# Relying on LLMs without judgment may put software developers' jobs at risk

DevFeed: [Relying on LLMs without judgment may put software developers' jobs at risk](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/there-s-no-point-at-which-turning-your-brain-off-will-work-77657.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://danluu.com/brain-off/>)

Published: 2026-09-18T00:00:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Danluu](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/danluu.md>)

Topics: [human in the loop agent](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/human-in-the-loop-agent.md>), [human review](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/human-review.md>)

Tags: [human-in-the-loop](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/human-in-the-loop.md>), [llms](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/llms.md>)

## AI overview

The author criticizes developers who assume LLM-generated code works and simply relay failures back to the model. Although this approach has improved, the author argues that if LLMs become capable of producing good software independently, employers could automate the loop and eliminate the intermediary role.

## Source excerpt

In early 2025, I started seeing people turn off their brain as they use LLMs1. They would have an LLM take an action (summarize text, write some code, etc.), and just assume that it worked2. This generally didn't work in early 2025 and the result was often quite silly. As LLMs have gotten better, I've seen more of this. Sometimes, people will try to get the LLM to write some code for them and basically just assume that it works3. Sometimes there's a human in the loop and, if the thing doesn't work, they'll ask the LLM to figure out the problem and solve it. Niklas Gruhn calls some variants of doing this being a meat proxy.4 Being a for loop meat proxy works better than it did in early 2025 and the software I've tried that's developed like this sometimes actually sort of works. Not well enough that I'd want to use it or that it's successful, but I'm impressed at how effective being a meat proxy is in September 2026. You could imagine LLMs improving enough that brain-off meat-proxy development produces average quality software in the foreseeable future, or even that LLMs improve enough that they produce great software without a human in the loop. Let's say that happens. What reason is there for the company to employ the meat proxy? The company can just run the LLM in a loop and lay off the employee. There's no point at which this methodology will work for the employee5. Thanks to Max Bittker, Yossi Kreinin, Luke Burton, Thomas Dullien, Dennis Snell, Milosz Danczak, Peter Geoghegan, and Jamie Brandon for comments/corrections/discussion. I've been having this thought for about a year and a half now. I have it more frequently now as LLMs get better and I see people spend more time turning their brain off when interacting with LLMs. [return] Luke Burton had this comment: I think being able to do this says more about the type of work being done than people think. I will only walk away from work like this if the task is quite low value, if it can afford to fail. For high va