> And more directly, I believe good software engineering is really hard.
It really is, if there's one sentiment that's remained consistent in me over time it's awe at how harsh of a mistress software is. As good as coding agents are, it still routinely dismantles them in astonishing ways. It's like complexity is the natural state to which all systems want to settle.
> Call me a gatekeeper if you want but, we ended up with a lot of people that just can't do the job.
The vast majority! I think I've come across 1 or 2 competent engineers in 20+ years. It's a miracle that software works, ever. Increasingly, it doesn't.
> "Why am I paying a consultant for something AI can do in 15 minutes?"
Tech consulting takes all kinds of forms. I've been doing it for a while. A lot of clients aren't thinking about time spent. A lot of clients have an in-house team that simply can't achieve something at all. Can't figure out how to do automated deployments, can't figure out their server OOM errors, can't figure out why a SQL query is slow. There is a huge swath of simply incapable teams. That's a whole class of opportunity potentially wiped out, I say potentially only because a lot of teams are so incapable that they still don't realize you can use an LLM to solve those kinds of problems.
And yes, every consultant loves to think they're getting paid for value, not time. Try telling a potential client that you're so much more skilled than their team, that you will finish the "200 hours" project in a single weekend, and that you would still like to bill 200 x market rate for it. Unless they are incredibly savvy, they will balk. If they are incredibly savvy, they probably don't have a shit eng team in the first place.
I was speaking from my own experience. I feel like we are generally required to _accept_ sloppiness given certain circumstances, but I have never worked with an engineer that actually _likes_ sloppiness. How cool would it be if you were given the freedom to do your highest quality work?
> The people who most argue for vibe coding will themselves never accept responsibility for the technical outcomes.
This is right, and don’t think this isn’t all partially fueled by spite. I’m not sure if engineers understand how much they’ve been simultaneously reviled/revered by non-technical people. They see this as a Prometheus moment. They would love to vibecode a mess and make the engineers deal with the details.
> grinds its way to profitability over 3 years, can't raise, and grows 15% / year.
You've been a part of some successful ventures! I've worked at places that grind their way to an uneventful shutdown over 3 years, can't raise, can't hire, can't scrape together a GTM plan, can't land on an MVP, and grow 0% / year.
