Hacker News Reader

Comment by avgDev | Hacker News Reader

Nobody says it does. However, if I am solving big business problems and making enough to justify a private cook, why wouldn't I do that to optimize and focus on my area of expertise?

I don't want to be a code monkey. I want to talk to business people and come up with solutions. I don't care if LLM writes most of it or a junior dev...well I do LLM is better.

View on HN

Ironic that the parent poster should use the phrase "code monkey" since most would likely agree being an "LLM prompt monkey" is an even lower rung on the ladder than that. The business people can surely find a LLM prompt monkey for much less salary than what a code monkey gets so I'm not sure anyone would want to embrace that future. In fact, if the AI gets good enough, the business people won't need the LLM prompters at all; they'll talk to the AI themselves.

Business people already talk to LLMs, and people who know how to code hate it.

I haven't written single line of code since Dec but I've been putting a lot of focus into systems design and making sure I understand how all the pieces of our system work together even if I don't know how the individual parts work.

The amount of times I hear my (fairly technical, mind you!) boss say "why can't we do X, Claude says it's simple" is pretty baffling, and my coworkers and him will have hours long debates about it.

This goes along in the hall of fame with the "how hard can it be", Turns out, if you want to do it right, more often than not, very hard.

Lol. I think a disconnect that engineers often have with product people is that product people want it to be done now (right or not) and engineers want it to be done right, which obviously takes more time. But I think a good engineer knows how to get it 80% of the way there quickly, and knows which 20% is ok to sacrifice or take on as tech debt.

Alas I'm not one of those engineers, but I'm fortunate enough to work with some.

There is a lot of that, but there is also the fact that you can get lulled into a false sense of "it is working" in general the motto is 90% of the work in 10% of the time and 90% of the time to get the 10% more done, and the devil is always in those 10% that often hinge on decisions made during the 90% phase.

It also depends on the requirements, and what the actual thing you want done. For software, sure you can probably patch it and there are some inconveniences you can live with depending on the clients requirements, for hardware... a little bit tougher... But it still depends on what is being done and what are the constraints, as long as people are reasonable, usually, it works out... Except that people rarely seem to be reasonable...

From the way you're writing, you'll fit right in with the 'business people' since they dont have any clue half the time either.

The issue is that the business problem you're solving is the problem of producing food. Why should you be kept around as the middleman, instead of hiring the chef directly?

The same reason middle management is still around today.

AI has been a catastrophe for middle management jobs though

No it hasn’t, middle managers are the ones telling everyone below them to use AI as much as possible, even if it makes no sense and screws things up. AI is a middle manager’s dream.

Middle managers are being told by upper management to force the use of AI, or get fired.

Middle management is being flattened. If you have better metrics, it's easier to phase out certain levels of management.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91601567/the-great-flattening-ro... https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/27/google-executive-says-compan... https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-ceo-says-cutting-middl...

Yes, this is what I meant. There hasn't been much news on it for some reason, but in Microsoft at least they're getting pushed out of their role, either to some more direct role, or out.

However, if I am solving big business problems and making enough to justify a private cook,

With the private cook, you're not cooking. If you "vibe", code, you're not coding.

And code review isn't coding, any more than a coach giving hints to an athlete, is an athlete.

Seems like the LLM has already impacted your reading comprehension. We're talking about learning here, not the overall value of LLMs.

I'm sorry to say but the business people don't want to talk to you, they want to replace you, that's what the LLM is for as far as they're concerned. Currently you're just filling the role of beta testing that replacement. The fact that you're so happy to throw away your fellow devs in the hopes of getting in bed with those people just makes this whole situation quite sad.

Maybe just get an MBA or something, I doubt its any safer from LLMs but thats clearly what you want to be doing

> and come up with solutions.

Why? Can't the business people talk to LLMs and have it come up with solutions?

Sure, many do and fail. I wonder why?

Because it is not that easy. I used LLMs daily, I still need to write code and debug.

My boss has his own work to do.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com