Comment by unoti
7 days ago
> I'm not sure that having the patience to work with something with a very inconsistent performance and that frequently lies is an extension of existing development skills.
If you’ve be been tasked with leadership of an engineering effort involving multiple engineers and stakeholders you know that this is in fact a crucial part of the role the more senior you get. It is much the same with people: know their limitations, show them a path to success, help them overcome their limitations by laying down the right abstractions and giving them the right coaching, make it easier to do the right thing. Most of the same approaches apply. When we do these things with people it’s called leadership or management. With agents, it’s context engineering.
Because I reached that position 15 years ago, I can tell you that this is untrue (in the sense that the experience is completely different from an LLM).
Training is one thing, but training doesn't increase the productivity of the trainer; it's meant to improve the capability of the trainee.
At any level of capability, though - whether we're talking about an intern after one year of university or a senior developer with 20 years of experience - effective management requires that you're able to trust that the person tells you when they've hit a snag or anything else you may need to know. We may not be talking 100% of trust, but not too far from that, either. You can't continue working with someone that doesn't tell you what you need to know even 10% of the time, regardless of their level. LLMs are not at that acceptable level yet, so the experience is not similar to technical leadership.
If you've ever been tasked with leading one or more significant projects you'd know that if you feel you have to review every line of code anyone on the team writes, at every step of the process, that's not the path to success (if you did that, not only would progress be slow, but your team wouldn't like you very much). Code review is a very important part of the process, but it's not an efficient mechanism for day-to-day communication.
> effective management requires that you're able to trust that the person tells you when they've hit a snag or anything else you may need to know
Nope, effective management is on YOU, not them. If everyone you’re managing is completely transparent and immediately tells you stuff, you’re playing in easy mode
So the role of a coding agent is to challenge me to play in hard mode?
And suppose getting developers to not lie or hide important information is on me, what should I do to get an LLM to not do that?
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Yes, I want to play in easy mode. Why would I want to play in hard mode?
You're trying to sell AI here, right? And the argument is that AI is like hard mode... which developers are already in, but might not be.
It's just not a very good sales pitch.
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> If everyone you’re managing is completely transparent and immediately tells you stuff, you’re playing in easy mode
So much this. There are many managers who are effective at managing people who do not need management.
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> effective management requires that you're able to trust that the person tells you when they've hit a snag or anything else you may need to know
This is what we shoot for, yes, but many of the most interesting war stories involve times when people should have been telling you about snags but weren't-- either because they didn't realize they were spinning their wheels, or because they were hoping they'd somehow magically pull off the win before the due date, or innumerable other variations on the theme. People are most definitely not reliable about telling you things they should have told you.
> if you feel you have to review every line of code anyone on the team writes...
Somebody has to review the code, and step back and think about it. Not necessarily the manager, but someone does.
> the most interesting war stories involve times when people should have been telling you about snags but weren't-
This comes up a lot. A person sometimes does an undesirable thing that an AI also does. So you might as well use the AI.
But we don't apply this thinking to people. If a person does something undesirable sometimes then we accept that because they are human. If they do it very frequently then at some point, given a choice, you will stop working with that person.
1000% this. Today LLMs are like enthusiastic, energetic, over-confident, well-read junior engineers.
Does it take effort to work with them and get them to be effective in your code base? Yes. But is there a way to lead them in such a way that your "team" (you in this case) gets more done? Yes.
But it does take effort. That's why I love "vibe engineering" as a term because the engineering (or "senior" or "lead" engineering) is STILL what we are doing.
Inconsistent performance and frequent lies are a crucial part of the role, really? I've only met a couple of people like that on my career. Interviews go both ways: if I can't establish that the team I'll be working with is composed and managed by honest and competent people, I don't accept their offer. Sometimes it has meant missing out on the highest compensation, but at least I don't deal with lies and inconsistent performance.