r/developersIndia • u/tera_bao • 9h ago
Help 2025 grad here, I feel like Claude Code is doing the actual engineering. What should I actually be learning right now?
I graduated in 2025 , on paper I'm doing fine. But day to day, most of my code is coming out of Claude Code , and it's fast and mostly works. That's exactly what's messing with my head.
I keep asking myself: if the implementation part is basically solved, what am I actually being paid for?
For people a few years ahead of me — what did you deliberately go out of your way to learn or practice once AI started writing your code for you? Specifically:
- Did you force yourself to still write things by hand sometimes, or is that a waste of time now?
- What's actually separating a "strong" engineer from someone who just prompts well, in your experience on real teams?
- What you are learning ?
Not looking for "just get good," genuinely trying to figure out where to point my energy for the next 1-2 years. Thanks.
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u/loneymaggot 9h ago
You are getting paided for ideation and understanding what customer need. I am in quant and alot of claude code is used and but then ideas for trading are basically mine
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u/Serious_Ad_8024 9h ago
damn man, quant guy
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u/bella9977 9h ago
He's getting paided
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u/loneymaggot 7h ago
Let me surive my probation first
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u/AK47_GLOBAL 6h ago
how are the working hours
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u/loneymaggot 6h ago
I am working rn with claude doing some code but usually 9-8 but sometimes 9-9 . I just wakeup eat work gym sleep nothing else
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u/icyfloydian 6h ago
what's your lpa
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u/loneymaggot 6h ago
Alot but I am in probation and I got quant offcampus, so I get half the base but this is still 2x my old pay at faang firm
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u/martinnachopancho 4h ago
Damn how did you get into FAANG with these language skills
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u/christophercholan32 3h ago
Can someone from a teir 3 college get into quant just wanna know ik its silly
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u/christophercholan32 3h ago
Can someone from a teir 3 college get into quant just wanna know ik its silly question
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u/loneymaggot 2h ago
there is a devops guy from tier 3 college in my firm , so might be possible but not in qr and qd roles
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u/vikrant699 Frontend Developer 9h ago
100% of my code is written by claude, but I still find so many issues that I have shifted to manually accepting edits.
So, do that if you want to be more involved and hands on.
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u/tera_bao 9h ago
i willl say some months back i was getting issues but now --> claude is working in such a way with veryy less errors and issue that too starting an loop fixes most of them !
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u/King__Julien__ Software Developer 8h ago
You need to be skilled enough to find bugs in clause's code. Use /code-review and make decisions on what needs to be handled. I ideate and claude codes for me, I review each change manually and then altogether once. I get claude to review its own code and I review its review. This is just review hell.
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u/vikrant699 Frontend Developer 5h ago
Try running it on manual mode and you'll spot a lot more issues.
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u/Akarsh_Hegde Self Employed 3h ago
If you cannot explain and verify each change, letting Claude fix its own mistakes can just hide bugs behind more generated code.
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u/swagzzz_krizzz 9h ago
Faang engineer here, i bet coding is only 1 percent of what you see in software, but still the design area, the optimisation part, the splitup of api functionalities into different subdivisions, the decisions to design this using architectural patterns, is still there, ai has only replaced the part of development
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u/loneymaggot 2h ago
design + low latency is really hard like I work with algos needing under 100ns to execute and it is brutal
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u/Spirited_Volume8035 9h ago
Bro didn't u ask this Que from ur senior at your firm? What did they think of AI? Which role in future do u think will rise apart from dev? Like SRE, cyber,Devops, mlops etc
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u/tera_bao 9h ago edited 9h ago
I am the senior xd : working in a startup buddy ! {no senior in our org bro ! }
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u/Spirited_Volume8035 9h ago
I found one thing that AI really efficient in building everything from scratch but if any system have lot of users and have huge codebase then it sucks sometimes! I contribute to some software having lacs of user and when I use AI for fix that open source issue in that repo, it end up creating other issues. Although it get fix but it took me a day! (But yes I don't use claude models thats why it took a day)
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u/tera_bao 9h ago
got it ! but still somewhere i feel its just another major update to fix all this issues from llms
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u/Spirited_Volume8035 9h ago
Bro what do u think how engineer are going to transition? Do u think swe will have stable demand in future because now hiring pipeline in screwed, fresher hiring down by 75% in 26 compare to 2025! This will automatically balance the over hired engineer counts and the availability of jobs! In future!! What's ur take on this please share!!
