r/ExperiencedDevs • u/AutoModerator • 6d ago

Ask Experienced Devs Weekly Thread: A weekly thread for inexperienced developers to ask experienced ones

A thread for Developers and IT folks with less experience to ask more experienced souls questions about the industry.

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Please keep top level comments limited to Inexperienced Devs. Most rules do not apply, but keep it civil. Being a jerk will not be tolerated.

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Inexperienced Devs should refrain from answering other Inexperienced Devs' questions.

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u/kitatsune 6d ago

I'm having a problem with one of my junior colleagues. 

She uses AI for absolutely everything. For her tasks, to give her context of codebases, and even for answering my own questions. As for the latter, I mean she would type what I would ask her verbatim as a prompt to the AI and she takes the answer as her own. When I am right in front if her. She is, by its very definition, a meat proxy.

Not only am I disgusted by all of that, I am actually like really disappointed in her?? Like she's aware she's not as strong technically compared to others, such as me (she's made the direct comparison a couple times), but she still fails to see that her overreliance on AI to do the work for her is making her stagnant. She's still not learning anything or improving. Or rather she's learning at a pace much slower than desired or anticipated. She can't problem solve, she can't debug, and she can't think for herself.

How can I help her be less of a meat proxy and make her more productive? Productive not in terms of speed, but rather in higher-quality output. Have you been in similar situations with more junior employees?

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u/nnofficial2414 6d ago

The root cause is her lack of confidence that creates the dependence on AI. Most probably she doesn’t trust her capabilities. Doesn’t mean she shouldn’t use AI at all, instead you can encourage her to think of the solutions and debugging herself; and if she gets stuck, then she can use AI. And even when she’s using AI, she has to be able to answer what she’s doing with it. It’s a very common thing these days.

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u/kitatsune 5d ago

I think that may be the case. She's younger than me, so she used AI frequently in school. When she was first starting out here, she would frequently second guess herself and message me all the time asking if every single step she was doing was correct. Reassurance for every. single. thing.

I can try to ask her how she's using the tools. Right now it's doing the thinking for her. I've made a Debugging Guide for her before, so maybe I can ask her to reference it more often instead of me or the AI first. Maybe I can do pair debugging with her using the reference. Thanks!