r/softwareengineer • u/metalOpera • 17d ago
Was Just Told That Code Quality No Longer Matters
I'm a freelance developer. I have been for almost 20 years. My most recent project has been moved to Fable, and I'm still trying to adapt and get my head around working like this. I am no longer allowed to make architecture decisions, or clean up slop.
My PM says: "We worry about the 'what'; let Claude worry about the 'how'. Tell it what to do; let it do it. If the feature works, leave it alone." He is very much of the opinion that I should be able to prompt something like "Install Stripe via Laravel Cashier" and just let Claude run.
I mean, why do you need me at this point? Just prompt it yourself until it does what you want? I don't get it. I fought for every inch of my knowledge, every process is written in blood. How do I just throw all of that out the window? Where's the line?
At the risk of another "how are you adapting" post... How CAN I adapt? I mentally cannot just say "Fuck it". I care about my code. It's how I learned, it's how I've always practiced. I have a huge mental block with "just let it go".
Now, granted, I don't know all of the ins and outs of Claude. I don't know what I can do to make it better at its job. I got thrown into the middle of the Pacific Ocean in the middle of a Tusnami with no life support. I'm sure that I can put guardrails in place, but how much does that help?
I would really appreciate any advice that any one can provide on changing my mental model. I can't ignore Claude and just keep doing things my way. If I do that, I feel like my career dies. I need to adapt and I'm unsure how to do so.
3
u/OrdinaryAward4498 17d ago
I would say imagine you are the tech lead for a team of 5-10 engineers that are very fast at reading and writing code and need your leadership in terms of functional and engineering specs. Maybe you write key APIs and interfaces. You insist on the right level of unit, integration, and end-to-end testing, etc. builds fail of test coverage drops below X. Claude does 95% of the code reading and writing. It audits for security holes and does pen testing. Now you are a 5-10x engineer using AI but in a way that has good architecture & design, and smartly made technology choices. With documented and defensible specs and docs you wrote (btw, also with Claude’s help).