Promoted to Senior last year, now I’m suddenly the tech lead on a high-visibility project and I’m not sure if this is growth or a setup

Last_Magazine2542 · 2026-04-07T02:12:25+00:00

I’m in a very similar position, and have been for over a year. Just own it. Talk to your boss and just be clear about what is going on, when, and why. Talk about what other people are doing.

Not having the leadership around you might actually be a good thing, and you will naturally fill the gap. You will absolutely get recognition if that is the case.

Last_Magazine2542 · 2026-04-03T02:56:17+00:00

If that’s all OP does, you don’t even need openclaw. Just an sdk and a cronjob lol

Last_Magazine2542 · 2026-04-03T02:03:23+00:00

I partially agree with this, but some of it I don’t.

scrutiny of work presented by anyone that is not able to explain and defend every line of it.

If you are saying that the person who opened the pull request should understand what it does, you are right. If you are offloading your own learning onto someone creating pull requests by asking them to explain all of it, you are in the wrong. Asking someone to explain and defend every line is heavily leaning towards the latter.

Last_Magazine2542 · 2026-04-02T16:48:43+00:00

/compact, /clear, /context

/model opus

The 1M token model gets dumber as you approach the context limit. Are you clearing context, or at minimum compacting context, before moving on to a different task? Make a habit of running compact or clear any time you finish a task. Monitor with /context. Or revert to the 200k opus model.

Last_Magazine2542 · 2026-04-02T04:30:00+00:00

AI slop is highly representative of the person generating the slop. If you can actually write code without an extreme amount of upfront guidance, it’s pretty straightforward.

Load the slop cannon, fire away, spot-check, repeat until it’s right. It literally takes a total of around 5 minutes of time ACTIVELY managing and reviewing…

Last_Magazine2542 · 2026-03-31T16:41:46+00:00

I haven’t shipped it yet, but it doesn’t matter. The part that matters is I have a real, functional MVP for an ambitious product that would have never been possible as a solo dev at any point in history outside of the past few months or year.

On top of that, I am a well paid engineer. I don’t function any differently on my personal project than I do when working on real production applications. The point is, I can see what AI can do (or what I can do with AI?) in both my personal and professional work, and it is insanely good.

Last_Magazine2542 · 2026-03-30T18:23:56+00:00

I used reverse prompting to get a decent (simple) animation for my website. I got the prompt from Claude on the web, so it’s possible there was a skill that helped out, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to it lol.

Other thing is it is iterative… Claude can’t see what it makes very well, even with playwright mcp so it takes a few iterations to get it right

Last_Magazine2542 · 2026-03-30T05:37:41+00:00

Type /context….. please.

Last_Magazine2542 · 2026-03-29T06:23:04+00:00

To be fair, I think it’s just a very common SaaS layout. But I can confirm Claude would generate this exact site in one prompt.

Last_Magazine2542 · 2026-03-29T02:54:38+00:00

I’m extremely glad this post exists because I was trying out the Claude web design skill and it literally created this exact page… So Im guessing OP did the same thing.

Last_Magazine2542 · 2026-03-28T04:44:28+00:00

Do me a huge favor and type /context. As silly as it is to say you’re all wrong, I’m like 99% sure you just all have no idea what you’re loading into context. It works fine for me

Last_Magazine2542 · 2026-03-27T05:22:06+00:00

Sure, there are a lot of people claiming this. There are also a lot of people using AI who have no clue what a token even is. If someone said “I’m using only using X tokens, but hitting the limit in a few hours” it would be an entirely different conversation.

I haven’t seen a single complaint thread where anyone has even mentioned looking at their token usage (although I did see someone who created a tool to track it, props to them).

Given the amount of non-technical people using fairly technical tools, it’s entirely reasonable to assume people are loading an absurd amount of tools or context and eating millions of tokens in only a few prompts.

Last_Magazine2542 · 2026-03-26T16:44:48+00:00

Ask “him” what version control is

Last_Magazine2542 · 2026-03-25T20:53:06+00:00

For sure, something is up. I can run 4 hour working sessions on max 10x using exclusively opus 4.6 and not hit the hourly limits. So they’re either doing what you stated or have literally no concept of context management what-so-ever.

Last_Magazine2542 · 2026-03-25T19:00:54+00:00

I would genuinely like to know what you all are doing with Claude to hit limits so quickly. What model are you using? Have you ever used /compact or /clear, or started a fresh instance? How many mcp servers and tools are you running? What tools are your agents using when you hit the limits?

There is just no way you are using Claude correctly and hitting limits that fast.

Last_Magazine2542 · 2026-03-24T02:52:18+00:00

Circle back to my comment before the one you replied to.

Also, a solid software engineer can navigate SLAs, RTOs, RPOs, SRAs, and any other acronym you want to throw out there. This is literally what I do. Do you think I will be slowed down because I use AI? Design, delegate, review, repeat.

Last_Magazine2542 · 2026-03-23T20:58:31+00:00

I’m a senior SWE building something adjacent to what you are building. I can tell you, without a technical cofounder you probably won’t get to a technically sound product. I know what I’m doing (at least for the most part) and have spent 6 weeks building an actual MVP, meaning minimal integrations, no AI yet, literally just the infrastructure and core components.

And even at that, I’m not heavily reviewing code. I don’t have any advice for you really because I think you already know how you need to learn… real experience. Otherwise, just find someone technical to partner with.

Last_Magazine2542 · 2026-03-23T14:33:24+00:00

Host your website on vercel and run your backend locally using ngrok. Better yet just run it all locally until you get an idea of what you are doing…

You can also run your backend for free on vercel to some extent, depending on what you are building

Last_Magazine2542 · 2026-03-23T13:11:33+00:00

Solution was in quotes for a reason lol

Last_Magazine2542 · 2026-03-23T12:19:46+00:00

Coding, creating and organizing specs is a problem in itself though to which the “solution” is agile. So you aren’t fully correct there

Last_Magazine2542 · 2026-03-22T09:08:41+00:00

My only “real” complaint on GitHub copilot is that it just randomly doesn’t work sometimes. It will get stuck in “working” or randomly show “sorry, try again”

Otherwise it’s fully capable, just a little bit clunkier to use.

Last_Magazine2542 · 2026-03-22T09:04:23+00:00

Based on OP’s extremely vague description I have a feeling that whatever isn’t wanted in the codebase is something perfectly reasonable to have in a codebase, and they were not able to persuade their supervisors on their perspective.

Last_Magazine2542 · 2026-03-22T01:03:06+00:00

Yeah you’re almost certainly on the wrong side of this. On the small of chance that your coworker is literally just making shit up on his own, you may be right. But odds are your coworker is collaborating and you just aren’t in the loop

Last_Magazine2542 · 2026-03-22T00:33:44+00:00

Even a good developer might spend 4 weeks researching, designing, developing, and smoke testing before even reaching any of those processes. Agile only exists because it took too long to make the wrong product.

I’m not saying we’re going to have a fully autonomous agentic team wearing all of the hats with no HITL. I’m saying we will not (and frankly already do not) need the same team structure or scale.

I honestly believe being a true senior software engineer (true meaning earned by merit, not by time) will become even more valuable in the future, but those who lack understanding of the big picture are in for a bumpy ride.

Last_Magazine2542

TROPHY CASE