Comment by zuzululu
6 hours ago
Your take is outdated. Agents are excellent at refactoring now. If you told me what you wrote during an interview, that would be grounds to not continue.
It's very important that you are using coding agents with the latest frontier models and know exactly what it can't and can't do if you want to be hired in this market.
Interesting that you said the word ‘using’. Why is that? If an agent could refactor excellently without a human who is the user
"Refactor this code spin up subagents" try that in codex to start your journey of improving your agentic coding skills but if you are too lazy to do even then there's just no hope for you.
I am currently working 3 remote jobs thanks to agentic coding and one of the jobs require me to interview and hire other devs. I find it amusing how many are irrationaly resistant and unwilling to use agentic coding. They are also the loudest in the room with opinions that are outdated. On the flip side, it's just as funny how to see how complicated engineers try to make agentic coding. It doesn't have to be and that's not its design. Don't get in its way as much as possible. The frontier models are good enough that adding complexity only wastes more tokens. We've come a long way from the summer you were fiddling with Sonnet 4.5 in Cursor or windsurf.
The job market isn't suddenly going to swoop in and save you by banning AI agents. Keep up or get left behind. Don't let other people's opinions about AI agents hinder your own progress, chances are they have no skin in the game.
> "Refactor this code spin up subagents" try that in codex
The deferral of all agency as a product owner over to the stochastic-word-box-in-a-do-loop feels like the kind of thing that, if you mentioned you do that in an interview, would be grounds to not continue.
Re: your updated comment, I'm glad you've found success with this pattern of behavior, but I'd suggest that you might be extrapolating "I haven't been punished yet for this shortcut" to "This is the future of work and those who disagree are luddites".
lol - I guess, if I heard that in an interview that would be grounds not to continue.
fwiw codex is very good. arguably better than the sonnet equivalent (value-wise). I use both daily, professionally. And "refactor this code spin up subagents" is hardly an expert-level "I wouldn't hire you" flex.
EDIT: agree with your comment updates. I'd just say it more positively leaning especially to people who are stressed financially. SOTA has advanced a lot so counter-intuitively being behind isn't really behind, it can almost be a way to leap-frog, lean on the Agents. But definitely you have to commit to putting in the reps and learning and not just mindlessly instructing AI to "fix it". Think that's where the discussion splits.