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If you’re 50+ as you intimated in your first post then you have a wealth of knowledge that juniors don’t.

Just because it worked this time doesn’t mean it always will.

If you need further explanation of why you might want to spend more time resolving a bug to learn about the systems you’re tasked with maintaining then I’m at a loss sorry.



And then as experience developer you would have to try one of the other tools in your toolbox. Why should someone tie a hand behind their back and not use an LLM out of some sense of nerd pride?


How do you get the experience if you always just reach for your LLM?


This is a real issue we'll face soon enough. It's less of a problem for senior+ developers that have experience and muscle memory. For people just starting in the industry, they won't develop the ability to research problems and solve them on their own.

I work with some junior level, outsourced developers that write prompts like "fix the tests." The result is, of course, bad. The consulting company charges $200+ hour for them. Garbage in, garbage out. Good thing I hit my retirement number. I can bail out anytime.


Outsourced staff aug contractors have always been mediocre.

From the contracting side, I’ve worked as a staff Aug contractor for six weeks when I was between jobs in 2012 and it was so bad I just walked off with no job lined up within four weeks.

For context staff Aug vs consulting is about who owns the project

Consulting = the customer gives you high level requirements and statement of work and you control the project (or your company)

Staff Aug = the client controls the project and you are a warm disposable body.


hm I don’t disagree with you in principle but there is sooooo much outsourcing (America First and all that jazz people eat up during election cycles lol) that there are many places (worked in two such places just in the last year) where staff aug has been around for decade+ (started with team of 2, now 48). client controls everything, staff hacks shit and does amazing job. from my experience there is a ton of this and work of often anything but mediocre


Yep, with staff aug the developers are treated like cogs. Nobody good sticks around in that environment.




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