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Things that helped me get out of the AI 10x engineer imposter syndrome

colton.dev

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Re: Things that helped me get out of the AI 10x engineer imposter syndrome

#501

Post by tptacek »

samtp wrote: post #491
tptacek wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People share this stuff all the time. Kenton Varda published a whole walkthrough[1], prompts and all. Stories about people's personal LLM workflows have been on the front page here repeatedly over the last few months. What people aren't doing is proving to you that their workflows work as well as they say they do. You want proof, you can DM people for their rate card and see what that costs. [1] https://news.ycombina…

Thanks for sharing and that is interesting to read through. But it's still just a demo, not live production code. From the readme: > As of March, 2025, this library is very new, prerelease software. I'm not looking for personal proof that their workflows work as well as they say they do. I just want an example of a project in production with active users depending on the service for business functions that has been w…

See, I just shared Kenton Varda describing his entire workflow, and you came back asking that I please show you a workflow that would find more credible. Do you want to learn about people's workflows, or do you want to argue with them that their workflows don't work? Nobody is interested in doing the latter with you.

Re: Things that helped me get out of the AI 10x engineer imposter syndrome

#502

Post by gwbas1c »

> If listening to a 70 year old disk makes you happier, just do it. You'll listen to more music if you do that than you would by forcing yourself to use the more "productive" streaming service.

Ironically, when I listen to vinyl instead of streaming, I listen to less music.

If I'm in the zone, I will often go minutes between flipping the record or choosing another one; even though my record player is right next to me.

Re: Things that helped me get out of the AI 10x engineer imposter syndrome

#503

Post by internet_points »

things that might actually make me several x faster:

* if my Github actions ran 10x faster, so I don't start reading about "ai" on hackernews while waiting to test my deployment and not noticing the workflow was done an hour ago

* if the Google cloud console deployment page had 1 instead of 10 vertical scroll bars and wasn't so slow and janky in Firefox

* if people started answering my peculiar but well-researched stackoverflow questions instead of nitpicking and discussing whether they belong on superuser vs unix vs ubuntu vs hermeneutics vs serverfault

* if MS Teams died

anyway, nice to see others having the same feeling about llm's

Re: Things that helped me get out of the AI 10x engineer imposter syndrome

#504

Post by joe_the_user »

voxleone wrote: post #447

There’s something ironic here. For decades, we dreamed of semi-automating software development. CASE tools, UML, and IDEs all promised higher-level abstractions that would "let us focus on the real logic." Now that LLMs have actually fulfilled that dream — albeit by totally different means — many devs feel anxious, even threatened. Why? Because LLMs don’t just autocomplete. They generate. And in doing so, they challe…

People object to CASE tools also I think.

And while I don't categorically object to AI tools, I think your selling objections to them short.

It's completely legitimate to want an explainable/comprehendable/limited-and-defined tool rather than a "it just works" tool. Ideally, this puts one in an "I know its right" position rather than a "I scanned it and it looks generally right and seems to work" position.

Re: Things that helped me get out of the AI 10x engineer imposter syndrome

#505

Post by jakelazaroff »

rob_c wrote: post #427
jakelazaroff wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the generated implementation is not good, you're trading short-term "getting on with the job" and "real deadlines" for mid-to-long-term slowdown and missed deadlines. In other words, it matters whether the AI is creating technical debt.

If you're creating technical debt, you're creating technical debt. That has nothing to do with AI/LLMs. If you can't understand what the tool spits out either; learn, throw it away, or get it to make something you can understand.

Do you want to clarify your original comment, then? I just read it again, and it really sounds like you're saying that asking to review AI-generated code is "disingenuous or naive".

Re: Things that helped me get out of the AI 10x engineer imposter syndrome

#506

Post by paulcole »

WD-42 wrote: post #302
paulcole wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I've never found those 10x claims convincing Who's making these claims?

There was a YC video just a few months ago where a bunch of jergoffs sat in a circle and talked about engineers being 10 to 100x as effective as before. Im sure google will bring it up.

> Im sure google will bring it up.

It didn’t.

Re: Things that helped me get out of the AI 10x engineer imposter syndrome

#507

Post by jedberg »

zaking17 wrote: post #244

The other day I asked chatgpt (o3) to help me compare a bunch of task orchestration systems and arrange them according to some variables I care about (popularity, feature richness, durability, whether can be self-hosted, etc.). I ended up using https://www.inngest.com/ -- which was new to me -- and that single tool sped up my particular task by at least 10x for the week. That was a one-off project, so it won't genera…

Hi there, I was wondering if you'd be willing to share that ChatGPT chat with me (or everyone). I'm the CEO of a competing product (DBOS) and I'm just curious what your question and responses were that let you elsewhere. Thanks!

Re: Things that helped me get out of the AI 10x engineer imposter syndrome

#509

Post by gspencley »

JoshuaDavid wrote: post #407
gspencley wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> making tests What I'm about to discuss is about me, not you. I have no idea what kind of systems you build, what your codebase looks like, use case, business requirements etc. etc. etc. So it is possible writing tests is a great application for LLMs for you. In my day to day work... I wish that developers where I work would stop using LLMs to write tests. The most typical problem with LLM-generated tests on the cod…

There are some patterns you can use that help a bit with this problem. Lowest hanging fruit is to tell the LLM that its tests should test only through public interfaces where possible. Next after that is to add a "check if any non-public interfaces were used in places where a public interface exposes the same functionality the not-yet-committed tests - if so, rewrite tests to use only publicly exposed interfaces" ste…

Oh don't get me wrong. I'm sure that an LLM can write a decent test that doesn't have the problems I described. The problem is that LLMs are making a preexisting problem much, MUCH worse.

That problem statement is:

- Not all tests add value

- Some tests can even create dis-value (ex: slow to run, thus increasing CI bills for the business without actually testing anything important)

- Few developers understand what good automated testing looks like

- Developers are incentivized to write tests just to satisfy code coverage metrics

- Therefore writing tests is a chore and an afterthought

- So they reach for an LLM because it solves what they perceive as a problem

- The tests run and pass, and they are completely oblivious to the anti-patterns just introduced and the problems those will create over time

- The LLMs are generating hundreds, if not thousands, of these problems

So yeah, the problem is 100% the developers who don't understand how to evaluate the output of a tool that they are using.

But unlike functional code, these tests are - in many cases - arguably creating disvalue for the business. At least the functional code is a) more likely to be reviewed and code quality problems addressed and b) even if not, it's still providing features for the end user and thus adding some value.

Re: Things that helped me get out of the AI 10x engineer imposter syndrome

#510

Post by bluefirebrand »

antonvs wrote: post #483
bluefirebrand wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you boycotting AI or something? At this point I am close to deciding to fully boycott it yes > If you try it yourself you'll soon find out that the answer is a very obvious yes I have tried plenty over the years, every time a new model releases and the hype cycle fires up again I look in to see if it is any better I try to use it a couple of weeks, decide it is overrated and stop. Yes it is improving. No it is…

You asked whether it's really better than "what we already had with search engines, online documentation and online Q&A sites". How have you found it not to be significantly better for those purposes? The "not good enough for you to trust" is a strange claim. No matter what source of info you use, outside of official documentation, you have to assess its quality and correctness. LLM output is no different.

> How have you found it not to be significantly better for those purposes

Not even remotely

> LLM output is no different

It is different

A search result might take me to the wrong answer but an LLM might just invent nonsense answers

This is a fundamentally different thing and is more difficult to detect imo

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