Vibe Coding Satisfaction - Harness engineering: Leveraging Codex in an agent-first world

Personal accounts of reduced coding enjoyment, concerns about skill atrophy, dopamine hit comparisons, withdrawal symptoms speculation, debates about returning to manual coding workflows

The transition toward "vibe coding" has sparked a significant debate over the loss of intrinsic joy in software engineering, with some developers seeking to return to manual workflows to reclaim their flow state and mental sharpness. While the "magic" of AI-driven development provides addictive dopamine hits, critics warn these can mask skill atrophy and lead to a deceptive overestimation of actual productivity. Despite this growing dissatisfaction among those who miss the "nerdy" satisfaction of the craft, many argue that resisting AI is professionally unsustainable in an industry where cost-effectiveness and keeping pace with peers are now mandatory. Consequently, the profession is shifting toward a model of "harness engineering," where financial compensation increasingly replaces the personal fulfillment once found in the act of writing code.

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I’ve been vibe coding a lot over the past year or so, and I think I’m going to stop. In fact, I sort of want to challenge myself to see, can I go back to a sort of the fork in the road with the old copilot autocomplete workflow and really maximize that. Be in the drivers seat for most of the code being written, but find ways to use AI to really enhance the flow state / remove blockers. Tools only minimal actual code generation.

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I would be very impressed with someone who's been vibecoding "a lot" for about a year who could then go back to being fully in the loop for even 50%. I would even say I'd expect withdrawal symptoms at that point.

The dopamine hits are core to why people even do vibecoding (or vibecoding-in-a-dress/spec-driven development) and why they tend to overestimate its output so much. Hell, it's core to all forms of LLM-assisted development (because it feels like magic), but most of the other forms are more value, less delusion.

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I actually don’t find vibe coding satisfying is one of the many reasons I’m going back. I feel a little of what you’re talking about, but I’m a nerd. I like to code.

But I’m not dismissing your concern. Because it is one of the reasons I’m making this decision. I’m a professional. I’m not just here to feel good I’m here to do a good job over the course of a career. I think all in, when you think about writing good maintainable, software, learning, staying mentally sharp, and speed put together. Vibe coding could be less effective and maybe even in the aggregate “slower”.

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This.

Insisting on writing code by hand when LLMs are available is not software engineering in 2026. Engineers find the most cost-effective solution for the problem at hand that meets the requirements.

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I’d be interested to know two things:

1. What’s the job satisfaction like day to day being an engineer on this project? How have they adapted to this way of working?

2. How much did it cost? Work is being done whilst the engineers sleep but if that 6 hours overnight task cost $300 and could have been done by a person in 2 hours is it a real saving?

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> 1. What’s the job satisfaction like day to day being an engineer on this project? How have they adapted to this way of working?

The job satisfaction is looking at the bank account every time you feel your job sucks.

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I am not much understanding the naysayers here.

I will do a premise: I don't like where software engineering is heading, at all. I have never been unhappier to work in this field since AI came out. And no, it is not possible to opt out of AI, especially when your teammates are all great engineers whose productivity increased a lot without any drops in quality code-wise (in fact the opposite has happened). You need to keep up. But it's tiring and the fun/interesting parts are disappearing.

That being said, it's clear that harness engineering is the most important part of our job and that task is going to take increasingly more of our time. And thus having a glimpse of how an AI company handles it is by any means interesting.

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How do you keep your skills if you no longer engage in the activity that keeps them sharp?