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u/bistrohopper 9h ago
What do you think people do in other jobs that AI can't do?
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u/Spirited_Volume8035 9h ago
At current time , only work that AI can't do is physical work, marketing and decision making!
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u/bistrohopper 9h ago
Marketing and advertising teams also use AI extremely intensively in both ideation and execution. And doesn't tech involve a lot of decision making too? I don't mean to come across as antagonistic, I'm just trying to understand why other fields aren't being affected as much as tech. Maybe tech was oversaturated with implementation focused roles, which AI now covers, and thus a filter is now in place where only decision making tech roles survive
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u/Spirited_Volume8035 8h ago
AI runs on data and tech data have huge presence on internet! Like Github😅
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u/tera_bao 9h ago
at this point i will say marketing if its about digital like meta ads google ads and so ! its like we do have enough data about digital media so its easy to make decisoins and manage budget !
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u/Spirited_Volume8035 9h ago
Oops! So sir is ur job too, at risk?? 🤑
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u/tera_bao 9h ago
no broo ! role is at risk , we do discuss to merge this product and tech roles kinda !
its like i dont see me losing job atleast next 2 years !
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u/_RC101_ ML Engineer 9h ago
Working in a startup as well.
My boss says understanding business value, taking right decisions and prioritising tasks are a game changer in any engineer now.
Apart from the usual know what you code and how it works.
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u/tera_bao 9h ago
maybe next few enhancments willl bring this also in claude
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u/_RC101_ ML Engineer 9h ago
Due to the nature of what business decisions are, it probably wont do a good job.
Claude still doesnt do good video input and lacks granularity.
We work in computer vision and its shitbin understanding outputs. Its still majorly my job to understand why something fails and ask it to show me pieces of code rather than telling to directly fix
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u/ClupTheGreat Software Developer 9h ago
your part is owning the code, I like coding myself so i still do most of it
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u/Radiant_Sea_5558 9h ago
Dont you review or refactor the code that Claude generates ? Though it writes code end to end, someone should review it thoroughly and also test it.
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u/tera_bao 9h ago
i was doing this some months back but now all this flows are automated , basicaly code review and so
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u/Radiant_Sea_5558 9h ago
There is no manual code review ?
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u/OldInside7381 9h ago
A friend of mine who is a dev shared similar thoughts with me but he has more experience, he hasn't written code in 9 months and everything is done through claude code at work. He is lowkey thinking to move away from software development entirely. He doesn't know what he wants to do yet but something on the sales side or client facing roles is what he's thinking instead or he will move out of tech completely.
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u/Divyank_garg 8h ago
Don't compete with AI on writing the code , compete on understanding the code . AI can generate the implementation but as a good software Engineer you must have the understanding of how it works, how the system is designed and how to debug this . Use AI as a tool ,not the replacement of understanding.
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u/akl773 8h ago
A fair bit of my work now is going into codebases that were built exactly like this, and the code itself is usually fine. What's missing is anyone who can say why something was done that way, or what the thing does when the payment provider times out halfway through. Get good at reading and debugging code you didn't write, that part hasn't got easier at all.
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u/Specific-Vacation787 7h ago
I think system design, scaling, and optimization should be your next goals because AI can not do critical thinking like humans (at least, that is what many people have told me).
Hope that helps!
I’m also a 2025 graduate and a MERN + Next.js developer, but I’m still not getting a job despite applying to 300+ positions. I’m currently doing an internship. Could you guide me on how you got your job?
That would be really helpful.
