Ask HN: Worth leaving position over push to adopt vibe coding?

I’ve been doing this for 20 years. I see it as you having two primary options.

You should stay there, learn the new tech, and see what happens.

If it works better than you expected, then your mind will be changed and you’ll be well positioned for the new economy.

If it turns out how you expect, now you have experience working with this tooling to inform your positions at your next company.

Either way, a few months in that environment will help your career.

It's the same elsewhere. Some places are actually using it as a way to get rid of people 'resistant to change'. It also remains to be seen what technical skills we need 5 years from now. I did memory management and pointers 15 years ago and I can still do them now.

What I'd suggest is adapt to it, find ways to push back. Obviously things like "delete entire unit test file & have claude generate a new one" is a bad idea. I've seen claude "monkey patching" a system so that it returns true to the tests.

This issue is going to pop up in the future. Experiment with it on the company's dime even if you've checked out emotionally. You are still doing your job - improving code quality and making sure things run.

The new approach seems to be doing TDD. One, as an engineer, you'll know when AI is bullshitting you with mocks. Even when mocks are BS, you can still test the thing they're meant to represent. 2) AI spits more code than anyone can review. The red, green, refactor approach is one way to keep them on the rails.

I'm a senior engineer with 20+ (oof) years of industry experience. I appreciate that this sucks and you don't want to do it. I wouldn't either. That said, it's a hirer's market out there right now. There will be plenty of people who will be happy to take your position while you're looking for something you prefer.

My opinion is that we're going to have about 5 years of this. Managers and C-suite folks are going to do their absolute darnedest to replace and supplement people with AI tools before they figure out it's not going to work. While I appreciate the differences, I remember seeing this ~6-7 years ago with blockchain at my last role. It'll work itself out. In the mean time, you get to contribute to the situation, instead of simply not being present. It's not going to be fun of course.

I don't think we're ever going back from this. There's an entire generation of new coders, and new managers who are growing up with this stuff. It's part of their experience, and suggesting they not use it is going to be akin to asking if you can use a typewriter instead of a computer with a word processor. Some companies will take longer to adopt, but it's coming...

Is it worth leaving? Hard to say for your specific situation, there's thousands of variables that no one here will ever know. Unless you are a superstar or independently wealthy, it's typically a bad idea to leave a job before you have something else lined up.

Is it worth looking? Absolutely! It will be much easier to make a decision when you're comparing your current position to a job offer, rather than comparing your current position to an unknown. I would also add, no matter what you feel about your current job, it's always a good idea to keep feelers out there for new positions. The fastest way up the rank and salary ladders is moving to new positions. It will always outpace internal promotions.

25 years of experience here. AI is the real deal, and it should be the primary way you’re coding now. Everyone who doesn’t embrace it is about to become a dinosaur overnight.

They’re going to pay you to learn to work with the thing you need to learn to work with anyway? Be smart. Take the deal.

That said, it’s a free country, you can quit any time for any reason.

I can't stop thinking what happened when CASE tools, WYSIWIG, UML, Model Driven Architecture/Development, etc was pushed into devs. I know, it's a different phenomenon (that was a graphical visual push, this keeps the text).

I'm basically retired now and I'm really glad about the timing - I would not want to be in this field if I were in my 30s, 40s or 50s the way things are going. I think what's happening at your company is happening in lots of companies right now so I don't think you'll be able to jump ship and end up somewhere else where it's not happening. You can hope for a backlash - and it might come. In the meantime, go ahead and vibecode being careful about the areas you do it in - they seem pretty good at coming up with testcases, for example. Maybe don't let your coding agent have full editing permissions. Have it give you suggestions for what it would do in the code and evaluate them closely before letting the edits happen (pushing back when needed).

Three years ago I left my job with VERY high salary because I was starting to burn out and took two months off.

From my experience, if you're burnt out or starting to burn out then leave, otherwise I recommend staying until you secure another job.

Regarding the situation, they want to delete the tests? Fine, you have git right? Replace it, and let everything set on fire, quietly enjoy the chaos and at some point revert the changes. Or don't, you're leaving anyway.

Technical growth in 2025 means understanding how to use LLMs effectively more than your peers.

There's no going back to pre-LLM days. Just like we're not going to stop using machines to weave textiles.

I know with only 5 years experience this may not be obvious, but this is only the first of many “revolutionary” technologies making everyone around you lose their minds that you’ll have to deal with in your career. Like every other such technology, I recommend that you engage with it, understand it, relate that experience to what your employer does, and be the voice of knowledgeable pragmatism about where to use it. In other words, be an engineer.

If that can’t be done where you are, or isn’t valued, you’re in the wrong place.

I’ve been through this with (including but not limited to) PCs, OOP, client-server, SOA, XML, NoSQL, blockchain, “big data”, and indeed, multiple definitions of “AI”. Turns out all but one of those were actually somewhat useful in the end, when applied properly, but they didn’t eliminate the industry. Just roll with it.

> The CEO & CTO are both obsessed with it and promote things like "delete entire unit test file & have claude generate a new one" rather than manually address test failures.

So what are the tests actually for then?

I’d stay and actually try the vibe coding, but if it’s not working, only a bit.

For example, try deleting one failing unit test and re-generate it with Claude. Then if it turns out mostly worthless, scrap it and restore the original test. Maybe the entire test is correct (and easy to verify), maybe you can take pieces from it, maybe it’s unsalvageable; if it doesn’t save time, write tests manually from then on until the next major AI improvement.

Worst case, CEO fires you for not vibe-coding enough. Best case, you find a way for them to make your life easier. My prediction (based on some but not much experience) is that you spend only a small amount of time trying the AI tools, occasionally they impress you, usually they fail, but even then it’s interesting and fun to see what they do.

EDIT: as for dealing with the spaghetti when others use AI; wait for that to become a problem before quitting over it. And of course you can look for opportunities now.