With this new-found capability, you can use an LLM to plan and execute some long-needed refactors, or use it to pile on new features even faster with no regard for tech debt management.

As others have said... it's a tool. A powerful tool in the hands of a wise and skilled wielder who makes planned, focused changes, or a slop-cannon in the hands of someone who is happy to churn out features with minimal understanding of context or system design.

I've been able to do relatively big refactors with great success, like porting thousands of lines of data transforms to drastically different data stores practically in one fell swoop. In the background. As I worked on other stuff.

The cost of experimenting is just mind mindbogglingly cheap now, it's really insane. Don't like the abstractions it comes up with, or think it generated a bunch of slop? Go again, who cares? With a little more steering, they'll often produce exactly what you want.

As for contracting firms, many of them were slop shops before AI, I imagine those kinds of firms are even worse slop shops now.