zlacker

>>jinhku+(OP)
First you must accept that engineering elegance != market value. Only certain applications and business models need the crème de le crème of engineers.

LLM has been hollowing out the mid and lower end of engineering. But has not eroded highest end. Otherwise all the LLM companies wouldn’t pay for talent, they’d just use their own LLM.

>>monero+M9
I keep hearing this but I don’t understand. If inelegant code means more bugs that are harder to fix later, that translates into negative business value. You won’t see it right away which is probably where this sentiment is coming from, but it will absolutely catch up to you.

Elegant code isn’t just for looks. It’s code that can still adapt weeks, months, years after it has shipped and created “business value”.

>>WD-42+7f
It's a trade-off. The gnarly thing is that you're trading immediate benefits for higher maintenance costs and decreased reliability over time, which makes it a tempting one to keep taking. Sure, there will be negative business value, but later, and right now you can look good by landing the features quicker. It's FAFO with potentially many reporting quarters between the FA and the FO.

This trade-off predates LLMs by decades. I've been fortunate to have a good and fruitful career being the person companies hire when they're running out of road down which to kick the can, so my opinion there may not be universal, mind you.