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Ask HN: Is vibe coding a new mandatory job requirement?

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Re: Ask HN: Is vibe coding a new mandatory job requirement?

#61

Post by zombot »

dasil003 wrote: post #60
zombot wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why a competent programmer wouldn’t have tried it by this point What does one have to do with the other? Since when is following every fad a prerequisite for competence?

Don't shoot the messenger, I'm just telling you how some hiring managers might think, not endorsing the opinion and it's definitely not something I consider in my hiring. I will say it's a little weird to frame it as "every fad" though. Do you really not see any net new or lasting utility for software engineering in AI tools? If not then more power to you, but software engineering being a fast-moving field where ther…

I certainly keep an eye on these developments, but I think the jury is still out on how useful/beneficial they actually are in practice. Generating more code in less time is not a useful measure of productivity for me.

Re: Ask HN: Is vibe coding a new mandatory job requirement?

#62

Post by ryandrake »

dasil003 wrote: post #28
georgemcbay wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We won’t hire anybody moving forward who doesn’t have hands-on agentic programming experience. This doesn't make a lot of sense to me even as someone who uses agentic programming. I would understand not hiring people who are against the idea of agentic programming, but I'd take a skilled programmer (especially one who is good at code review and debugging) who never touched agentic/LLM programming (but knows they wi…

I suspect it’s not about agentic coding being a special skill, and more about why a competent programmer wouldn’t have tried it by this point, and whether that is a sign of ideological objections that could cause friction with the team. Not saying I agree with that thinking, but I definitely see why a hiring manager could think that way.

I can't get into that hiring manager's head. It shouldn't matter, if the candidate can deliver business value. That's what you are hiring them for. You're not hiring them to burn LLM tokens, you're hiring them to create business value. Why would you care if he does it by hand-coding, using an LLM, or chanting magic spells at the computer?

Re: Ask HN: Is vibe coding a new mandatory job requirement?

#63

Post by P-Nuts »

dasil003 wrote: post #28
georgemcbay wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We won’t hire anybody moving forward who doesn’t have hands-on agentic programming experience. This doesn't make a lot of sense to me even as someone who uses agentic programming. I would understand not hiring people who are against the idea of agentic programming, but I'd take a skilled programmer (especially one who is good at code review and debugging) who never touched agentic/LLM programming (but knows they wi…

I suspect it’s not about agentic coding being a special skill, and more about why a competent programmer wouldn’t have tried it by this point, and whether that is a sign of ideological objections that could cause friction with the team. Not saying I agree with that thinking, but I definitely see why a hiring manager could think that way.

I was only granted permission to use it a few weeks ago and haven’t had time to set it up yet

Re: Ask HN: Is vibe coding a new mandatory job requirement?

#64

Post by peacebeard »

mcdeltat wrote: post #46
peacebeard wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When doing more technical / novel work you can’y vibe code it but you can still use ai tools to make things faster. Having Claude implement small chunks with strict direction and oversight is underrated in my opinion. Or just using it to search the codebase (where is the code that does x), implement tests, and do code review are all helpful. There is a lot of e-peen measuring around vibe coding but I think it’s reall…

Out of curiosity, can you elaborate on the size and nature of the "small chunks"? I'm very curious for examples!

Sure! I went through my Claude history and pulled out some of the most recent ones (anonymized a bit). I had it write code when it was rote / boilerplate work to save time, and other than that I used it more to discuss the code rather than write it for me. In between these, I was writing code myself.

Writing code:

- can you remove this and move the state here into

- Can you update the unit tests for the working copy changes that need test updates / created (it wrote a bunch of tests which were satisfactory, I just deleted some redundant ones)

- I removed this type can the usages in this file be safety replaced with ? (it analyzed the type differences, confirmed it was safe, and made the replacement, though an IDE could have done the replacement too)

- Can you fix this type error (it built a type guard function to address it, which is boilerplate code)

- is there a way to add the output here not just the input (it found a way to plumb some context through the codebase that I needed, pretty rote)

Other stuff I did in this time:

- can you review the code in commit (been doing this a lot)

- Seems my changes in this branch has broken . can you add logging to help me diagnose what is now wrong, and also analyze the git history to maybe get some theories on what maybe broke it (this can save a lot of time, digging through git history manually can be time consuming)

- This file doesn't work as expected anymore given that we've implemented . Can you investigate (another good time save, it's good at digging through a bunch of changes quickly)

Hope this was of interest to you!

