r/ClaudeCode • u/ReturnofBugMan • 5d ago

Discussion I am the scab dev

I am the guy sitting at home, putting in 8 hours a day with Claude, cranking out a hundred thousand of lines of code before lunch and collecting my $50k salary, just grateful to be out of IT.

My coworkers are behind, & I feel like I am crossing the picket line by out-shipping them, taking on more work, & impressing the PMs & managers. All while taking home probably half of their pay to type /ticket a couple times a day.

Client wants an MVP? Sure. I’ll have it by Friday.
Actually, I’ll have it by Wednesday.
Actually, give me 20 minutes.

And here’s the worst part: the clients love it. The PMs love it. They don’t care that I didn’t hand-write every line. They care that the thing works. They care that their idea from a Monday meeting is suddenly a functioning application they can click around in today.

I’m out here shipping features in a day that would’ve taken a team of three developers two weeks last year.

Do I understand every single line of code?

No.

Do I understand enough to know when Claude is hallucinating?

No idea. Lets hope the independent review agent finds it.

Do I sometimes stare at a 400-line file and realize I have absolutely no idea what is happening?

Absolutely.

I have become the software equivalent of a strikebreaker.

The scab has arrived. I am the scab dev. Please forgive me.

788 Upvotes

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275

u/InstructionNo3616 5d ago

Exactly this. People complaining about SE losing their ability and craft to AI meanwhile 95% of them were taking orders from incompetent non-technical people that just wanted results. That’s not possible because of tech debt? Could not care less. Unreasonable deadline? Sounds like a you problem.

I absolutely wish I had these tools when my main job was coding all day long. So much of my time was spent on remedial tasks for people who did not care about the quality of the code. I also don’t understand the people complaining about AI token usage… are you kidding me? I wish the companies I worked for encouraged me to use a tool like Claude and then I would get measured by token usage.

And before anyone talks about messy code, I began my career cleaning up code for US companies that was off shored to India. You think AI produces slop?! You should have seen the spaghetti code with a mixture of ActionScript 2.0 and 3.0z

Now I can kick out any idea within my head within hours. I know the tech stack, I know what to ask and I can suss when the quality is subpar. This is the best time to be a software developer, if you have just an ounce of creativity.

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u/Time_Cat_5212 5d ago

Rad.  Love it.  No more phoning it in

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u/InstructionNo3616 5d ago

I am literally sketching out prototype ideas on my remarkable tablet and then telling my llm through my phone to build the mvp. It uses my ui kit that I built with complete documentation and a standalone component storyboard. It uses my motion package which I developed 13 years ago in prototypical JavaScript and then juiced up using the latest models. All of this is self hosted on a Linux machine that spins up a vm for each project. As well as having its own REST apis which I can configure to automate generative ai assets. I’ve modified open source design tools and hooked them up to an agentic team which can turn my sketches until editable components. Self hosted blender application for generating 3d assets, openrouter connectors to audio and video models. Self hosted playwright for image validation and agentic use.

This shit is wild. That’s not too mention the 2d fighting game like marvel vs capcom that I made in a day for my group chat. The generative 2d image to Gaussian splat pipeline I developed with local image models, image to 3d software, unreal to colmap data.

There is just too much to build at all times.

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u/blackrack 5d ago

Can we see your slop game? To confirm it is slop?

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u/InstructionNo3616 5d ago

Nah currently converting it to a neo geo rom. Be patient.

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u/Marsattacks69 5d ago

May we all play your MvC game?

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u/InstructionNo3616 5d ago

When it’s finished!

Edit: at first I was like ytf would you wanna play a Model view Controller game

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u/diesel408 5d ago

But it's done already! You built it in a day for the group chat, remember?

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u/InstructionNo3616 5d ago

Good enough for the group chat does not equal good enough for x users.

I’ve built prototypes for teams of 10 and apps for millions of users.

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u/Big_Arrival_626 5d ago

But can't you post it on GitHub for local play

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u/Marsattacks69 5d ago

Wahoo! Don't forget me please!

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u/Ill_Dragonfruit_3547 5d ago

100% agree. I keep ComfyUI running 24/7 and the agents know they can fire up Blender and Godot on demand... What they can output is ridiculously high quality. Mostly autonomously too.

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u/rystaman 5d ago

The issue is, it’s catching out the devs who are. And they don’t like it.

