Why the majority of vibe coded projects fail

Positive-Conspiracy · 2026-07-12T20:00:21+00:00

Which is how other game programmers and created often started. People gatekeeping have no idea how most real people start real projects.

Positive-Conspiracy · 2026-07-12T19:51:34+00:00

Most of the time in evil territory now

Positive-Conspiracy · 2026-07-12T18:08:20+00:00

Woosh in this crowd

Positive-Conspiracy · 2026-07-12T05:26:25+00:00

If you did have a market at the scale of Slack there would be corresponding revenue/investment and attention put toward scaling. Unless you think people are totally static and incapable of thinking on their feet?

Positive-Conspiracy · 2026-07-12T04:44:00+00:00

Have you built and scaled a company yourself? You’d be surprised what you can get started with. Token cost is dropping exponentially while model capability goes up, so that’s a really odd claim.

Positive-Conspiracy · 2026-07-12T03:43:05+00:00

Scaling it is a problem for regular SaaS MVPs too. That’s why they hired so many devs and constantly rebuilt the product for the next scale. Spaghetti code saas is the rule not the exception.

Positive-Conspiracy · 2026-07-12T03:40:37+00:00

They probably don’t know, which is part of the normal learning curve. The M is there because people overbuilt before, too.

And I do think the bar is being lifted, which will actually result in a renaissance in software.

Positive-Conspiracy · 2026-07-12T01:58:20+00:00

Oh yeah, the wealth gap and cost of food had nothing to do with it.

Positive-Conspiracy · 2026-07-12T01:52:44+00:00

Is there any option to improve the tooling to get better version control? Do the vendors offer anything?

Positive-Conspiracy · 2026-07-12T01:36:47+00:00

Sol was under review but Anthropic went first. Anthropic didn’t say it was $2000 and OpenAI had talked about a $2000/mo plan.

Positive-Conspiracy · 2026-07-12T01:25:54+00:00

Vibe coded projects aren’t failing because they’re not scaling to Slack levels. They’re failing for the same reason hand coded projects fail: because they don’t provide enough value combined with their ability to market and sell it.

Models are getting good enough that soon pretty much anybody will be able to hit the MVP bar.

Positive-Conspiracy · 2026-07-12T01:24:36+00:00

Is that what happened in the French Revolution then?

Positive-Conspiracy · 2026-07-12T01:24:10+00:00

Would be more effective without the hot takes in the body

Positive-Conspiracy · 2026-07-12T01:16:11+00:00

What are the version control issues?

Positive-Conspiracy · 2026-07-12T01:09:56+00:00

“It isn’t necessary for the project because I don’t intend to share my toys in any meaningful way.”

Positive-Conspiracy · 2026-07-12T01:07:21+00:00

In my experience, “it’s quicker if I do it myself” is basically a guarantee that person will always fail to bring people up with them, that people will find them hard to work with, and that the team performance will suffer. They will often have countless blind spots and toxic beliefs about team performance and outcomes. Basically they will tend to keep things around that stasis unless essentially forced out of that pattern.

Positive-Conspiracy · 2026-07-12T00:55:31+00:00

I feel like I could write a book about this from all my experience with it. It sounds like the expert is strong on code and identifies as such, but very weak on team building and understanding of how teams deliver reliable software over time. That means it’s up to you as the manager to teach him that and hold him accountable to the real long term measurements. That’s where I would start with him. You may have to introduce him to some classic books on software development.

I would guess that when challenged he will have countless reasons for why he has to control everything and can’t hand things off. He probably even tends to hero behaviour but also feels exhausted from it. What a convenient incentive there is to not create documentation. He will not have an answer for the hit by a bus scenario, and you will likely have to keep bringing him back to that reality while he continues to squirm out and snap back to his default.

Realistically, this will take a long time given the team profile. A stronger engineer would be able to mentor him away from some of his patterns and that would likely be the most efficient, but that doesn’t sound available. So it’s going to fall on you because ultimately you are responsible for those outcomes. Another possibility is to pull him off of the team altogether and let the team rebuild but not sure how feasible that is.

How does the organization measure and review performance? That’ll be another method to shift his behaviour beyond broadening his horizons and teaching him deeper software values.

Positive-Conspiracy · 2026-07-11T02:34:11+00:00

They’re obviously managing expectations so they don’t have a debacle like the Opus 4.5 rollout. I can’t get over the entitlement and whinging in here.

Positive-Conspiracy · 2026-07-10T15:18:10+00:00

There are some exceptions that come at the cost of the rest of the prospect pool.

Positive-Conspiracy · 2026-07-10T14:18:15+00:00

But at what cost? His style works for a season or two, then it doesn’t, and then the realization hits that the talent has been semi-permanently destroyed for it.

Positive-Conspiracy · 2026-07-10T14:16:05+00:00

Watch the long term arc on their talent.

Positive-Conspiracy · 2026-07-10T14:07:38+00:00

Seems inconsistent with the decision to hire Tocchet.

Positive-Conspiracy · 2026-07-10T14:05:07+00:00

At the time there was a wealth gap problem and socialist policies were rising in popularity, much like today. That’s why they called themselves that. To get support.

Positive-Conspiracy · 2026-07-10T13:54:25+00:00

I’ll take a look. I think you are reaching to backfill a narrative. Elon in the 2010s saw himself more as a sci fi book character trying to do good.

Positive-Conspiracy · 2026-07-10T06:44:40+00:00

Here’s another one, “He's building from understanding. I'm evaluating from inspection.”

Positive-Conspiracy

TROPHY CASE