←back to thread

61 points NotAnOtter | 6 comments | | HN request time: 1.292s | source | bottom

My company is increasingly pushing prompt engineering as the single way we "should" be coding. The CEO & CTO are both obsessed with it and promote things like "delete entire unit test file & have claude generate a new one" rather than manually address test failures.

I'm a 'senior engineer' with ~5 years of industry experience and am considering moving on from this company because I don't want

1. Be pushed into a workflow that will cause my technical growth to stall or degrade 2. Be overseeing a bunch of AI-generated spaghetti 2-3 years from now

Feel free to address my specific situation but I'm interested in more general opinions.

Show context
leakycap ◴[] No.44468518[source]
The market is not easy right now. I would not leave unless you have something definite lined up.

> 1. Be pushed into a workflow that will cause my technical growth to stall or degrade

Whether your growth stalls or degrades is up to you, but in my country your employer's ability to tell how you how to produce/deliver the work (not just the outcome desired) is the difference between being an employee and contractor

You should remain open to new things in this industry. Hate it or not, AI is currently the new thing in our line of work.

> 2. Be overseeing a bunch of AI-generated spaghetti 2-3 years from now

How you implement code, including human review and understanding of code, is key. I have never copy and pasted code into development from an LLM/AI helper. I've certainly asked it questions about the code, tested the code output, had it add comments to help me understand the code it wrote and produce alternate methods that better fit my needs, etc.

"No spaghetti" in the codebase will prevent having to take care of it, but that doesn't mean small modular components, troubleshooting, general ideation of different approaches to see what can scale, etc. isn't going to be really helpful.

> I'm a 'senior engineer' with ~5 years of industry experience and am considering moving on from this company

5 years is not what I would consider a big bargaining chip in today's market full of seasoned developers, including those who started when they were in middle school and are applying for the same jobs as you would be.

Can you work with your employer to effectively introduce some AI tools and workflows to help ideas, changes, revisions, new features, or even documentation?

Don't jump until it is safe, and remember the next place is likely just slower or one leadership away from asking their employees the same thing your employer is.

replies(2): >>44468566 #>>44468612 #
mattl ◴[] No.44468566[source]
But also don’t give up your principles and use AI stuff if you’re against it.

Hiring people who haven’t used it will be a marketable skill too

replies(2): >>44468597 #>>44468880 #
1. qualeed ◴[] No.44468880[source]
>"Hiring people who haven’t used it will be a marketable skill too".

Can you explain your thinking on this?

Obviously there will be jobs where AI isn't required, so omission of experience would be fine, but I can't think of any reason why it would be marketable to advertise "I've never worked with AI".

In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a resume that contains anything along the lines of "I haven't used X". You would just omit the lack of experience. Otherwise it risks signaling other negatives (not comfortable with change, etc.).

replies(1): >>44468929 #
2. muzani ◴[] No.44468929[source]
It's a moral stance. But AI isn't as bad as say, biological weapons. It's closer to piracy.

So it's like I've never used a gun. Which isn't really a strong point. At the very least, even if you don't plan to use guns, you'd know how guns work and where they don't.

replies(1): >>44468979 #
3. qualeed ◴[] No.44468979[source]
I can understand the stance, I'm just saying that it's not something that I would ever describe as "marketable".

No one is saying "I've never used a gun" or "I've never pirated a movie" on their resume to market their morals. Resumes are to market the skills you have that match the job you're applying for, not for marketing your moral stance.

replies(1): >>44469242 #
4. mattl ◴[] No.44469242{3}[source]
A while ago I had to hire people who'd never used Flash (and therefore agreed to the EULA of Flash Player) for a project.
replies(1): >>44469328 #
5. qualeed ◴[] No.44469328{4}[source]
That's certainly interesting!

But I doubt those people put "never used Flash" on their general resume (or literally any other resume except the one tailored to that position, if they even put it on the resume instead of their cover letter). I also doubt they thought of it as a "marketable skill" considering it was applicable to ~1 job.

In any case, this seems like an incredibly niche situation that probably has no business being extrapolated to all AI tools.

replies(1): >>44469545 #
6. mattl ◴[] No.44469545{5}[source]
There are plenty of cleanroom-type jobs for developers, they just might not always be the sexy big companies offering them.