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Comment by teekert | Hacker News Reader

IDK, I'm thinking more than ever. I used to be in a flow, writing code, now, I'm thinking at the top of my lungs, making a new decision every 10 sec, Claude thinks through all the scenarios, makes proposals for many data models, RBAC rules etc, and I'm just focusing on understanding it all and deciding (and it can be pretty exhausting!). More thinking than ever. Am I doing it wrong? Should I just think less? Rely on the spec more?

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I do the same and I was just coming home the other day after doing a massive system design session with AI and I was probably the most mentally exhausted I’ve ever been in my career. But I guess the thought is, “is that necessary?” Could I have just yolo let Claude take the wheel. I don’t know the answer. I know at the end of the day I’m accountable for this output so I feel a professional responsibility to understand what’s going on. Maybe that sense of responsibility is holding me back but I really don’t know.

I feel the same. In 2 days I meet the people that gave me this assignment, they have questions, they will look at the visual I made of the DB layout and the RBAC table, and they will say some stuff is wrong, or ask why I deviated from their proposal.

And no-way am I going to ask them to wait as I relay my questions to Claude.

So I stay on top of things. I tell them: "I simplified the RBAC because these two roles here are functionally the same and, I noticed there were two axes underneath, scope and trust which I encoded here and here..." etc. Yes, a lot of it is Opus' findings, but along the way I also stopped Claude from over-complicating things at several stages in the development.

I do also feel that I'm slowly developing this way of working, perhaps I'll learn to lean into it more, perhaps I will get better at it. Perhaps it's just exhausting for now and I can handle more and more agents as I do it more and more. That's what I hope at least, to become a one-stop software shop by employing agents, all while being uncompromising on quality. What choice do we have?

I take note of when I provide input that disagrees with the LLM's suggestions, or adds additional insight. If I was just accepting the model's suggestions all the way then I don't need to be there, if I feel that I am contributing to a better result then I should be there.

This is starting to happen less, however.

Same here. I used to hit back LLMs with refactoring ideas and prompts to use better APIs or reduce duplication / increase abstraction. Ever more they're doing such things without being asked.

> Am I doing it wrong?

No, you're not. You've promoted yourself into middle management. Congratulations.

Well, I don't like it, but it feels like I have no choice, and I hope I will learn to like it or find some other aspect to focus on. I'm giving myself some time because things change so fast. It is a reset of my: "Search for the most energy-giving things in my career", tbh.

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