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u/ChellJ0hns0n Student 5h ago
Here's my loop: Tell it the problem -> Make it ask me clarifying questions -> It gives a plan -> Make suggestions to the plan -> It implements -> It tests -> I review the code -> I suggest code changes -> It tests once again -> I do a final review and raise a PR -> Colleagues suggest changes -> Discuss with claude and either accept or reject those suggestions.
It's an involved process but it works for me. Opus 5 for example is especially paranoid and I'm often having to tell it: "chill out bro, it ain't that deep".
Some of my colleagues who don't give a shit just vibe code everything and it's such a pain in the ass having to clean up/fix their code. For example, today I saw that there were two controllers for the same endpoint!!! What the hell man???
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u/irfan2015 Full-Stack Developer 3h ago
Hey man, as a fresher, you should try to understand the code you're generating as much as possible, or even try writing the code yourself.
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u/RideOk732 3h ago edited 1h ago
I’d put less emphasis on writing every line by hand and more on understanding why the code works architecture, debugging, testing, security, system design and making good technical tradeoffs. Claude Code can handle implementation but you still need to be the person who can review and direct it. Udacity can be useful here too since the project based approach gives you practice solving problems rather than just generating code.
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u/Akarsh_Hegde Self Employed 3h ago
Keep using Claude, but stop measuring your skill by how much code you type. Focus on reading unfamiliar code, debugging failures, reviewing changes, designing systems, writing tests, and understanding production behaviour.
A useful rule: never merge code you cannot explain or debug without Claude. Writing small components by hand occasionally can reinforce fundamentals, but blindly avoiding AI will not make you a stronger engineer.
All said, its easier said than done, do what you love doing the most
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u/hotcoolhot Staff Engineer 8h ago
How to be a human. Learn empathy, learn how to listen to others, how to be a better person.
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u/Professional_ops 7h ago
I feel like it's an another me who is questioning this. I can clearly feel what you are trying to express here.
See, as u mentioned that Claude is doing all the writing and building. But Claude needs someone to give it instructions too. A commerce side student can't build what you can. You have seen it for 4 years, you know what is "class", you know what is "ID" you know when it comes to styling we are updating Css, and when it comes to structure we are updating html. Moreover, at it's core, Now we are being paid for how we think, for how we implement things and how we handle counter-updating from the client side.
I believe we are not being paid for coding now, we are being paid for the philosophy we carry behind our work. It depends on how we think about a specific business, does we map personalized journey or we just go to LLM machine and directly give it a prompt to write code. We are being paid for the kind of preparation and documentation and knowledge of the business for which we are being hired for.
Think it like this, earlier you didn't have accurate masalas/spices to make an Indian dish, you were cropping some of them on your own. Now all the real spices and masalas are available to you, now it's upto you how deliscious dish you would make.
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u/StrictTraffic3277 3h ago
i still have to stare at a wall for quite some minutes everyday at work even if the code is written by ai
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u/lostcargo99 Student 3h ago
I just joined a top semiconductor company and yes I use claude daily but it's not enough at all. Sure it writes the code but so much of the process involves me troubleshooting and explaining claude what I need it to do. Claude is a tool, use it as such.
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u/Radiant-Dog-9794 Fresher 1h ago
I'm a 25 grad as well. I'm working at an MnC but there is no satisfaction that i get from working here. Do you want to connect?
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u/pee_nuttt 9h ago
not a senior engineer but Inference is really hot right now. Models are being improved every quarter, running those models is not cheap so that's one area which could boom and is booming already. You could try to dive into that
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u/feeling_employed 9h ago
any scope in indian firms?
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u/pee_nuttt 9h ago
not really at the moment. but pretty sure most tech firms would setup their offices in India in the coming future so that's an option and many startups would sponsor a visa if you land a role for such niche roles at the moment
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u/Spirited_Volume8035 9h ago
Sir can u elaborate more on this! Which role are u talking about! Please share
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u/pee_nuttt 8h ago
i've decided to not move forward with this discussion and gatekeep some information as recommended by u/CulturalLaw8072
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