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My spicy take on vibe coding for PMs

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Re: My spicy take on vibe coding for PMs

#171

Post by BoneShard »

sdevonoes wrote: post #86
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…

Simply put in your resume that you are a manager? And learn how to vibe code a weather app? Wouldn’t be the first time I “lie” in my CV about my skills (“lie” in quotes because I can learn pretty fast; I know the fundamentals)

Don't do that if you're in the US. I was laid off and finally got two offers, both places ran a background check and had all the information - my previous title, precise start - end time, etc. I've talked to one hiring manager and he told me that they had a lot of offers revoked due to failing these background checks recently.

Re: My spicy take on vibe coding for PMs

#172

Post by kaffekaka »

maplethorpe wrote: post #21

Hot take: only PMs need to code now. With Claude 4.6 Opus, the engineer skill set is no longer useful. Why are we hiring people with code writing ability when code writing ability has no value anymore?

In my job I struggle to find time for the coding I need to get done, in between all the other stuff I also need to do. If the coding part goes that much quicker with AI, then I can do the rest of my job better.

So AI is merely letting me focus more on the other parts. Some developers don't like this. I kind of do.

Re: My spicy take on vibe coding for PMs

#173

Post by kaffekaka »

perrylaj wrote: post #32
maplethorpe wrote: post #21

Hot take: only PMs need to code now. With Claude 4.6 Opus, the engineer skill set is no longer useful. Why are we hiring people with code writing ability when code writing ability has no value anymore?

Opposing Hot take (possibly missing the joke....): Coding was never the most valuable skill a software engineer contributed. Socially-capable engineers are going to be far more likely than PMs to 'shine' when agents can write code and engineers are afforded more time to engage with busines/customers/stakeholder/domain experts. If my experience is any reflection of the norm, the avg PMs greatest value has never come f…

This sums up my experience/opinion well.

Re: My spicy take on vibe coding for PMs

#174

Post by laalshaitaan »

The best point in this thread: "intuition as evals." That's actually the crux. PMs have context about what the product should do that engineers often don't, and that intuition IS an eval. The problem is it doesn't scale once the system has millions of conversations no one is reading. The empathy from vibe coding is real, the prototype-as-spec culture is where it breaks down for AI products specifically.

Re: My spicy take on vibe coding for PMs

#175

Post by jwilliams »

jmull wrote: post #136
jwilliams wrote: post #97

I read takes like this and I feel like it's gatekeeping. I love writing software. I love that others are now getting to share this. I think the issues here are valid. Equally there is lots of hard engineering work to reduce these issues. That's where I'm putting more energy. My scale is decidedly non-Meta, but we're investing to make the whole team able to get their own PRs up. It's not been without it's bumps, but o…

Don't ignore the context here. These are people hired to develop software for a company. They have an obligation to do so efficiently, with sufficient quality, and while balancing the company's short term and longer term business needs. I think it's great that software development has been opened up by LLMs. Everyone should at least try it, IMO. But your company's source isn't your personal playground and you shouldn…

I agree that a company’s codebase isn’t a playground and I know+feel those obligations.

My reaction is more to the broader tone of some of these discussions. In my experience engineering cultures can become quite dogmatic or obstructive, and that can block improvements just as much as the opposite problem.

At our definitely-non-Meta-scale, we’ve been experimenting with letting more of the team get their own PRs up with LLM help. Overall it’s been pretty transformative. Interestingly, people tend to work on QoL and polish improvements that many SWE workflows often don’t prioritise or have time for.

There are outliers of course, but we learn, revert, and move on. If the outcome somewhere like Meta is PMs building nonsense, that feels more like a deeper systemic issue than something inherent to opening up the codebase.

Re: My spicy take on vibe coding for PMs

#176

Post by gedy »

donkers wrote: post #168
gedy wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, I mean if we’re talking about "we don’t need engineers anymore" why not do that?

Re: My spicy take on vibe coding for PMs

#177

Post by lrakster »

We are a much smaller team than Meta and all-in with agentic-coding. But even we are seeing value in specialization of roles. There is so much to be done. Why have PMs work with coding agents to code the product when they aren't going to do as good a job as an Dev will? Have the PMs do research, competitive analysis, mockups, prioritization, etc

Re: My spicy take on vibe coding for PMs

#178

Post by array_key_first »

alansaber wrote: post #115
fifticon wrote: post #82

I am glad this essay was on the right side of the fence, otherwise I would have written it myself in response.. Our company is currently one of countless, where we just had a "get with the program" meeting with our PMs, where they showcased stuff they had added to our enterprise system in hours and days, and told us that they expected us to start delivering with the same tools techniques and speed.. Meanwhile, my tea…

Move fast and break things. If it works well for a startup with 3 users and 1 developer, why not do the same for our critical infrastructure company? Openclaw, fire my engineering team and bring me more alcohol.

Everybody and their mom loves to believe they're the hot young stuff on the block.

Even with a company like, say, Meta, they have more freedom to make mistakes than 100% of enterprise companies. Nobody cares too much if Facebook goes down or is slow or something.

But if you're selling to another business, they're gonna have your ass for breakfast for even the tiniest mistakes. As they should, they're paying you a lot of money!

Re: My spicy take on vibe coding for PMs

#179

Post by array_key_first »

intelVISA wrote: post #124
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…

I appreciate this is satire, or marketing, but I'll engage: in this scenario how is the SaaS generating millions if anyone can just prompt their own?

The SaaS comes with a complimentary blow job.

In the future, prostitutes no longer work the street corner and you no longer roll up. No no, prostitutes vibe code apps nobody asks for with subtle hints in it that they're offering their services. Then, clients buy it as a proxy.

Law enforcement isn't prepared for this!

Re: My spicy take on vibe coding for PMs

#180

Post by senko »

bonecrusher2102 wrote: post #143
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…

Agree. Also as a PM, one of the most important things you can do, once you've decided or understood "this is the most important thing we can be working on," is to sell that vision internally so you have high alignment and thus can move fast with shipping (i.e. Sales, Marketing, Legal et al are all on board and ready to help you get to market). SHOWING internal folks something is always more compelling than words on a…

> then throw it away and let your Engineers build the real thing

Aaah, but the pull of "it's already built, 90% is done, let the eng polish it and that's it!" productivity siren song is strong...

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