[juanre]

"The system they built feels slightly foreign even as it functions correctly." This is exactly the same issue that engineers who become managers have. You are further away from the code; your understanding is less grounded, it feels disconnected.

When software engineers become agent herders their day-to-day starts to resemble more that of a manager than that of an engineer.

[allan_s]

exactly, as a manager and a sometimes a developer, "vibe-coding" has been looking more and more as my day job (in a good way, it's good to not have to do all the dirty work for your pet projects) and it's all about having the same discipline in term of:

* thinking about the big picture * knowing how you can verify that the code match the big picture.

In both case, somtimes you are happily surprised, sometimes you discover that the things you told 3 times the one writing code to do was still not done.

[mort96]

Do you view it as an issue at all that when everyone takes on a more manager-like role, no human remains who has the hands-on experience and understanding of the system?

[archagon]

Engineering is not "dirty work."

Management is not "engineering."

[konschubert]

And like good management, the solution is to define clear domain boundaries, quality requirements, and a process that enables iterative improvement both within and across domains.