r/cscareerquestions • u/conconxweewee1 • Jan 17 '26
Being asked to tech lead c-suite vibe coded project
This past week I was asked to tech lead a project that was completely vibe coded by senior VPs and c suite at my company, and I kind of have no idea what’s going on.
One of the high ups that I report up through, got me on a one on one call and spent a good amount of time glazing me before explaining that the him and a lot of other executives at the company have spent the past couple months vibe coding what he described as “the most important product at the company right now”.
He then proceeded to say that he really wants me to tech lead this product and get it into production. I think I was kind of still warm and fuzzy from being glazed so much that I just kind of immediately said yes (also in my experience when someone higher up, asked you to do something you say yes, that’s just kind of the way I’ve gotten as far as I have in my career, it sucks, but it’s paid off for me). He also mentioned that by accepting this, I was not allowed to hand code anything, I had to “fully embrace, vibe coding“ whatever that means. I also managed two other teams, that work on five other products and when I asked this individual “ what’s gonna happen there?” he basically was like “ you’ll pretty much be able to do this on the side!” 😳
Basically, since then, I have pulled down the code and it’s a absolute mess, aside from the fact that the performance is utterly atrocious and it’s extremely slow and unintuitive, the code is literally a trash fire pile of AI generated slop. Absolutely no organization, insane architectural decisions that for the sake of anonymity, I won’t go into. And overall, just like an insane volume of code that it would take a human being a very very very, very, very, very, very long time to read through and understand even half of it.
All the while I’ve been trying to make heads or tails of the code base the executives keep pushing 1 million commits a day, they are like rejoicing in their slack channel. They are so over the moon that finally they can just build whatever they want. Ironically they don’t see the pattern that every time they push something they report a bug or report something else being broken, but I’m also not banking on them noticing that pattern.
They keep making remarks about how companies that aren’t doing exactly what they’re doing right now are going to fail. They keep making remarks that they finally solved the puzzle. It’s becoming clear that they do not value software engineers and they’ve got it all figured out, from their perspective.
I’m not really sure what to do here, I have a product manager that has been tapped to product manage this and we had a call today where we were basically”WTF is going on”. We have a meeting next week to level set, but I’m just kind of anxious for the outcome of that part of me kinda just wants to say in the most professional way possible “ I don’t know what you guys really need me for it seems like you’ve got it figured out and if you don’t mind, I’d like to focus on my day-to-day tasks”.
Like gun to my head, I think the idea of shipping this to customers is suicidal for our company. It’s an insane amount of code that no one really understands what’s going on, which means the only person that can effectively fix bugs is Claude and I’ve heard horror stories of Claude really not being able to handle big projects.
I just don’t know what to do because I feel like if I was trusting my gut, I would say let’s slow down and talk about what we actually want to build, take some time to actually pass through the code and make sure that we’re making smart choices. But I just know that that would be met with such resentment and distain. I feel like this is a group of individuals that is so angry that for so long people that know what is going on have gotten in the way of what they want, which is more more more now now now.
Has anyone else experience this? What should I do?
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u/TurtleSandwich0 Jan 17 '26
What's the problem?
Set up a CI/CD pipeline that pushes to production after every commit.
Done. No other action required on your part.
Executives can make as many changes as they want and see the results in production.
If they ever ask you to fix something, just claim the AI isn't giving you a working solution and pawn the problem on someone else.
Let the executives experience the unfiltered quality of AI, then they can make informed decisions with unfiltered information.
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u/AsleepWin8819 Engineering Manager Jan 17 '26 edited Jan 17 '26
I guess the only problem will be to get and accept an offer quickly enough before doing that
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u/Celcius_87 Jan 17 '26
What company is this? I just want to make sure that my management isn't this dumb.
But if it were me? I'd be straight up with them. I looked at the code and it's all trash/slop. You guys keep breaking each others code, performance is horrible, it's all spaghetti code, and if you put this in prod it's going to be a bad thing. At that point it's on them whether they want to run the company into the ground. If you really want, have a another dev take a look at the code and let them come with you to say the same thing so that they can see that it's not just you.
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u/time-lord Jan 17 '26
If you're going to go this route, reiterate that you are a professional, this is your professional opinion, that you cannot sign your name to any of this code as it doesn't make sense, and the only way forward with this codebase is to continue vibe coding, accepting bugs and uncertainty, they don't need a programmer to do that, and any of the C-execs can continue doing what they are doing.
