If you can reduce a problem to a point where it can be solved by simple code you can get the rest of the solution very quickly.
Reducing a problem to a point where it can be solved with simple code takes a lot of skill and experience and is generally still quite a time-consuming process.
Here's an example I saw on twitter. Asking an LLM to document a protocol from the codebase:
https://ampcode.com/threads/T-f02e59f8-e474-493d-9558-11fddf...
Do you think you will be able to capture any of this extra value? I think I'm faster at coding, but the overall corporate project timeline feels about the same. I feel more relaxed and confident that the work can be done. Not sure how to get a raise out of this.
Agentic workflows for me results in bloated code, which is fine when I'm willing to hand over an subsystem to the agent, such as a frontend on a side project and have it vibe code the entire thing. Trying to get clean code erases all/most of my productivity gains, and doesn't spark joy. I find having a back-end-forth with an agent exhausting, probably because I have to build and discard multiple mental models of the proposed solution, since the approach can vary wildly between prompts. An agent can easily switch between using Newton-Raphson and bisection when asked to refactor unrelated arguments, which a human colleague wouldn't do after a code review.
If you do care about these things, it will take you overall longer to write the code with an LLM than it would by hand-crafting it. I started playing around with Claude on my hobby projects, and found it requires an enormous amount of exhausting handholding and post-processing to get the code to the point where I am really happy with it as a consistent, complete, expressive work of art that I would be willing to sign my name to.
This really is what businesses want and always have wanted. I've seen countless broken systems spitting out wrong info that was actively used by the businesses in my career, before AI. They literally did not want it fixed when I brought it up because dealing with errors was part of the process now in pretty much all cases. I don't even try anymore unless I'm specifically brought on to fix a legacy system.
>that I would be willing to sign my name to.
This right here is what mgmt thinks is the big "problem" that AI solves. They have always wanted us to magically know what parts are "good enough" and what parts can slide but for us to bear the burden of blame. The real problem is same as always bad spec. AI won't solve that but it will in their eyes remove a layer in their poor communication. Obviously no SWE is going to build a system that spit out wrong info and just say "hire people to always double check the work" or add it to so-so's job duties to check, but that really is the solution most places seem to go with by lack of decision.
Perhaps there is some sort of failure of SWE's to understand that businesses don't care. Accounting will catch the expensive errors anyway. Then Execs will bull whip middle managers and it will go away.
The "Perfectionist Engineer" without a "Pragmatic Executive" to press them into delivering something good enough would of course still been in their workshop, tinkering away, when the market had already closed.
But the "Pragmatic Executive" without the "Perfectionist Engineer" around to temper their naive optimism would just as soon find themselves chased from the market for selling gilded junk.
You're right that there do seem to be some execs, in the naive optimism that defines them, eager to see if this technology finally lets them bring their vision to market without the engineer to balance them.
We'll see how it goes, I guess.
You are describing a push-and-pull / tug-of-war balanced relationship. In reality that's absolutely exactly never balanced. The engineer has 1% say, the other 99% go to the executive.
I so wish your take was universally applicable. In my 24 years of career, it was not.