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The two senior engineers in my org (in a FAANG) who vibe-code the most have lost literally all of their skills. Their code has become terrible and their judgmen

The two senior engineers in my org (in a FAANG) who vibe-code the most have lost literally all of their skills. Their code has become terrible and their judgment even worse. A very similar topic was discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48392004 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48392004 and I make the exact same conclusion: All of this makes me selfishly excited for my own future. It's glaringly obvious that anyone who's a heavy user of LLMs is atrophying their skills in real-time. I have yet to meet a single person for whom it's not the case. But I essentially completely stopped using them for software engineering (why isn't really relevant, but it's not because od this skill atrophy). So as the skills of everyone else is diminishing, mine is proportionally raising. It has never been easier to get better than others. You don't need to put in more effort, just the same effort as you always have, and others will do the job of losing their skills for your own benefit.

specproc 4mo ago
You're making the right call there. I've felt it, seen it around me personally. That study is terrifying. I'm no code ninja at the best of times. It's scary to hear that's happening to top engineers. I need an exit strategy. Anyone else come off AI?
- rf15 4mo ago
  Yes, feeling like I had to relearn to walk. The first week was rough, everything was wired for LLM usage and autocomplete. Couldn't even type right anymore.
- dgellow 4mo ago
  Yeah, I had the same and decided to cancel all my subscriptions and remove all my local models ~1 months ago ago. So far I’m very happy with my decision. I wrote about it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48083162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48083162 > I had the same experience over the past year with early coding harness at the beginning of the year, then Claude code since its release date. But after 1+year going that direction I really don’t want to continue. The novelty is gone, dealing with AI now feels frustrating and boring, I miss engaging deeply with the actual lower level technical challenges. I do not want to manage fleets of agents. I do not want to rediscover for the hundredth time that in fact all this time an agent took shortcuts for acceptance tests I rely upon and didn’t catch. Or once again get the agent to understand why and what I want it to do after its context got bloated and it start to drift completely. While I got artifacts I can use (libraries, tools, docs), including some things that I’m pretty confident are SoA I do not feel satisfied anymore knowing that I used a model to generate them, even if I was the one designing every part of it. I do feel that I’m lying anytime I come to a colleague to share a new cool tool I have made. > YMMV but I’m personally feeling burnt out with AI coding agents and ready to go back to the old ways for my next personal project And also here (specifically to human communication): https://sam.elborai.me/articles/no-more-llm-comms/ https://sam.elborai.me/articles/no-more-llm-comms/.
ianbutler 4mo ago
Idk man my system design game is better than its ever been because I put in the effort to use these tools and recognize they can't do software design better than I can and because I've increased the scope of what I'm building I often have to think more deeply about the problem up front. A typical speccing sessions lasts a few hours for me on big work before I have AI start writing that work where I'm just going back and forth on what I want, points of consideration for performance, usability, structure etc pushing back on where AI (always) chooses the most naive way it wants to do something. Every time I see an anecdote like this, A it reaffirms my belief that FAANG devs are fairly mediocre on the whole (not saying this is you, obviously there are good FAANG devs) and B it reaffirms my belief that the developers who kind of give up their thinking like this are really using the tool wrong or didn't really care about the work before AI either so its now just a quick means to an end.
- jcgrillo 4mo ago
  > Every time I see an anecdote like this, A it reaffirms my belief that FAANG devs are fairly mediocre on the whole I think another (partially causal?) problem is how they're managed. The whole perf circus is just ridiculous, especially the stuff recently reported about facebook. But they're all more or less like that. Steeped in that cocktail of incentives, who even knows what might happen to an otherwise excellent engineer. But also just numerically, they can't be much above average, on average, because there are so many.
  - iLoveOncall 4mo ago
    > But also just numerically, they can't be much above average, on average, because there are so many. There are as many CS grads every 2 years in the US alone as total software engineers employed by FAANGs...
    - jcgrillo 4mo ago
      I stand corrected! That's very interesting.
- Lwerewolf 4mo ago
i_am_proteus 4mo ago
This is the most important point: it seems like AI tool use undermines one's ability to use the AI tool.
Fergusonb 4mo ago
My friends can't ride horses as well as they used to, they've been using cars to get around too much. Sure horses are more efficient, but cars are faster and more convenient, and allow you to get a lot more done. Also cars will get better in our lifetime, horses are horses.
- bee_rider 4mo ago
  Writing code seems more like walking to me; at least it is the most manual way of getting a computer program. Horses might be more like one of those low-code/no-code solutions (it really fits, they are useful but very opinionated, so not always cooperative). And, the situation with AI seems a bit worrying for them. To continue the modified analogy, if your friends lost the ability to walk, you’d be quite worried, right?
- dosisking 4mo ago
  Your analogy doesn't make very much sense. Perhaps it would be better to compare somebody who drives a car vs someone who used to drive but now uses Uber.
- mekoka 4mo ago
