US CEOs experience imposter syndrome

It's not imposter syndrome if you're really an imposter.

A short read, but I really got a lot out of it. One thing I've started losing with the rise of AI and didn't realize until now is the communication with coworkers about current problems we're working through. I reach out to people in the git-blame log, and others used to reach out to me. But now everyone asks the AI, so we're even more siloed than before.

It feels less like we're working together and more like we're working next to each other.

The workflow was: Google it, find Stack Overflow, maybe actually read the documentation (said as a joke, but not really).

Anyone that says this is not good at their job in the first place. I (and other actually competent devs I've talked to about it) have always gone straight to official documentation first. Stack overflow has its place, but it is not the first place to research.

Are we human, or are we Dancer?

I'm not sure humans can do anything continuously without learning. It's just a question of what your brain is filtering down to habit and experience. If your enemy is the compiler saying 'error on line 314' and line 314 is blank, you know to take a deep breath and start checking semicolons and braces. If your enemy is Copilot emitting 'assert true' tests, you know to grumble and move down a level in the specificity of your instructions.

At the end of the day - does the project work?

I’ve never used a LLM willingly, and otherwise avoid interaction with them where possible.

My base impression from interacting with those who actively choose to use LLMs, and unironically call them ‘AI’, is they’re a competency and credibility chipper.

It’s one thing to leverage a tool, where it makes sense for a task, and can otherwise be justified, but there’s a carcinogenic effect on cognition at play with prolonged exposure to whatever form LLMs are in today.

Also, happy 29th anniversary of Judgement Day.

That there's a gap between "it works" and "I understand why it works" and that gap is getting wider, not smaller.

20 years from now, important shit will go sideways, and no one will be able to fix it. That's the world you're building and that's the world your kids will blame you for.

The Google-versus-AI point in there is the one I'd hold onto. Searching made you read three wrong answers before the right one, and the wrong ones were where you learned what the problem actually was. Getting the answer straight away skips that without it feeling like anything is missing.

What I'd say to a junior is to keep reviewing the diff properly rather than reading the summary of it. Reading code you didn't write is worth getting good at either way, and reviewing agent output gives you more practice at it than any job I've had before.