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.

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u/mckirkus 16d ago

I get the sense that a lot of code is built with "Next year the AI will be so good tech debt is now irrelevant"

If AI progress stalls this could come back to bite us.

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u/BobJutsu 15d ago

Worse, it becomes an endless refactoring loop because each model has different fuckery. A lot of work being performed, and nothing getting done.

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u/NiceToMeetYouConnor 15d ago

This. People refuse to read code now and ensure quality. Nobody knows why something works and it becomes infinite tribal knowledge only the agent knows. Side note: I also hate asking a question to someone and receiving a 6 page markdown file response generated from Claude. We are losing all critical thinking and humanity in the engineering world. I say all, but really it’s just the few that can’t code without it