Should it be a 5X junior-middle engineer, not all engineer work? I found Claude Code really struggles to implement something more complicated than a simple data mapping, APIs, or similar. Concrete examples I saw Claude Code didn’t work well and instead made me slower are arirthmetic coding, PPO. Also, see this research from METR that makes similar conclusion.
Claude Code doesn’t work that well if you’re not an experienced programmer. I mean, it works okay, but it has no taste, so it just produces syntactically correct stuff that is only randomly useful by default. It takes active steering to get good code out of it.
Also, I’m rarely trying to solve algorithmic problems, I’m trying to build production software, which is mostly about managing abstractions and plumbing different systems together to produce something useful to customers. All the hard algorithm work happens somewhere else by someone else because, while it’s essential, it adds very little marginal value for our customers. If algorithms to do something don’t exist, the solution is often to just wait for someone to figure it out, then build a feature on top of them. When I do get to work on algorithms, it’s usually solving complex concurrent execution problems, which Claude is okay at helping with but not great on its own. Luckily, I mostly design smartly to rely on systems that manage these details for me so I don’t need to work them out all the time.
I work well with Claude because I have a lot of programming experience—over 30 years’ worth! I’ve developed strong intuitions about what good code looks like, and have clear ideas about what patterns will and won’t work. I can steer Claude towards good solutions because I know what good solutions look like. Without this skill, I’d be lost.
so I’d amend that to “Gordon-level very senior engineer”, not junior-middle (not sure where you got that from the OP?)
Should it be a 5X junior-middle engineer, not all engineer work? I found Claude Code really struggles to implement something more complicated than a simple data mapping, APIs, or similar. Concrete examples I saw Claude Code didn’t work well and instead made me slower are arirthmetic coding, PPO. Also, see this research from METR that makes similar conclusion.
Claude Code doesn’t work that well if you’re not an experienced programmer. I mean, it works okay, but it has no taste, so it just produces syntactically correct stuff that is only randomly useful by default. It takes active steering to get good code out of it.
Also, I’m rarely trying to solve algorithmic problems, I’m trying to build production software, which is mostly about managing abstractions and plumbing different systems together to produce something useful to customers. All the hard algorithm work happens somewhere else by someone else because, while it’s essential, it adds very little marginal value for our customers. If algorithms to do something don’t exist, the solution is often to just wait for someone to figure it out, then build a feature on top of them. When I do get to work on algorithms, it’s usually solving complex concurrent execution problems, which Claude is okay at helping with but not great on its own. Luckily, I mostly design smartly to rely on systems that manage these details for me so I don’t need to work them out all the time.
Gordon said
so I’d amend that to “Gordon-level very senior engineer”, not junior-middle (not sure where you got that from the OP?)