What's this about?
Boris Cherny — creator of Claude Code — argues the best engineers were *always* the ones who automated their own work: vim macros, lint rules, e2e test suites. Those were the highest-leverage activities because they multiplied output. Coding agents are the same instinct with a vastly higher ceiling.
What exactly does "leverage" mean here?
Leverage is output per unit of effort. Writing one lint rule that prevents a bug class forever beats fixing that bug fifty times. The thesis: agents don't replace engineering — they industrialize this automation instinct, so the engineers who thrive are the ones who were already automators at heart.
What's the community saying?
6.1k likes / 494 retweets — the day's most-shared engineer-culture post
- Strong agreement from tool-builders — this framing makes agents a continuation of engineering culture, not a rupture.
- The counterpoint — some note the old automations taught you the system deeply; delegating to an agent might not.
- Pairs with the same-day chorus — trq212's "software engineering is the profession of automation" and simonw's "outsource the typing" made this the day's unofficial theme.