction.

I am also aware that people like me, probably don't make commercial sense, but that's already been the case for quite some time.

[RGamma]

Vaguely reminds me of a phenomenon in farming an acquaintance recently told me. Apparently automation is now so great (if you can afford it), that operators only need to sit in their tractors and let the machine do the rest. You're effectively a weight for the seat contact switch.

[ErroneousBosh]

That works until something goes wrong.

Same as "self-driving cars", the automated farm machinery can't cope with any sort of change in its environment.

[drzaiusx11]

You're simply describing the end state of a hyper capitalist system, as outlined by classic Marxist theory.

The core operating principle of which says capitalism requires and promotes systems that enforce the separation of labor from the product they produce. This precludes fellow laborers from meaningfully communicating with each other; knowledge sharing could expose more of how the product "works" after all! Only in final combination, following an undisclosed (to the worker) larger plan, does the product become whole and provide utility.

So not knowing "what happens" in layers "above" and "below" you for your specific work unit is key. This is the "de-skilling" tenet of capitalism and is required for exploitation, conformity, at scale. As labor units become smaller, they require less skill and time to produce, rendering laborers "conditioned to a machine." In other words, workers must acquiesce their skills in the name of "progress" of the system itself. This can easily be sold to the laborers, couched by real world data highlighting the obvious efficiency gains, along with a heavy bonus of having to do less work yourself.

Only by making ever smaller parts of a whole, awhile hiding the utility of those parts produced, can capital rob labor of their value (their skill, their products, their output.)

This very same system lends itself to outcompeting private labor by way of parallelization: as it just so happens that smaller slices of work tend to parallelize better than larger ones. If you can operate at a scale that bespoke creators have no chance of replicating on their own, you "win!" The beautiful moat, the envy of all.

In other words, you're just describing being a worker in a highly efficient capitalist machine! Look! We're almost there! I can just about smell all the "winning" from here...

[raw_anon_1111]

The average tenure of a developer for the longest was 2.5 years not to mention the developer changing teams, even before AI many developers didn’t know how the code they were brought in to maintain works.

> My English instructions do not leave any residual growth. I learn nothing to send back up the chain, and I know nothing of what's below. Why should I exist?

When you use Claude code, tell it to keep a markdown file updated with the what and the why. Instead of just “Do $y”, “Because of $x I need to do $y”. If it is updated in the markdown file, it will be recorded and sometime the agent will come up with code and mske changes that are correct. But use cases you didn’t think about. You can then even ask it “why did it do $x” that you weren’t expecting but oh yeah, it was right.

> Why should I exist?

That’s the wrong question, the correct question is “why is my employer paying me?”. Your employer is paying you to turn well defined requirements into working code to either make them money or to save them money if (the royal) you are a mid level ticket taker. If someone is working at that level, that’s what they are regardless of title.

No one cares if either you or the LLM decided to use a for loop or a while loop.

At higher levels you are responsible for taking your $n number of years of experience to turn more ambiguous, more impactful, larger scoped projects into working implementations that are done on time, on budget and meets requirements. Before LLMs, that meant a combination of my own coding, putting a team together and delegating and telling my director/CTO that this isn’t something we should be doing in house (ie a Salesforce or Workday integration) at all.

Now add to the mix between all those resources - a coding agent. In either case, I as anything above ticket taker, probably haven’t looked at a line of code first. I test for does it meet the functional and non functional requirements and then mostly look at the hot spots - concurrency issues, security issue, and are there any scalability issues that are obvious before I hammer it with real world like traffic - web request or transactions for an ETL job.

And before the pearl clutching starts, I started programming as a hobby in the 80s in assembly and spent the first decade and a half of my career doing C bit twiddling on multiple mainframes, PCs, and later Windows CE devices.

[beej71]

>At higher levels you are responsible for taking your $n number of years of experience to turn more ambiguous, more impactful, larger scoped projects into working implementations that are done on time, on budget and meets requirements.

Is this not a job for LLMs, though?

[raw_anon_1111]

LLMs are good at turning well defined requirements to code.

But even now it’s struggling on a project to understand the correlation between “It is creating Lambda code to do $x meaning it needs to change the corresponding IAM role in CloudFormation to give it permission it needs”

[Spivak]

The LLMs are fantastic at writing terraform when you tell it what to do which is a huge timesaver, but good heavens is it terrible at actually knowing what pieces need to be wired up for anything but the simplest cases. Job security for now I guess?

[raw_anon_1111]

I was able to one shot CDK, Terraform and CloudFormation on my last three projects respectively (different clients - different IAC). But I was really detailed about everything I needed and I fed ChatGPT the diagram.

I guess I could be more detailed in the prompt/md files about every time it changes lambda code, check the permissions in the corresponding IAC and check to see if a new VPC endpoint is needed.

[zen4ttitude]

You sit on the arbitrating layer. It sounds like you have some programming experience as you miss looking at the code. I did check a lot of code and got tired of how perfect it were, generated by AI. Latest Claude is insane, does not even make errors. You still have to guide it and it will occasionally go astray and make rookie mistakes. If you extrapolate to 6 months down the road, one Claude API = a team of 10 programmers. None of them sloppy and undocumented. So if one wants to remain pertinent in this new economy of infinite coding, one should go back to project management, learn best practice and software fundamentals. I think there will be a lot of demand for ex-programmers able to steer AI in the most efficient stack, the best architecture and the most optimised deployment. Notions of recurring cost, maintenance and security will help for sure.

[matthewkayin]

> Latest Claude is insane, does not even make errors. You still have to guide it and it will occasionally go astray and make rookie mistakes.

I swear, do you people even hear yourselves?

[zen4ttitude]

yeah this might have been contradictory... thanks for pointing it out. I will watch mirror reflections in the future.

[observationist]

Chesterton's steamroller, lol.

[anal_reactor]

In an ideal scenario, you want your employees to be fungible. You don't want any irreplaceable individuals who hold the entire organization hostage. One way of defending yourself from such individuals is ensuring that all members have enough knowledge to take other people's roles, at least after some brief training. The problem is, maintaining high level of competency and transparency is very expensive. The other solution is when your organization is a complete mess and nobody knows what they're doing anyway. Yes, this results in your organization being inefficient, but this inefficiency might actually be cheap in the grand scheme of things.