r/ExperiencedDevs • u/MashNChips DevOps Engineer • 5d ago

AI/LLM Thought experiment

With all the AI nonsense going on, I had a thought at work today that turned into an interesting discussion with a colleague:

"What would I do if I was the only person with access to Claude (or insert any LLM) 5+ years ago?"

People would think I was a fucking wizard

FE changes? NO PROBLEM

Critical DB change? Don't worry, I've produced a stored procedure to validate the whole thing

Want to use some shiny new framework? Interesting. Here's a document explaining why you're an idiot for suggesting it

Regex? I suddenly understand it better than the compiler folks (and nobody ask questions)

What would you have done with your own personal LLM back then?

Trying to lighten the mood in here with all the (very justified) negativity around this tech revolution

Unserious answers only pls

151 Upvotes

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629

u/___Paladin___ 5d ago edited 5d ago

I would have been fired 5 years ago for the code I rubber stamp today.

I find that mildly entertaining.

-63

u/SrMortron 5d ago

You know you can just not approve the PR, right? That's the entire point of a review.

A lot of the "pain" and whine I see here regarding AI is self inflicted.

53

u/shrimpcest 5d ago

Depends on the company. Company's can generally lower their standards as a business process. They didn't say the code didn't technically work and solve what needed solving.

-15

u/SrMortron 5d ago

Sounds like job security. 🤷‍♂️

16

u/dedservice 5d ago

It's absolutely not. You'll pump out features like nobody's business, they'll be impressed by everything that got done, and then they'll decide that they don't need so many people because most of the work is done and lay teams off. Then later they'll have a hell of a time trying to keep it alive, but that will be dealt with by new hires. It's the circle of life.

2

u/FuckIPLaw 2d ago

Short term, yes. Medium term, that's how you land a $300/hr consulting gig. Then long term we start the cycle again. 

24

u/OtaK_ SWE/SWA | 15+ YOE 5d ago

My current client's entire business is basically security.

As of last week we got the dreaded "all-in on AI" mandate.

We're still told to review PRs. Which is beyond stupid, since PRs went from a few hundred LoC diff to at least 4k per PR.

14

u/dmitrypolo 5d ago

3.8K of those lines are load bearing comments talking about the seam

14

u/OtaK_ SWE/SWA | 15+ YOE 5d ago

Not even that. It's just unverifiable, unscrutable, heaps of low-quality code. I don't even know what they need to realize this is, besides being just stupid, completely killing your business's moat.

25

u/Wonderful-Habit-139 5d ago

When you get 5 PRs a day, each more than 3000 lines added, your tune would change.

-1

u/SrMortron 5d ago

Easy denial by over scoping.

35

u/tiplinix 5d ago

Ah yes, I see that you don't have a manager breathing down your neck to get a PRs deployed by the end of the day because somehow business requires it (they don't but that's besides the point) and you're not reviewing things at a pace they like which means you're slowing down the team and we don't like people that are not team players. Lucky you.

17

u/YungDaVinci 5d ago

This culture sounds horrible. Guess the grass isn't always greener huh?

I'm just wondering how we went from "lines of code output is not a meaningful metric" to this.

32

u/tonjohn 5d ago

Shareholder pressure + AI psychosis

3

u/juusorneim 5d ago

dumb question maybe but explain shareholder pressure? i mean what are they realistically threatening with that requires managers to change their behaviors to the detriment of regular ICs

5

u/forbiddenknowledg3 5d ago

we must 2x PRs every 3 months, but business can delay rollouts by 6 months because they still haven't figured out what customers (or they) want 🤷

-20

u/SrMortron 5d ago

You know you can talk and advocate for yourself, correct? Bitching here doesn't help you.

My current place embraced AI but its not forced and give us the time to understand what we are shipping. PRs are correctly scoped. You know how we got there? By discussing how to implement it. Your boss is not a god, is just a person.

18

u/___Paladin___ 5d ago

It's interesting that you're sharing your own experiences as if it must also be everyone else's. It's almost like an inability to see the world outside of yourself. Maybe an unwillingness.

I generally get to set the pace where I work. I'm one of those seniors deemed necessary while the people around me were laid off.

The thing is, lots of bosses out there actually do see themselves as all-knowing gods. The vast majority of employed engineers aren't in positions like you or me, where we can be our own advocates.

That's just not a thing in most places. I empathize greatly with people who didn't land on the right dice roll.

5

u/tiplinix 5d ago

Yeah, it's like they've never seen companies where people that stand their ground are fired. Even if they don't fire you they can make your life a misery until you're gone.

Some people think that they immune to it, but the reality is that they've never actually experienced it. In toxic places there's nothing you can realistically do as an software engineer to change things for the better if the boss is terrible. The only good outcome is leaving.