  Just try to take those same friends who drive everywhere on a (walking) trail hike inside the city, then come back to report.
- ThrowawayR2 4mo ago
  "My friends can't reason as well as they used to, they've been using LLMs to do their reasoning for them." is going to be the eventual outcome. What's the point in getting more done if it ruins your mind in the process?
antonvs 4mo ago
Another tactic is to use LLMs to help you learn. That's another way to approach "It has never been easier to get better than others." Avoiding tool use because you're afraid you won't be able to use the tool responsibly is not likely to be a winning strategy in the end. Learning to use the tool well is much more effective.
- rf15 4mo ago
  But they're also unreliable in what they present, they still hallucinate. I rather do my own research or listen to a real human on the topic who actually has an internal concept and structure of what they're talking about.
rf15 4mo ago
I did stop because I noticed the severe atrophy after using them for a year. Never again.
slibhb 4mo ago
The article is saying that using AI degrades certain skills when AI is not available. You're claiming that AI is making people less effective even when they have access to AI. I'm skeptical of your claim. The article's claim is probably true, but not really an argument against AI. Using keyboards degrades my ability to write by hand but that's not a good argument against keyboards. AI will become another tool that allows us to operate more effectively and at a higher level of abstraction. Just like keyboards and Python. Now, we still occasionally need people who can write assembly (and do calligraphy). But mostly we don't.
fbrncci 4mo ago
Are you actually seeing any signs that we’re going back to how software was written before, and needing those skills in the same way? Because I sure am not seeing that right now. As someone who vibe codes 100% and has become managements favorite, while being more or less allowed to break the platform every other release I know my skills are atrophying. But it’s taking me different places in my career entirely. There’s a path to managing other engineers now that opened years before it would have previously. Even writing this makes it sound ridiculous, but that’s what’s infront of me right now. There is an entirely other set of skills that I’m interested in sharpening now. Definitely no more sitting down several hours per day and meeting about system design and integrations with others.
- mekoka 4mo ago
  It's not really about going back. Evolution happens within a pattern of ebb and flow, back and forth. We never get anything perfectly right. We overdo, then course correct, rinse and repeat. Right now, we're embracing AI, but we're also noticing atrophy of skill as an effect. These may be the last generations of such craftspeople that can notice, compare, and inform as to whether there's actual loss. That future you're seeing for yourself is still being written. Stay tuned.
CuriouslyC 4mo ago
I recently did a manual exercise to force myself to keep my skills from decaying too much after about a year of using agents exclusively. My ability to go from a blank slate to software was indeed in the toilet, but my ability to reason over and edit code seems to be surviving fine. I suspect that your LLM-pilled coworkers' judgment issues are related to laziness that LLMs have enabled, rather than an inherent property of LLM use.
- iLoveOncall 4mo ago
  > My ability to go from a blank slate to software > my ability to reason over and edit code You can't be able to do one but not the other, they're the same thing. > I suspect that your LLM-pilled coworkers' judgment issues are related to laziness that LLMs have enabled, rather than an inherent property of LLM use. Does it matter? The end result is the same. Maybe the studies that the article mentions are simply showcasing the exact same effect that you're suggesting here, but it doesn't change the fact that there is indeed a negative outcome.
  - CuriouslyC 4mo ago
    Not true, blank page syndrome, inertia and write vs edit flows are a known thing across disciplines. You might not think about it as much because you have a command in your package manager or framework to bootstrap projects, but imagine if you had to hand code _everything_. I'll guess there are languages/frameworks where you consider yourself quite proficient but where you couldn't bootstrap a project without checking the docs if not for the tooling. It matters. If LLMs are like alcohol, useful but potentially dangerous, they should be treated very differently than if they're just poison. If someone's a drunk and they can't keep their lives together, it's not the alcohol's fault, it's the person's.
jatins 4mo ago
> two senior engineers in my org (in a FAANG) who vibe-code the most have lost literally all of their skills. Unfortunately FAANG incentives this behaviour with their token leaderboards and general push for velocity over anything else (other than goog maybe)
bigfudge 4mo ago
As someone who was self taught as a programmer and has a reasonable high level understanding of some CS concepts but not lots of experience applying them, and no good mentor, I’ve found working with an LLM really englightening. Asking Claude to think about “good ways to structure this” or asking how similar problems get solved in industry or high profile projects has really helped me design better solutions and avoid painfully reinventing wheels (recent eg was for a plugin type architecture). I think a lot of academics and researchers who code but aren’t software engineers or CS majors are going to benefit, provided they take the time to prove what the model does and are curious about whether it’s doing something sensible! Relative to a 1% coder hand rolling something then yes it’s AI slop etc. but it’s prob still raising the bar generally.
- anon7725 4mo ago
  > Asking Claude to think about “good ways to structure this” or asking how similar problems get solved in industry or high profile projects has really helped me design better solutions I think this highlights the difference between the “how do I make a ham sandwich?” approach of chat vs the “sudo make me a ham sandwich” of agentic coding.

