Using LLMs at Oxide

A measured, comprehensive, and sensible take. Not surprising from Bryan. This was a nice line:

> it’s just embarrassing — it’s as if the writer is walking around with their intellectual fly open.

I think Oxide didn't include this in the RFD because they exclusively hire senior engineers, but in an organization that contains junior engineers I'd add something specific to help junior engineers understand how they should approach LLM use.

Bryan has 30+ years of challenging software (and now hardware) engineering experience. He memorably said that he's worked on and completed a "hard program" (an OS), which he defines as a program you doubt you can actually get working.

The way Bryan approaches an LLM is super different to how a 2025 junior engineer does so. That junior engineer possibly hasn't programmed without the tantalizing, even desperately tempting option to be assisted by an LLM.

> That junior engineer possibly hasn't programmed without the tantalizing, even desperately tempting option to be assisted by an LLM.

Years ago I had to spend many months building nothing but Models (as in MVC) for a huge data import / ingest the company I worked on was rewriting. It was just messy enough that it couldn't be automated. I almost lost my mind from the dull monotony and started even having attendance issues. I know today that could have been done with an LLM in minutes. Almost crazy how much time I put into that project compared to if I did it today.