January 10, 2026
Leveling up or getting played?
Beating the Tutorial
Congrats on “Senior” — the crowd says that’s just the warm-up
TLDR: The article argues shipping task tickets is beginner-level; true senior work is protecting long‑term product health. Comments split between calling promotions a management hustle, backing tough trade‑offs, and joking about a “hug of death”—urgent as AI tools speed feature churn and risk.
A fiery blog post says the real game of software isn’t cranking out “tickets” (task cards) fast—it’s protecting the long‑term health of the product. Shipping features is the tutorial, not the final boss. Promotions for hitting tickets? The author calls that a systemic failure where new engineers learn speed, not judgment. And as AI chatbots (LLMs) turbo‑charge feature churn, the piece warns: adding stuff is easy, adding it without breaking your future is hard.
Commenters went full gladiator. jackblemming lit the match with “management’s greatest trick” hot take, accusing bosses of dangling titles while they “make the real money.” simonw backed the core message, highlighting that “can’t be done easily” often means “not healthy for the product.” Meanwhile, hvs dropped a “Hug of death?” and linked the archived post, implying the original might’ve been swarmed with clicks—irony not lost on the crowd: web.archive.org. Jokes flew about speedrunning promotions, ticket mining, and “ship now, regret later.” The vibe: half the room cheering the warning against feature mills (teams that churn features), the other half dunking on career ladders as XP bait while the real endgame is choosing fewer, better changes—so your product doesn’t become spaghetti with badges.
Key Points
- •The article frames feature delivery as a “tutorial” phase of software engineering, not the culmination of expertise.
- •It argues that promoting engineers to senior based primarily on feature delivery is premature and often misguided.
- •Change carries costs, and implementing features without considering product health can be value-neutral or value-negative over time.
- •Experienced engineers evaluate multiple approaches with trade-offs, risks, and collaboration needs to protect and improve product health.
- •LLMs are described as accelerating efforts to commoditize engineering, intensifying problematic industry trends.