specproc 4mo ago

You're making the right call there. I've felt it, seen it around me personally. That study is terrifying. I'm no code ninja at the best of times. It's scary to hear that's happening to top engineers. I need an exit strategy. Anyone else come off AI?

rf15 4mo ago
Yes, feeling like I had to relearn to walk. The first week was rough, everything was wired for LLM usage and autocomplete. Couldn't even type right anymore.
dgellow 4mo ago
Yeah, I had the same and decided to cancel all my subscriptions and remove all my local models ~1 months ago ago. So far I’m very happy with my decision. I wrote about it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48083162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48083162 > I had the same experience over the past year with early coding harness at the beginning of the year, then Claude code since its release date. But after 1+year going that direction I really don’t want to continue. The novelty is gone, dealing with AI now feels frustrating and boring, I miss engaging deeply with the actual lower level technical challenges. I do not want to manage fleets of agents. I do not want to rediscover for the hundredth time that in fact all this time an agent took shortcuts for acceptance tests I rely upon and didn’t catch. Or once again get the agent to understand why and what I want it to do after its context got bloated and it start to drift completely. While I got artifacts I can use (libraries, tools, docs), including some things that I’m pretty confident are SoA I do not feel satisfied anymore knowing that I used a model to generate them, even if I was the one designing every part of it. I do feel that I’m lying anytime I come to a colleague to share a new cool tool I have made. > YMMV but I’m personally feeling burnt out with AI coding agents and ready to go back to the old ways for my next personal project And also here (specifically to human communication): https://sam.elborai.me/articles/no-more-llm-comms/ https://sam.elborai.me/articles/no-more-llm-comms/.

ianbutler 4mo ago

Idk man my system design game is better than its ever been because I put in the effort to use these tools and recognize they can't do software design better than I can and because I've increased the scope of what I'm building I often have to think more deeply about the problem up front. A typical speccing sessions lasts a few hours for me on big work before I have AI start writing that work where I'm just going back and forth on what I want, points of consideration for performance, usability, structure etc pushing back on where AI (always) chooses the most naive way it wants to do something. Every time I see an anecdote like this, A it reaffirms my belief that FAANG devs are fairly mediocre on the whole (not saying this is you, obviously there are good FAANG devs) and B it reaffirms my belief that the developers who kind of give up their thinking like this are really using the tool wrong or didn't really care about the work before AI either so its now just a quick means to an end.

jcgrillo 4mo ago
> Every time I see an anecdote like this, A it reaffirms my belief that FAANG devs are fairly mediocre on the whole I think another (partially causal?) problem is how they're managed. The whole perf circus is just ridiculous, especially the stuff recently reported about facebook. But they're all more or less like that. Steeped in that cocktail of incentives, who even knows what might happen to an otherwise excellent engineer. But also just numerically, they can't be much above average, on average, because there are so many.
- iLoveOncall 4mo ago
  > But also just numerically, they can't be much above average, on average, because there are so many. There are as many CS grads every 2 years in the US alone as total software engineers employed by FAANGs...
  - jcgrillo 4mo ago
    I stand corrected! That's very interesting.
Lwerewolf 4mo ago

i_am_proteus 4mo ago

This is the most important point: it seems like AI tool use undermines one's ability to use the AI tool.

Fergusonb 4mo ago

My friends can't ride horses as well as they used to, they've been using cars to get around too much. Sure horses are more efficient, but cars are faster and more convenient, and allow you to get a lot more done. Also cars will get better in our lifetime, horses are horses.

bee_rider 4mo ago
Writing code seems more like walking to me; at least it is the most manual way of getting a computer program. Horses might be more like one of those low-code/no-code solutions (it really fits, they are useful but very opinionated, so not always cooperative). And, the situation with AI seems a bit worrying for them. To continue the modified analogy, if your friends lost the ability to walk, you’d be quite worried, right?
dosisking 4mo ago
Your analogy doesn't make very much sense. Perhaps it would be better to compare somebody who drives a car vs someone who used to drive but now uses Uber.
mekoka 4mo ago
Just try to take those same friends who drive everywhere on a (walking) trail hike inside the city, then come back to report.
ThrowawayR2 4mo ago
"My friends can't reason as well as they used to, they've been using LLMs to do their reasoning for them." is going to be the eventual outcome. What's the point in getting more done if it ruins your mind in the process?

