[sasmithjr]

> sasmithjr was apparently trying to defend babysitting A.I. by making an analogy with mentoring juniors

I regret adding that last bit to my comment because my main point (which I clearly messed up emphasizing and communicating) is that I think you’re presenting a false dichotomy in the original comment. Now that work can be done with LLMs asynchronously, it’s possible to both write your own code and guide LLMs as they need it when you have down time. And nothing about that requires stopping other functions of the job like mentoring and teaching juniors, either, so you can still build relationships on the job, too.

If having to attend to an LLM in any way makes the job worse for you, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. So far, LLMs feel like one of many other automations that I use frequently and haven’t really changed my satisfaction with my job.

[lapcat]

> If having to attend to an LLM in any way makes the job worse for you

I think you're downplaying the nightmare scenario, and your own previous comment already suggests a more expansive use of LLM: "so a senior engineer can send it off to work on multiple issues at once".

What I fear, and what I already see happening to an extent, is a top-down corporate mandate to use AI, indeed a mandate to maximize the use of AI in order to maximize (alleged) "productivity". Ultimately, then, senior engineers become glorified babysitters of the AI. It's not about the personal choice of the engineer, just like, as the other commenter mentioned, open vs. closed offices or remote vs. in-person are often not the choice of individual engineers but rather a top-down corporate mandate.

We've already seen a corporate backlash against remote work and a widespread top-down demand for RTO. That's real; it's happened and is happening.