Claude Opus is the reason I'm about to get promoted to SDE2
I'm getting promoted to Sr. SWE with 1 YOE. I feel like a fraud but the code works.
Had my appraisal meeting recently. My manager said my throughput is "unmatched" and they are bumping me to SDE2. I’m 24, with barely 1.5 year of experience.
Here is the raw truth: i am not a 10x engineer. I’m just the only one in my startup paying for the Claude highest tier plan (out of my own pocket) while everyone else is using the Gemini subscription the org pays for or using MiniMax or some shit like that on Opencode.
The difference is night and day. While my actual Senior dev (4 YOE) is stuck debugging complex chains and state management issues manually, I just dump the entire file context into Opus. Honestly, I have seen compared opus vs 3.1 pro preview and the difference is stark, i am alarmed people do not see this.
I’m shipping 3-4 complex screens per sprint (week) while my mentor is struggling with one.
It feels illegal and fake. I’m bypassing the "struggle" phase of learning. I respect my senior, he taught me the basics, but raw coding speed doesn't matter anymore.
If you aren't paying for the best models/tools, you are already behind. 1 YOE + Claude Opus > 4 YOE. That’s the scary reality.
Until I get replaced by AI, this will work out for me :)
Just make sure you are not getting stuck in a lawsuit, pushing out company’s data outside enterprise subscription could be an issue!
Yes about to say that since you are using personal plan you are actually exposing the data of company While the other devs using company provided ai tools there the company data is protected
That's what prompt dev do, but in future you'll find difficulty in switching when interviewer throws some hard problems.
He will become CTO of that company
Facing this situation.
Yess bro I have been telling this to friends too ... How sh*tty Gemini is compared to Claude and Chatgpt...
Can you tell me what your setup is? I mean do you use claude in terminal/vs code extension or what?
Claude opus and Claude sonet i am using in Vs code
Both are best helps me to wrappup work within 15-30 mins
Well I can totally relate to you. Something similar happened to me. Many developers in my company are more senior than I am, but with the help of AI, I’m able to get most of my work done efficiently and even produce optimized code. I’m also learning a lot along the way and continuously upgrading myself in the AI space. Over time, the CTO noticed my progress and promoted me to SDE2 within just a year.
Don’t overthink. Claude and all are just tools, and you deserve your promotion because you learned how to use it properly.
It’s good that you’re using the best tools in the market. But make sure you deeply understand what the model is generating and the architectural decisions behind it.
If something breaks in production, or there’s a major LLM outage... you’ll be the one accountabl to fix the issues. And if you don’t understand the internals, that’s a high-risk.
I have seen my juniors making the llm based development(vibe coding) in other projects and we are fixing them as they can't fix on their own.
How do you guys give code and data to AI though... Isn't it confidential?
When do u think AI will reduce workforce by 60% ?
I just realized that in my lifetime I am going to see the split of developers into virgin prompt devs and chad rawdog devs
But what to do in case where your company blocks access to all AI chatbots ?
