[dominotw]

developers now are expected to randomly jump around projects and ship without friction. For employers it means they can move us around like pawns. Lot of companies have not reorged themselves to this new type of workforce thats much more malleable.

it used to be that i pay your due at some enterpise and learn some corner of codebase really well and become go to person. that would give you job security.

[chasd00]

Working in silos like this has always been an anti pattern though. You end up being employed for 10 years but only have 1 year of actual development experience. Just turning-the-crank and going home was always risky because one day you get laid off and realize you’re 10 years behind the competition.

[JambalayaJimbo]

What I found comfort it in was turning the crank and then using extra time to upskill in various other things (including non software dev domains). Things that weren’t immediately useful to my employer and I never would have been directly assigned, but did pay off after sometime.

Now I’m basically expected to do what my boss wants me to do every minute of the day, it’s gotten much more micromanaged.

[Terr_]

I cynically predict that some of the new practices being hyped could easily end up worse...

Before: "I learned very little this year, because I was placed in charge of the same stuff, and I've already learned most of what I could from tinkering with that code, stepping through its architecture, and dealing with those recurring problems."

Soon: "I learned very little this year, because I don't deeply interact with anything, I just pull the lever on the babbling slot-machine until I get lucky and things seems to quiet down."

[wiseowise]

As opposed to what? You seriously think that shipping 10 years, instead of turning-the-crank and going home, will save you from the interviewing gauntlet?

[bluefirebrand]

> developers now are expected to randomly jump around projects and ship without friction

This describes the expectation my managers had of me at every software job I've had, and I've been doing this for a decade and a half

It's definitely not a new thing since LLMs came around, if that is what you were implying

[wiseowise]

> It's definitely not a new thing since LLMs came around, if that is what you were implying

It is on a scale that it is required now. Previously you could say "it'll take me a week to decipher the mess", now they can just say "can't you use an agent to make it fast?".

[locknitpicker]

> it used to be that i pay your due at some enterpise and learn some corner of codebase really well and become go to person. that would give you job security.I

I had the displeasure of working with those types. One of them replies to any question or challenge to a technical problem emerging from the PRs they posted with variants of "I've worked here for over a decade, this is how we do things". And then proceeds to argue things like defensive programming is a code smell because it means developers don't trust themselves.

I cannot envision any healthy, effective engineering environment where developers don't periodically switch between projects.

[Chrisoaks]

So what enables job security now?

[whattheheckheck]

Let them attempt to use ai to build business critical systems and when they waste tens amd hundreds of millions they can rehire master builders who know what they're doing

[intrasight]

They will attempt and then soon enough they will be succeeding, and the master builders will have all retired, and that's the point that humans become dependent upon AI's. I aim to live a couple more decades and I sadly expect to see it play out this way.

[whattheheckheck]

Master builders ought to write blogs, books and speak at conferences and in podcasts for clout and subscriber money so the training data can get scooped up in the next loop. And pick the best of the best for master/apprentice training while you still can

[BarryMilo]

Your dad owning the company?

[lenerdenator]

If you can move humans around like pawns, then by definition, they have no job security.

[simonw]

Being a really good engineer - the kind of engineer you can assign a feature to and they promptly turn around a robust, maintainable, secure and well documented implementation.

[JodieBenitez]

hey... claudex helps me being that.

[necovek]

So does your IDE, your choice of programming language, your OS even — but does it define you/make you a good software engineer?

[JodieBenitez]

No, but who said that ?

[necovek]

I'll be explicit: Claude is just another tool in your SW engineer's belt.

If you believe Claude makes you a good engineer and you previously weren't, I am saying that's not true and you still are not a good engineer even with the latest-and-greatest Claude model.

The difference is between "helps" (in your comment) or "you are". Sure, it helps a good engineer do more, do better, etc — but the thread was on being a good engineer.