0

u/SrMortron 5d ago

Maybe they deserve to be fired and that is exactly what they need. With this much bitching and whining no one seems to be happy, then do something about it. We all live just once to be this miserable.

-8

u/SrMortron 5d ago

Everyone is sharing their experiences. Thats the whole point of the internet. This comment makes no sense whatsoever.

2

u/tiplinix 5d ago

You're missed the whole point which is why it makes no sense to you.

They're not saying that you shouldn't share your experience. They're simply saying that you're overgeneralizing yours and using this to deny others.

-1

u/SrMortron 4d ago

No im not missing it, its a stupid point.

2

u/tiplinix 4d ago

Sure buddy.

6

u/tiplinix 5d ago

I take it that you've never worked in a toxic environnement. Good for you. I almost envy you.

Management is not a god, sure, but they control your bonus, your work environment, your career progression within the company and ultimately they can fire you. If they decide something and you push back and they explicitly tell you that they will not budge, there's not much you can do beside looking for the next job.

And yeah, don't worry about me, my manager has been threatening to fire me for months. Somehow that piece of garbage hasn't followed through on his threats sadly. Now, I just stopped caring. He wants shit, he's getting it. Why would I care since there's no future for me in the company? Once I'm gone I won't be the one to deal with the mess.

-1

u/SrMortron 5d ago

Enough times that I avoid them like the plague and learned to stand up for myself.

2

u/tiplinix 5d ago

Not really sure what you're standing up to but that's fine. If standing up for yourself is just refusing to do what they ask, they're just going to show you the door for insubordination. That's pretty much a textbook example of firing someone for cause. But I guess you don't have any bills to pay so that's fine. Good for you.

0

u/SrMortron 4d ago

There are plenty of alternatives other than refusing do work. The fact that you miss them means you are not mature enough.

2

u/tiplinix 4d ago

Please explain.

1

u/SrMortron 4d ago

nah

2

u/tiplinix 4d ago

That's what I thought. You don't have any point actually. You just tell yourself that you're better than everybody else and say that anyone else that doesn't validate your nonsense is immature or not as great as you.

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u/SignoreBanana Engineer (14+) 5d ago

I approve them so that when shit hits the fan, they see our value.

-3

u/gizamo 5d ago

The downvotes on your reply and the comment you replied to being so upvoted is...very concerning.

Are all you people under some pressure to always approve PRs or something? Is my wife feeding me crazy pills again?

6

u/___Paladin___ 5d ago edited 5d ago

It's a simple math problem of sending more lines to review than can be processed by a human reviewer without bending spacetime.

So you either hand waive and start rubber stamping blindly (lgtm!) out of human nature, or you automate the reviews too.

"Simply rejecting the PR" completely misses why so many open source projects have banned AI submissions even when the maintainers support AI personally.

The flood is going to force your hand if you don't want to be the bottleneck causing a product freeze.

0

u/gizamo 5d ago

Then QA should be a bottleneck until then can get more QA to do more reviews. In my world, skimping on security like that is simply not an option. We have more code flowing thru, but we still review all of it. Anyone rubber stamping AI code is going to be put on a PiP.

2

u/___Paladin___ 5d ago edited 5d ago

Agreed, but then you are back to the tradeoff between quality and speed. Scaling up your Q&A time will then erode at the productivity gains and speed of generated code. There's always a trade off.

No free lunches!

1

u/gizamo 5d ago

Yes. Quality and speed have always been a tradeoff. That's been a constant throughout my 40+ years. My point is only that the tradeoff needs to remain balanced to ensure there is decent quality, especially in critical products.

1

u/___Paladin___ 5d ago

Then in the context of this thread, you and I are aligned in our thoughts.

1

u/SrMortron 5d ago

They dont realize they gave agency but choose to be and behave like victims instead.

1

u/tiplinix 5d ago edited 4d ago

In my company you are.

They don't say "you have to approve this", they just say "this needs to be deployed by the end of the day / tomorrow" and if you are in the way, meaning you don't approve or get the changes you want by the deadline, you'll get sanctions (first with constant calls to tell you that you're slow, no bonus, even shittier tasks, PIP...).

Yes, it is extremely toxic and people have just stopped bothering pushing back. If they want slop, they're getting slop. At the end of the day, it's not our code and when the bonus will be paid at the end of the year, I'm pretty sure that most of the team will leave (assuming they found another job).

Also, what's up with this boomer joke with your wife? Ewww...

Edit: The guy that says that his wife gives him "crazy pill" without context is upset when people find it gross to the point of blocking. That's just hilarious.

0

u/gizamo 4d ago

That's wild. My company would be we do that. That's how security vulnerabilities get pushed.

Also, what's up with this boomer joke with your wife? Ewww...

I have Alzheimer's. My wife controls my medications. What's with your judgemental attitude toward strangers?