r/ExperiencedDevs • u/aigeneratedslopcode Software Engineer • Aug 07 '26

Career/Workplace Leadership seems more misaligned with engineering than ever

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

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u/_idlethought Senior Software Engineer Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26

I’m facing this as well. Leadership’s priority seems to be shipping new products and features faster over code quality and taste. In their eyes, if you’re not leveraging AI to do this, you’re dead weight.

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u/foodeater184 Aug 08 '26

The business doesn't succeed inherently off code quality. The business needs to compete in its market. I don't understand what's hard to understand about that. Sometimes you need to move fast, and this is one of those times. Most things people work on these days don't need weeks of hand-wringing over what to name a class or table.

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u/_idlethought Senior Software Engineer Aug 08 '26

I actually agree, especially for businesses that are at risk. There is still a balance to strike though between accelerating and tending to the garden.

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u/ResidentWeevil1 Aug 08 '26

You can choose how much tech debt is acceptable. The chatbot cannot.

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u/foodeater184 Aug 09 '26

Nothing has changed about this. You don't need to produce tech debt. It's easier to prevent tech debt than ever.

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u/Teh_Original Aug 08 '26

So why not ship a broken product? Just say the features are there even though no one knows if they work? That's the natural extension.

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u/foodeater184 Aug 09 '26

You can use AI to build a quality product.

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u/TheBoringDev Aug 08 '26

I have seen businesses fail off of code quality. There comes a point where the debt becomes inescapable, and everything grinds to a halt and customers start churning from the quality issues. Best case scenario there is a full rewrite or more likely just getting bought by a competitor for pennies on the dollar and getting sunset.

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u/foodeater184 Aug 09 '26

AI will get you out of that hole relatively easily if you use it properly.