Probably not a hot take anymore.

I think “Prompt Engineering” is bullshit.

Why do we need to have a l33t h@x0r synonym for basic human communication and writing documents?

Clear communication is a real skill. Organizing your thoughts in a manner another human or statistical approximation can understand is valuable.

But it’s not worth dropping five figures to bring in an “expert” to “teach” your staff for an hour amid an active headcount reduction.

Don’t get me fucking started on paywalling prompts.

Here is an alternative framing using some Dharmic vocabulary because I like to flex.

There exists some Bhagwan that contains a lossy dataset.

There exists a variety of Mantras that one can present to LLM Bhagwan for an answer.

It may or may not be an answer that is valuable or even makes sense. There is no contract that requires the output to be factually correct.

Hell there are even so-called Gurus or Pandits that will restrict access to the Mantras they know unless you pay them.

Not a new pattern, already saw it with the Mantra of Ma Gayatri.

But back to the bubble.

This is something that certifications are being sold for.

We can expand on that. Let’s say I am trying to hire someone who knows how to use these not-so-new-anymore Agentic Tools.

What does a piece of paper that says they conceptually understand how to organize their communication in a manner that the machine can understand tell me? Say what we want about the American school system, but this is basic English proficiency being sold back to us with the branding and marketing of technology.

I have heard real engineers broadcast the advice to the room that we should use voice input to “dump out all your thoughts and let the LLM figure it out”. Imma be frank, this resembles the act of prayer significantly more than the art of engineering.