Summarizer

> We don't call architects 'vibe architects' even though they copy-paste 4/5th of your next house and use a library of things in their work! > We don't call builders 'vibe builders' for using earth-moving machines instead of a shovel... > When was the last time you reviewed the machine code produced by a compiler? Sure, because those are categorically different. You are describing shortcuts of two classes: boilerplate (library of things) and (deterministic/intentional) automation. Vibe coding doesn't use either of those things. The LLM agents involved might use them, but the vibe coder doesn't. Vibe coding is delegation , which is a completely different class of shortcut or "tool" use. If an architect delegates all their work to interns, directs outcomes based on whims not principals, and doesn't actually know what the interns are delivering, yeah, I think it would be fair to call them a vibe architect. We didn't have that term before, so we usually just call those people "arrogant pricks" or "terrible bosses". I'm not super familiar but I feel like Steve Jobs was pretty famously that way - thus if he was an engineer, he was a vibe engineer. But don't let this last point detract from the message, which is that you're describing things which are not really even similar to vibe coding.

I think you are right in placing emphasis on delegation. There’s been a hypothesis floating around that I find appealing. Seemingly you can identify two distinct groups of experienced engineers. Manager, delegator, or team lead style senior engineers are broadly pro-AI. The craftsman, wizard, artist, IC style senior engineers are broadly anti-AI. But coming back to architects, or most professional services and academia to be honest, I do think the term vibe architect as you define it is exactly how the industry works. An underclass of underpaid interns and juniors do the work, hoping to climb higher and position themselves towards the top of the ponzi-like pyramid scheme.

You read it. You now have an infinite army of overconfident slightly drunken new college grads to throw at any problem. Some times you’re gonna want to slowly back away from them and write things yourself. Sometimes you can farm out work to them. Code review their work as you would any one else’s, in fact more so. My rule of thumb has been it takes a senior engineer per every 4 new grads to mentor them and code review their work. Or put another way bringing on a new grad gets you +1 output at the cost of -0.25 a senior. Also, there are some tasks you just can’t give new college grads. Same dynamic seems to be shaping up here. Except the AI juniors are cheap and work 24*7 and (currently) have no hope of growing into seniors.

> Same dynamic seems to be shaping up here. Except the AI juniors are cheap and work 24*7 and (currently) have no hope of growing into seniors. Each individual trained model... sure. But otoh you can look at it as a very wide junior with "infinite (only limited by your budget)" willpower. Sure, three years ago they were GPT-3.5, basically useless. And now they're Opus 4.6. I wonder what the next few years will bring.

Isn’t there something off about calling predictions about the future, that aren’t possible with current tech, hype? Like people predicted AI agents would be this huge change, they were called hype since earlier models were so unreliable, and now they are mostly right as ai agents work like a mid level engineer. And clearly super human in some areas.

> ai agents work like a mid level engineer They do not. > And clearly super human in some areas. Sure, if you think calculators or bicycles are "superhuman technology". Lay off the hype pills.

It's so sad that we're the ones who have to tell the agent how to improve by extending agent.md or whatever. I constantly have to tell it what I don't like or what can be improved or need to request clarifications or alternative solutions. This is what's so annoying about it. It's like a child that does the same errors again and again. But couldn't it adjust itself with the goal of reducing the error bit by bit? Wouldn't this lead to the ultimate agent who can read your mind? That would be awesome.

What a lovely read. Thank you for sharing your experience. The human-agent relationship described in the article made me wonder: are natural, or experienced, managers having more success with AI as subordinates than people without managerial skill? Are AI agents enormously different than arbitrary contractors half a world away where the only communication is daily text exchanges?

> babysitting my kind of stupid and yet mysteriously productive robot friend LOL, been there, done that. It is much less frustrating and demoralizing than babysitting your kind of stupid colleague though. (Thankfully, I don't have any of those anymore. But at previous big companies? Oh man, if only their commits were ONLY as bad as a bad AI commit.)