Re: Ask HN: Is vibe coding a new mandatory job requirement?

#65

Post by borplk »

I realise that this is not always practical. But generally I refuse to engage or negotiate about the way I work. Especially if you have a lot of experience, you have to push back when people want to drag you in the mud and wrestle about which tools you use.

A good company will not try to micro manage you as an Engineer in that way.

Re: Ask HN: Is vibe coding a new mandatory job requirement?

#66

Post by array_key_first »

cebert wrote: post #4

We won’t hire anybody moving forward who doesn’t have hands-on agentic programming experience. We’re in the traditionally slower moving GovTech space. I have to imagine this is now a common expectation in many sectors. Teams where I work can use Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and Copilot CLI. Internally, it seems like Claude Code and Codex are the more popular tools being used by most software teams. If you’re new to th…

If you're technically competent, as in you can program pretty well, you can pick up agentic programming fast. Like, in a week, max. And I don't mean be okay-enough. I mean be just as good as people who have been agentic coding this whole time.

And, at the end of the day, a person who can program will be better at agentic coding after a couple days than someone who cannot program who has been agentic coding for a year.

Agentic coding is just not all that complicated. It's a deep rabbit hole, sure, but figuring out how to prompt an AI is not that complicated. The harness can be, the skills might be, the subagent architecture maybe. But your organization should be standardizing that stuff. I would hope to God. Catching someone up to speed is very quick.

But, if you hire good engineers, you will be have a competently engineered product. That has always been the case and will continue to be the case. If you hire sales people and product managers, it will not. Again, that's always been the case.

Re: Ask HN: Is vibe coding a new mandatory job requirement?

#67

Post by array_key_first »

bitwize wrote: post #30
dasil003 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect it’s not about agentic coding being a special skill, and more about why a competent programmer wouldn’t have tried it by this point, and whether that is a sign of ideological objections that could cause friction with the team. Not saying I agree with that thinking, but I definitely see why a hiring manager could think that way.

If you aren't taking advantage of it, you are not a competent software engineer in 2026.

Many companies cannot take advantage of it. Not everyone is making toy CRUD web applications to help consumers purchase things they don't want. Some people are making safety critical applications, and many more are making highly sensitive applications.

At my job, we just got agents. Because we had to self-host them in our new data center. Our product isn't the kind that can be used with Claude or Gemini, like, legally.

Re: Ask HN: Is vibe coding a new mandatory job requirement?

#68

Post by dasil003 »

zombot wrote: post #61
dasil003 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't shoot the messenger, I'm just telling you how some hiring managers might think, not endorsing the opinion and it's definitely not something I consider in my hiring. I will say it's a little weird to frame it as "every fad" though. Do you really not see any net new or lasting utility for software engineering in AI tools? If not then more power to you, but software engineering being a fast-moving field where ther…

I certainly keep an eye on these developments, but I think the jury is still out on how useful/beneficial they actually are in practice. Generating more code in less time is not a useful measure of productivity for me.

Agree the jury is still out, but "More code in less time" is a shallow strawman. The better question is what is it good at and what is it not good at, and what are the ways to best leverage those capabilities. I've seen enough use cases from enough engineers now that I firmly believe anyone saying "nope never useful" is sticking their head in the sand.

Re: Ask HN: Is vibe coding a new mandatory job requirement?

#70

Post by snowboat »

Vibe coding is definitely the future. The real issue is that the industry is not ready to fully embrace it yet. My suggestion is to keep working on traditional software engineering for now, but use vibe coding to build your own side projects. One day, that will give you the power to start your own business. Believe me!
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