alt Hacker NewsYeah you don't walk into the job doing it. But once your position is secure and you've built some stuff to where you can make changes in 5 minutes that might take someone else a day, then you can start pushing back on craziness.
There's also an art to how you do it. It's important to build up trust that you won't tell the client something is impossible or really hard just because you don't want to do it. You try to explain to them how much complexity this is going to add, how that will make it harder to add new features in the future, and most importantly offer some alternatives that get them 90% of what they're trying to do. Most clients will appreciate that approach IME, especially if you've already thrilled them a few times.
This is one of the reasons I'm not so worried about Claude taking my job in the immediate future. But I am still extremely worried about the industry as a whole and by extension the future of the middle class.
Yeah I agree. I've worked with my boss in various capacities for the last ten years. When he says "can we do X" my answer is always like "we can do anything, the question is does the company want to allocate Y resources to get X done." Claude, being a yes-man, will always say "you're absolutely right!" to any idea you throw at it, not knowing (and, perhaps more crucially, not caring) if it's the right fit for your product/business.
I think part of the problem is that many engineers don't stick around long enough to build that rapport, which isn't a problem of AI in itself but is certainly exacerbated by it.