Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My spicy take on vibe coding for PMs

ddmckinnon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 202 posts

Re: My spicy take on vibe coding for PMs

#161

Post by dogleash »

raviisoccupied wrote: post #9

I don’t think this is a spicy take at all. A PM’s job is to prioritise, and the most important/high priority projects will naturally be handled by Engineers enabled with AI-coding workflows. The high priority/impact work should be allocated to the folks with the highest level of skill. I feel like PMs coding unlocks a whole new category of work, mainly addressing the long tail of cool ideas/small optimisations that o…

>PMs coding unlocks a whole new category of work, mainly addressing the long tail of cool ideas/small optimisations that ordinarily would not be addressed

So you get to cowboy code, but I don't. I see how it is.

Re: My spicy take on vibe coding for PMs

#162

Post by [deleted] »

nananana9 wrote: post #125
akshay2603 wrote: post #120

I am one of those PMs at a big tech that just shipped a PR in prod: My take: 1. Doing this moves my team faster. I now use sourcegraph MCP all the time to file much better bugs. And when the actual bug fixing TAT is larger than bug filing TAT, I rather just do it myself. My engineers appreciate it, truly. 2. This not only helps me do bug filing but just get comfortable with code. And this improves my PRDs, my MVPs an…

If you can't read code and don't understand the codebase, you have no business anywhere near a text editor. I work with a PM that's also learning to program. I assume just like you, they probably feel they'll otherwise will be pushed out. While it's far from the most productive thing I could be doing, I'm always happy to answer questions from a beginner programmer, or walk them through how something works, or how it…

[deleted]

Re: My spicy take on vibe coding for PMs

#163

Post by akshay2603 »

nananana9 wrote: post #125
akshay2603 wrote: post #120

I am one of those PMs at a big tech that just shipped a PR in prod: My take: 1. Doing this moves my team faster. I now use sourcegraph MCP all the time to file much better bugs. And when the actual bug fixing TAT is larger than bug filing TAT, I rather just do it myself. My engineers appreciate it, truly. 2. This not only helps me do bug filing but just get comfortable with code. And this improves my PRDs, my MVPs an…

If you can't read code and don't understand the codebase, you have no business anywhere near a text editor. I work with a PM that's also learning to program. I assume just like you, they probably feel they'll otherwise will be pushed out. While it's far from the most productive thing I could be doing, I'm always happy to answer questions from a beginner programmer, or walk them through how something works, or how it…

Spicy response but nevertheless, thank you for taking the time.

You are right that I can't understand code. But what I can do is identify the right problem, and identify the right solution to solve that problem. Coding agents are GREAT enough now to complete the last leg of solution -> code implementation.

It helps that my PRs are small, typically frontend heavy, I can test all I want, and almost all of them get merged without any major comments. If this is happening , then surely we can agree that no one is cleaning up my mess or I am not generating something that is not net positive.

I have zero worries about being pushed out - all of this is barely 5% of my work time ++ weekends, happening out of interest (and the other reasons I mentioned) and not because I have to.

And sure, I could invest in learning the craft. But this is exactly that from my pov. I am sitting in terminal, I am asking Claude to explain what changes it is making, thoroughly testing everything to ensure nothing breaks. Just because I am not typing the actual code doesn't mean I am not putting an earnest effort.

Re: My spicy take on vibe coding for PMs

#164

Post by keeda »

polotics wrote: post #88
keeda wrote: post #55

A friend at Meta -- long before the age of LLMs -- got paged at 3am for a site issue. When he found the PR that caused the bug, the testing section for the change simply said: YOLO! This was well into the "Move fast with stable infra" era of Meta, but clearly that still encouraged "Move fast and break things" for everything beyond infra. PMs landing Prod diffs sounds like even more moving fast shall ensue.

The quip "move things and break fast" is from which year btw, do you remember?

