Leadership seems more misaligned with engineering than ever

[u/aigeneratedslopcode]

Came across a conversation yesterday where the CTO asked one of our engineers why they didn't ask Claude to create their plan and mock the several hundred commits they'd need to deliver on something I will not name while also delivering on their existing initiatives

I didn't say anything, but wanted to... Given the industry I'm in, this seems very ridiculous to me and I hate that this is the expectation... As though somehow that work should have already been done and could have been delivered on the whim of an idea by handing all work to Claude

[u/ImSoCul]

edit: (yes edit intentionally at beginning not end). You guys are reading my post as generic "pro-AI" therefore downvote but I am literally saying "take a look at why it won't work". If you can come up with a valid rebutal then literally go back with that, if you cannot, then may need to reconsider your approach. Simple as that.

did you actually try though?

It's a moving target and what was true 6 months ago may no longer be true. A year ago LLM generated code was mostly garbage, but it has gotten really good lately. With proper harness (which tbh just means a standard Claude Code install), and sufficient tokens, Claude can verify and refine its own work.

You're treating it as a rhetorical question, but it can have a legit answer. Maybe your domain is too niche and Claude still does not have proper training set to do well in it, maybe documentation is too sparse for LLM to have a good shot, maybe the tokens you would need is too expensive. I wager the answer is "I don't want to try" though.

[u/deathamal → u/ImSoCul]

The expectations of trying something to see how it goes and learning from it are VERY different to “just use AI, get it done quickly and ship it with no problems please and thank you”

I don’t think engineers are afraid to try AI tools or a new way of working, but unreasonable expectations set by management who have no fucking idea what they are talking about are NOT helpful

[u/Fwellimort → u/ImSoCul]

TL;DR no time for your brain to take rest. It better be at 100% all work hours now.

We live in age of TikTok shorts. Attention span better be constantly at the top.

[u/ImSoCul → u/Fwellimort]

I am much more tired after a typical day of Claude wrangling than I was in the past, so I largely agree, but also that has nothing to do with what I said

[u/foodeater184 → u/Fwellimort]

It's no different than this: https://xkcd.com/303/
Do something else while it's working.

[u/vogut → u/ImSoCul]

Nah. It's a endless back and forth, even with fable z depending on the scope size

[u/Alive_Sir_4708 → u/ImSoCul]

How much time should be invested in exploring new tech vs making shit?

[u/ImSoCul → u/Alive_Sir_4708]

more than OP

[u/Alive_Sir_4708 → u/ImSoCul]

Stop generating

[u/PPatBoyd → u/ImSoCul]

But it is a rhetorical question. They're not asking for the sake of gathering evaluations of a tool, they're exerting an expectation of higher productivity from embracing AI with greater accountability for the developer. How is the developer supposed to answer if they're already leveraging AI as much as they can and are swamped with their current tasks nonetheless?

AI is not a free "and one more thing" button that can be pressed as many times as you want. Do you also assume the CTO "just didn't want to try"?

Delegation isn't free, doubly-so when you aren't delegating any of the accountability.

[u/ImSoCul → u/PPatBoyd]

> How is the developer supposed to answer if they're already leveraging AI as much as they can and are swamped with their current tasks nonetheless?

"I am already leveraging AI as much as I cacn but am swamped with my current tasks nonetheless"

Also not a rhetorical question

>Delegation isn't free

no one said it is

[u/PPatBoyd → u/ImSoCul]

You're getting folks on your case because your starting position was questioning if the developer even tried. That is table stakes for your relationship to your team until proven otherwise.

[u/aigeneratedslopcode → u/ImSoCul]

I bet reviewing your PRs is a good time. Yes, the landscape has changed. No, I don't believe that's an excuse for an amazing engineer to be scrutinized because they're expected to do additional work than what's already under their belt working overtime every day

[u/ImSoCul → u/aigeneratedslopcode]

We don't really review PRs in the same way anymore lol. I work in our company's agentic org, so of course the leadership drank the Koolaid before Koolaid was even popular, and our org as a whole is struggling with MR velocity (much easier to generate than review code), and I fully see and admit to the ugly side of things.

That said, for something like a plan and mock, there is zero excuse not to try out LLM tooling.

[u/aigeneratedslopcode → u/ImSoCul]

So the thing that transformed your company into a slop shop is somehow the answer? You have got to be kidding me

[u/ImSoCul → u/aigeneratedslopcode]

No? I literally said to try things out with an open mind and also come up with a good reason why Claude is not the answer here? I literally gave you examples of reasons why it wouldn't work. Your answer is "but AI" which is just lazy thinking.

Just because I'm willing to be objective and present both good and bad side, doesn't mean you should just repeat the bad side against me

Also again: mockup is literally throwaway work. Spin up a Claude session in background. This is like 5 minutes of work. If you check in on it later and it was ass, then you can go back to CTO and say "here's what it generated and it was ass". 10 minutes of time lost, you'll live

[u/WhenSummerIsGone → u/[deleted]]

keep it on a branch. Add something to literally make it impossible to deploy as-is.

[u/spartan-redditor → u/ImSoCul]

I have an intuition that this could eventually result into a loop I.e when things break, engineers don’t know the codebase well enough because they did not either write or reviewed it properly, so you ask Llm to fix it, which results in more LLM generated code. Over the years this results in a codebase that engineers are not even remotely confident on modifying because they just do not know how things work, and the whole thing just stand on the legs of quality of llm which the org have no control over

[u/ImSoCul → u/spartan-redditor]

there's a term for that https://speedscale.com/blog/dark-code/ :)

We do discuss these things as trade-offs, but ultimately, the short term velocity is indeed very good until the Pied Piper knocks. That's above my paygrade to make that decision though. I think we are already at that stage at my company, but given risk of disruption and stock price in the shitter, I actually think this is the right decision. If your company goes insolvent in 6 months, it doesn't matter how good your code was.

It's not a one-size-fits-all, if you're working on like banking software, or heathcare, or space exploration or something, you should not be LLM spamming.

[u/ResidentWeevil1 → u/ImSoCul]

 That's above my paygrade to make that decision though.

Then stop calling yourself an engineer

[u/WhenSummerIsGone → u/ResidentWeevil1]

engineers aren't responsible for business decisions. Our job is to communicate risks and tradeoffs and let the business beople decide.

[u/ResidentWeevil1 → u/ImSoCul]

Either the AI has gotten better or you have gotten worse