antonvs 4mo ago

Another tactic is to use LLMs to help you learn. That's another way to approach "It has never been easier to get better than others." Avoiding tool use because you're afraid you won't be able to use the tool responsibly is not likely to be a winning strategy in the end. Learning to use the tool well is much more effective.

rf15 4mo ago
But they're also unreliable in what they present, they still hallucinate. I rather do my own research or listen to a real human on the topic who actually has an internal concept and structure of what they're talking about.

rf15 4mo ago

I did stop because I noticed the severe atrophy after using them for a year. Never again.

slibhb 4mo ago

The article is saying that using AI degrades certain skills when AI is not available. You're claiming that AI is making people less effective even when they have access to AI. I'm skeptical of your claim. The article's claim is probably true, but not really an argument against AI. Using keyboards degrades my ability to write by hand but that's not a good argument against keyboards. AI will become another tool that allows us to operate more effectively and at a higher level of abstraction. Just like keyboards and Python. Now, we still occasionally need people who can write assembly (and do calligraphy). But mostly we don't.

fbrncci 4mo ago

Are you actually seeing any signs that we’re going back to how software was written before, and needing those skills in the same way? Because I sure am not seeing that right now. As someone who vibe codes 100% and has become managements favorite, while being more or less allowed to break the platform every other release I know my skills are atrophying. But it’s taking me different places in my career entirely. There’s a path to managing other engineers now that opened years before it would have previously. Even writing this makes it sound ridiculous, but that’s what’s infront of me right now. There is an entirely other set of skills that I’m interested in sharpening now. Definitely no more sitting down several hours per day and meeting about system design and integrations with others.

mekoka 4mo ago
It's not really about going back. Evolution happens within a pattern of ebb and flow, back and forth. We never get anything perfectly right. We overdo, then course correct, rinse and repeat. Right now, we're embracing AI, but we're also noticing atrophy of skill as an effect. These may be the last generations of such craftspeople that can notice, compare, and inform as to whether there's actual loss. That future you're seeing for yourself is still being written. Stay tuned.

CuriouslyC 4mo ago

I recently did a manual exercise to force myself to keep my skills from decaying too much after about a year of using agents exclusively. My ability to go from a blank slate to software was indeed in the toilet, but my ability to reason over and edit code seems to be surviving fine. I suspect that your LLM-pilled coworkers' judgment issues are related to laziness that LLMs have enabled, rather than an inherent property of LLM use.

iLoveOncall 4mo ago
> My ability to go from a blank slate to software > my ability to reason over and edit code You can't be able to do one but not the other, they're the same thing. > I suspect that your LLM-pilled coworkers' judgment issues are related to laziness that LLMs have enabled, rather than an inherent property of LLM use. Does it matter? The end result is the same. Maybe the studies that the article mentions are simply showcasing the exact same effect that you're suggesting here, but it doesn't change the fact that there is indeed a negative outcome.
- CuriouslyC 4mo ago
  Not true, blank page syndrome, inertia and write vs edit flows are a known thing across disciplines. You might not think about it as much because you have a command in your package manager or framework to bootstrap projects, but imagine if you had to hand code _everything_. I'll guess there are languages/frameworks where you consider yourself quite proficient but where you couldn't bootstrap a project without checking the docs if not for the tooling. It matters. If LLMs are like alcohol, useful but potentially dangerous, they should be treated very differently than if they're just poison. If someone's a drunk and they can't keep their lives together, it's not the alcohol's fault, it's the person's.

jatins 4mo ago

> two senior engineers in my org (in a FAANG) who vibe-code the most have lost literally all of their skills. Unfortunately FAANG incentives this behaviour with their token leaderboards and general push for velocity over anything else (other than goog maybe)

bigfudge 4mo ago

As someone who was self taught as a programmer and has a reasonable high level understanding of some CS concepts but not lots of experience applying them, and no good mentor, I’ve found working with an LLM really englightening. Asking Claude to think about “good ways to structure this” or asking how similar problems get solved in industry or high profile projects has really helped me design better solutions and avoid painfully reinventing wheels (recent eg was for a plugin type architecture). I think a lot of academics and researchers who code but aren’t software engineers or CS majors are going to benefit, provided they take the time to prove what the model does and are curious about whether it’s doing something sensible! Relative to a 1% coder hand rolling something then yes it’s AI slop etc. but it’s prob still raising the bar generally.

anon7725 4mo ago
> Asking Claude to think about “good ways to structure this” or asking how similar problems get solved in industry or high profile projects has really helped me design better solutions I think this highlights the difference between the “how do I make a ham sandwich?” approach of chat vs the “sudo make me a ham sandwich” of agentic coding.