Hah, not sure of the origin, but I do recall seeing it at some point and I think it was this HN comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41581370

Re: My spicy take on vibe coding for PMs

#165

Post by bennyelv »

dasil003 wrote: post #56

As much as I recognize that a truly talented product manager is worth their weight in gold, I'd say the average engineer would be much more capable of learning to be an average PM than vice versa. PM vibe coding a prototype for demonstration purposes? Might be a better use of a designer or engineers time, but okay I could see it being valuable. PM vibe coding something to ship to production? Your title is now enginee…

I imagine you’re saying that as a software engineer :). As a manager of both software engineers and product managers, I think this view is a bit of a stretch.

Some software engineers would make good product managers, some product managers would make good software engineers, and the majority of both are best suited to their current job.

Re: My spicy take on vibe coding for PMs

#166

Post by DiscourseFan »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #108
DiscourseFan wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was before the bot could competently code things. Software development is now a very different beast, and yes while there have been some very stupid and irresponsible uses of this new technology, many others are integrating it effectively into their workflows.

> This was before the bot could competently code things Agree to disagree Getting something working is the absolute bare minimum, it's not "competent"

The fact that it can, and often does, get things working, sometimes even well, is evidence enough. It can't do some things, it can easily do others, and knowing which is which is very important nowadays.

Re: My spicy take on vibe coding for PMs

#167

Post by bluefirebrand »

DiscourseFan wrote: post #166
bluefirebrand wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This was before the bot could competently code things Agree to disagree Getting something working is the absolute bare minimum, it's not "competent"

The fact that it can, and often does, get things working, sometimes even well, is evidence enough. It can't do some things, it can easily do others, and knowing which is which is very important nowadays.

> The fact that it can, and often does, get things working, sometimes even well, is evidence enough

So can my 12 year old nephew, but we aren't racing to put him in charge of software development in professional settings

Re: My spicy take on vibe coding for PMs

#168

Post by donkers »

gedy wrote: post #149
Bridged7756 wrote: post #33

Our job is done for. We will be shown the door, and everyone will rejoice. Everyone will live in a happy world where you'll doddle a house and Claude will build you a next generation SaaS that makes you millions. Managers will do the job of engineers, by just telling LLMs to make an app or to make money or something. C-suites will have agents doing the jobs of managers, and CEOs will run entire companies with a Claud…

Maybe, but why have (frankly not that intelligent/logical) PMs doing dev work vs the dev/eng types being the PMs with AI help?

Way to dunk on a whole group of people there. As an engineer turned PM, some of us are intelligent and logical and don’t want to do this stupid shit. And some engineers should never be PMs, I’ve seen some real disasters where engineering tried to play that role.

Re: My spicy take on vibe coding for PMs

#169

Post by joe_mamba »

dragonwriter wrote: post #156
joe_mamba wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Of course, in America you have to fund your own retirement. Isn't social security a thing? Plus employer funded 401K also? >As long as the pensions plans remain solvent, "savings" are a lot less important in Europe. "As long as" is doing a lot of lifting here, and that's enough if you're lucky enough to own your own property and not have to pay market rate rent at your old age.

> Isn't social security a thing? Social Security alone will, at best, slightly mitigate poverty. 401Ks are generally employee-funded, with some firms providing matching funds, especially during good economic times and where the firm is in a field where the main area of labor relied on relatively scarce so that there is competition for talent. EDIT: The line about social security is a little inaccurate in the extreme…

>Social Security alone will, at best, slightly mitigate poverty.

It's the same in Europe

Re: My spicy take on vibe coding for PMs

#170

Post by kaffekaka »

dasil003 wrote: post #145
neonstatic wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd say the average engineer would be much more capable of learning to be an average PM than vice versa. It's a completely different skillset. Practice shows, that most Engineers simply do not want to be PMs or find out about that after making the change and regretting it.

I agree but my point stands, even if they don’t want to, an engineer at least has the precision of thought to specify how a product could work. Many PMs simply don’t have this, so asking them to become vibe coders is a hopeless waste of time.

I agree, the thought of some PMs building an actual system is absurd. They do not understand the details necessary.

But quite a few developers I know would also be absolutely hopeless as PMs. No people skills, no interest in strategy or the long term view, do not want to hear about end users.

PM = project manager in my world

Post reply on HN