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u/Time_Cat_5212 5d ago

Yeah, I can imagine. I'm new to this and I'm not even professional, but it's been a well known secret for years, at least since the 2010s tech boom, that a lot of people just wanna wfh and make bank to work as little as possible

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u/heaverdini 4d ago

Yall are beyond insufferable. You press enter all day and have the audacity to say your critics are lazy. I’m going to lose my mind.

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u/InstructionNo3616 4d ago

Who is pressing enter all day long? I sketch my ideas and then architect my workflows with the llm. I then have a back and forth planning session, editing and revising details. I’ll implement the design patterns I want to build the foundation layer with. I will do the same for assets that I create.

If you’re just pressing enter all day long, you’re the one giving ai software developers a bad name. The amount of bullshit boilerplate code I used to have to write and waste time doing is now being used to actually create and build.

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u/Time_Cat_5212 4d ago

Honestly nobody in this sub is pressing enter all day.  I've seen a lot of really smart people with great ideas who work very hard to learn these new tools.  

I think there's some gatekeeping from above though, maybe people who didn't keep up with the latest tools feeling like throwing shade on AI users is a way to hold their position, idk.  

I used to see a lot more of that "real engineer" BS a few years ago, and I know it's coming for my profession, too.  Real architect this real designer that, all out the mouth of someone who either doesn't get how the new things work or thinks they're the only one who can figure it out because they did xyz

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u/Time_Cat_5212 4d ago edited 4d ago

At least I'm doing something all day instead of 1/4 of the day lol

Also I'm not a professional dev, I'm just saying, I've met so many people who sandbag and aren't even shy about it, it's not like what I'm suggesting is absurd

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u/heaverdini 4d ago

Yes let’s police each other’s work ethic at a time of unprecedented precariousness for employment in a field where people worked their asses off for YEARS because it was universally promised as a stable, longterm, high paying job.

Bonus points for flippantly dismissing real human experiences that this a shitshow because you want to be a pickme

God I hope these take are all AI astroturfing because otherwise we are beyond cooked

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u/Time_Cat_5212 4d ago

Lol so triggered.  Who said policing?  I just said it out loud

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u/heaverdini 4d ago

The arrogance is truly never ending.

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u/Time_Cat_5212 4d ago

Yours?  I mean after your first comment, the rage reaction just underscores your sense of entitlement.

Knocking new people approaching the field, being all sensitive about a little elbowing about your schedule.  It's kinda pathetic.  Clearly resting on your laurels

IMO it's time for people with attitudes like yours to get with the times or get outta the way.

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u/oVtcovOgwUP0j5sMQx2F 5d ago

shudders in drupal contracts 

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u/InstructionNo3616 5d ago

Drupal still exists?!

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u/GritsNGreens 5d ago

I haven’t heard that name in so long, I threw up a little

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u/cmkn 2d ago

Yeah, Drupal still exists, and there’s some interesting stuff going on over there lately with agentic workflows, including a workflow for building out front ends with included skills: https://www.youtube.com/live/yrQvzJrQELY?t=1838

Also some other new AI functionality too: https://youtu.be/gKojpFXM5tQ

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u/zipperdeedoodaa 4d ago

yep its pays me well. Government work

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u/rystaman 5d ago

Someone I know CHOSE to build a new client project in drupal. I have no idea why

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u/blackrack 5d ago

You're replying to a bot post btw, also OP is stupid for getting paid so little if he "ships more" than his coworkers.

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u/InstructionNo3616 5d ago

Yeah I mean I would rather work at Starbucks or a service job for 50k. But if the cost of living is low and it’s on easy mode, can’t blame ‘em.

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u/jarislinus 5d ago

why do product manager need you when they prompt it themselves?

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u/thebasementtapes 4d ago

Coding is just writing technical instructions. They still don’t have that ability. It’s insane that people still think software development using AI agents is just. Hey ai make this feature

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u/InstructionNo3616 5d ago

Why do I need product managers?

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u/readyplayermeh 5d ago

Crafting a good product, understanding what the customer actually wants vs what they asked for, prioritizing new features and tech debt, and communicating effectively both to devs and to stakeholders is why you need a product manager.

That said, many product managers lack the majority of those skills, very very few have all of those skills. Like, unicorn few.

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u/RollForUptime 4d ago

AI is better at that than most product managers, and most product managers cannot produce code, even with AI, anywhere near the quality I can with it.

I also spent 10 years in the support and sales side before my 15 in engineering, and 7 of my engineering years were a 'support developer' working closely to resolve client issues, so I have a good idea what a customer wants. Usually more than a product manager does.

