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Ask HN: Worth leaving position over push to adopt vibe coding?

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Re: Ask HN: Worth leaving position over push to adopt vibe coding?

#61

Post by edanm »

wrs wrote: post #33

I know with only 5 years experience this may not be obvious, but this is only the first of many “revolutionary” technologies making everyone around you lose their minds that you’ll have to deal with in your career. Like every other such technology, I recommend that you engage with it, understand it, relate that experience to what your employer does, and be the voice of knowledgeable pragmatism about where to use it.…

> I know with only 5 years experience this may not be obvious, but this is only the first of many “revolutionary” technologies making everyone around you lose their minds that you’ll have to deal with in your career.

While this has some truth, the size of the current "revolution" makes all the others look tiny, especially in terms of how it affects a programmer's day job. Nor did most of those "revolutions" affect every field of programming at once, like this one does. The percent of programmers actually impacted by blockchain is probably in the low single-digits. The percent of programmers using some version of AI tooling 3 years into this is probably >50%, and the more impactful tools will be used more very soon is my gues.

Re: Ask HN: Worth leaving position over push to adopt vibe coding?

#62

Post by gary17the »

Vibe coding/prompt engineering automatically accumulate "technical debt" of spaghetti code and thus with time cause every larger project to fail. Sooner or later you will be asked to fix all that AI mess in your company codebase and when you respond that you are unable to do so without a major, manual rewrite, you will probably get fired. Stay at your job for as long as possible, but start searching for a new position ASAP in an organization that declares up front that they do not intend to use AI for their codebase as a matter of company policy. There are actually companies out there already that make that kind of choice, but it might take a year or two for you to find such a job in the current job market. If all else fails, switch to the Linux kernel/driver development specialty with C/Rust for companies like Canonical.

Re: Ask HN: Worth leaving position over push to adopt vibe coding?

#63

Post by dwb »

Yes, but not without something else lined up – it’s tough out there right now. There are absolutely companies out there with much more sensible AI policies. It is good to have experience with it, it’s a tool in the toolbox, but best to be rid of the starry-eyed marks taken in by the hyperbole.

Re: Ask HN: Worth leaving position over push to adopt vibe coding?

#64

Post by il-b »

Quit. Doing the work you hate will burn you out, faster than you’d expect. The worst part is to pretend to be enthusiastic about the tech, while in the same time knowing it’s just not worth your time. If you don’t have enough savings and leaving the job isn’t an option right now, maybe just stay for several months and learn some tech that is complex and boring enough to not to attract too many ”vibe” people

Re: Ask HN: Worth leaving position over push to adopt vibe coding?

#65

Post by KronisLV »

> delete entire unit test file & have claude generate a new one

Why not just add new tests or refactor the existing ones? Seems kind of silly.

Aside from that:

  - if you don't like AI tools and can afford to do so, then look for a place that matches how you want to work
  - if you do like AI tools, or are open to learning them, then there isn't an issue (aside from maybe how they're used)
There isn't much more to it: https://blog.kronis.dev/blog/ai-artisans-and-brainrot (bit of a rant of mine on the topic, the tl;dr would be that the cat is out of the bag in regards to these tools and there are both positives and negatives, but they lead to brainrot and degradation of skills the same way how IDEs and StackOverflow did, just a large leap further)

Re: Ask HN: Worth leaving position over push to adopt vibe coding?

#66

Post by bravesoul2 »

Zooming out the problem is micromanaging vs. let those on the shop floor make decisions. You are being told how to work. If everyone but you agrees maybe it is time to consider a move. Your story paints a worldview you have that will be loved by some companies I think.

If it is CTO only and the engineers all disagree. Maybe worth thinking about how to get that voice heard without ruffling feathers.

Try an evaporating cloud! This is a bit heavy to read but is a good technique to think about. It is so good it might change YOUR mind too about this situation! It looks to get to the facts and once practices is a good tool to use.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporating_cloud

Tldr is they want vibe coding because X and you want not vibe coding because of Y. The assumption is Y = !X but if it isn't there could be a good win win.

Re: Ask HN: Worth leaving position over push to adopt vibe coding?

#67

Post by biglyburrito »

Stay, but actively look for other opportunities. It’s a miserable tech job market right now; hunkering down and continuing to collect a paycheck is something you shouldn’t take for granted.

As others have said, use this opportunity to learn about what works w/ AI based on all the crap that doesn’t. Your C-level execs have given you carte blanche to fuck around, without worrying too much about the immediate-term consequences. If they literally said to delete existing test files & generate new ones using AI, do it! And when shit inevitably goes sideways, you’ll be able to spend more of your salaried time rewriting those tests to probably look & work more like the original tests that you deleted.

And while you’re learning to use AI, you’ll be burning the company’s funny-money on AI usage fees. At some point, they’re gonna realize they don’t have a lot to show for all the money that was thrown away in service of doing what they told employees to do. At which point, they’ll take a more measured & pragmatic approach towards using AI. Do everyone a favor & help them get to that point sooner than later.

Re: Ask HN: Worth leaving position over push to adopt vibe coding?

#69

Post by HenryBemis »

biglyburrito wrote: post #67

Stay, but actively look for other opportunities. It’s a miserable tech job market right now; hunkering down and continuing to collect a paycheck is something you shouldn’t take for granted. As others have said, use this opportunity to learn about what works w/ AI based on all the crap that doesn’t. Your C-level execs have given you carte blanche to fuck around, without worrying too much about the immediate-term conse…

I fear that when the CFO and CEO will walk in holding a hammer and a saw, the CTO will start blaming the Directors for not "maximizing value" by "misusing" AI.. because why blame the tech when you can fire 20 more devs/engineers and hire 20 more eager and cheaper ones...?

As for the long term consequences.. I suggest "in front of your nose" by Orwell.

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