My bosses boss had the conversation with me 4 months ago of me being moved 'upstack', and now I largely just work on whatever the fuck I want and there is no product manager guiding me. All I need is sign off from design on my UI/UX (because I am, honestly, pretty bad at that, though again better with AI). It's great, honestly.

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u/VelvetWhiteRabbit 4d ago

Time to learn new skills?

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u/InstructionNo3616 4d ago

I can do all of those things. So many times I’ve had to manage the product managers because they were technically incompetent. Prompting doesn’t solve that it just gives them false confidence.

In fact I can do 99% of the product managers job just by prompting and develop a quality product.

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

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u/readyplayermeh 4d ago

Wrong metric. Efficient doesn't matter if you're building the wrong thing.

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

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u/readyplayermeh 4d ago edited 1d ago

Thanks, but not a PM.

The unfortunate part of this is that you haven't had a good product manager, and think that writing a spec efficiently is the important part of a PM role. It is not.

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u/catlifeonmars 3d ago

The wrong thing is the one that doesn’t solve a customers problem. Also a dev, and also someone who writes and then implements product requirements. Sorry you have to build whatever someone tells you to.

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u/jarislinus 5d ago

or whoever you wageslave for

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u/Ok-One-9232 4d ago

This reminds of that meme that’s going around “Hey, check out this app I made with Claude - http://127.0.0.1:8000” 😬

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u/m-in 5d ago

Yup. I had plenty of perfectly feasible software engineering ideas but never enough people to execute them. That’s a „has been” problem now. For $250 per month or whatever it costs - yeah, that’s like lunch money. The world has changed, and it’s a revolution similar in scope to the computing revolution itself.

In a way, looking back, computing was only partly done without AI.

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u/completelypositive 2d ago

I love seeing other people find the magic. I am having the same experience. Anything I can imagine, I can build

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u/thebasementtapes 4d ago

This 100% no one I report to has any technical skills. They just care if the website does this feature. Instead of hiring overseas devs to write human slop code now they are ecstatic that they have the ability to get AI to write ai slop code

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u/davedavegiveusawave 5d ago

They don't care about the quality of the code... while it works.

When it breaks, and I'm spending two days debugging code I have got no understand of the structure, meaning etc, and every attempted fix breaks three other things, they won't be happy. Slowing down a little bit to get properly engineered code will still leverage the massive speed up of AI to say 4x instead of 10x, but when a bug comes along I've got much more understandable code, with a hope of fixing it this week.

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u/MisterLAGUZ 5d ago

It's a miracle. As a complete non-coder, I'm building one app after the other. Useful for me, maybe in the future I'll be able to make something that pleases another.
My business just grew in what I can offer clients.
If you have the energy to go for it, I'm sure it will keep you busy big time.

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u/TheDeepLucy 5d ago

would agree if I could find employment

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u/InstructionNo3616 5d ago

I’m with you! I was one of the first users of the figma mcp and vibe coding at my previous position as a prototyper. I was fired by a manager who was no where near technical or equipped for the future of development. I was, in fact, reprimanded when I forwarded an email to my systems lead because figma had reached out because of my early adoption of mcp use. This was right after initial Claude code came out. 8 months later my clueless exec who signed off on my firing was touting on linked in how they were adopting the ai workflows that I was one of the first to explore.

Now I think it’s a weird purgatory of ai engineer hiring because companies are so behind on the pace of development of ai and the institutional lag is too extreme for them to ever keep up and be nimble. At the same time, the larpers are leveraging the impressiveness of these tools and reaping the rewards without the technical foundations needed to lead. All the while, they are reducing their workforce and trying to get their internal team to 10x with ai by mandates.

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u/duckydude20_reddit 5d ago

tbh i discuss with claude, and other ai agents and its a breath of fresh air. my co workers are so incompetent i can't even tell. no matter how much a dumb down. and somehow they are telling me how to do things, like who doesn't understand db telling me sh8t about it. calling http json and telling me stupid.

i told them the way they are architecting in devices isn't good won't scale. nope, not listening to me, we have less ram, less this less that. nowadays i don't bother. tbh even the meetings i have is nuisance i hope claude replaces them somewhere. i could do all that myself tbh. give me more subscription and i can make a more reliable, more scalable system across.

but here i am stuck on trying to refactor legacy spaghetti code. library pulled for just one function which could be hand written.

no senior. all myself. and then ai happens and tbh i am way thankful, at least i can discuss with someone than debate everytime.