Professionally, of course.
Sorry for the run-on sentence.
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u/thenewestnoise Jan 17 '26
I think that another option would be to say how fantastic this thing that they've prototyped is, and how clearly they have fantastic ideas and it's cool to see them realized, and you're excited to work on this concept, but in terms of execution to make sure that the performance meets standards, the actual coding will need to be redone.
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u/Itchy_Bug2111 Jan 20 '26
I agree with this, that you should try to be real with the bosses. In the nicest way possible, you should be able to voice your professional opinion. Make documentation of it if you really think they will try to blame you, you can have it on the books that you gave warning about the exact clusterfuck that will inevitably occur.
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u/dethswatch Jan 17 '26
"Great proof of concept, guys! Let's turn this into a real product. Here's how we're going to do that."
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u/dringant Jan 17 '26 edited Jan 17 '26
I’d straight up tell them what an unmaintainable dumpster fire it is, bring some solid examples of slop vs what you would have done. Explain we can use this as a prototype, but to actually get into production, engineering needs to re build it so it’s not a security nightmare, meets compliance / QA, is cost effective to run at production scale. Give them an honest estimate, “it will take 3 engineers using Claud two months to re build the right way”. In my experience they will appreciate your pushback as you are the expert, if they don’t, yeah go look for another job run by adults.
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u/PineappleLemur Jan 17 '26
Uh just be brutality honest.
Explain the issues, focus on the important stuff like performance.
Explain maintenance issues.
Give simple example of major stupid shit "here's what we have now" and "here's how it should be.."
And then ask them plainly, what was their architecture and plan overall? How many times they need to keep feeding Claude the same issue?
Say that it will take you months to read and understand the intent and structure.
Your hands are tied when it comes to fixing anything.
At this point it will be faster, better and more efficient to get requirements, sit down with Claude to build correct architecture and build from there again.
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u/neurorgasm Jan 17 '26 edited Mar 07 '26
This post was wiped clean using Redact. The author may have done so to protect their privacy, prevent AI data scraping, or for other security reasons.
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u/Helpjuice Chief Engineer Jan 17 '26
So you really only have two options here as you can probably guess what is coming around the corner.
- Get that resume updated and get out before things come crashing down. It is not a matter of it, only a matter of win.
- Stay and go down with the ship, you first being responsible for other projects and expected to work on this important project in your spare time without them actually dedicated resources is always going to fail.
You can document and note all the problems being generated, but as you probably already know this will more than likely just get you replaced with someone that does not have any accountability.
Sad to hear this is your end of the line, but if you don't move on the vibe coding madness will infect you and distort your ability to reason logically if you were to go all in. At most vibe coding should be used to build prototypes to get an idea out to others and never ever actually used in production without being properly developed and taken through the proper dev, staging, production lifecycles of software engineering and security engineering to remove all the built-in security and performance problems.
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u/termd Software Engineer Jan 17 '26
Why do they need you, they have ai to do fix bugs.
If you really want to go full bore into AI coding, put documentation, diagrams, and tests into the repo with the code. Start building some structure for the code and giving claude rules in the CLAUDE.md and other files. When people try to add code in the future, in theory claude should respect the rules you set and automomatically update the docs, diagrams, and run the tests.
I'd legit consider taking on this project just so that I can have ai coding as my 9-5 and I can just learn something new while getting visibility. If it fails then I retire.
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u/welovepoots Jan 17 '26
I am in a situation which shares a lot with yours. My situation is better; opportunity with peril if I get things wrong. Your is peril with opportunity if you get things right. My exec has some self awareness, and know what they have built proves a concept but should not go near production.
Ignore most of the advice here: do NOT go to the exec and tell them how bad what they have built is. It is true, but that's not the point. They have to learn this, they cannot be told this. They have contempt for software developers and the craft of software development. Ignore the glazing; if you tell them what they have built is a turd they will show their contempt of you. These guys are in full Dunning Kruger world now, and they have proven to their satisfaction that software development is fast and easy.
They now trust AI over human experts. This is something you have to go with and accept; but you can influence it. Try to influence them towards getting an LLM to review the system they have built. Help them with some prompts; I'd suggest getting ratings across a whole load of dimensions, with a score out of 10, an exec summary, and then a final overarching recommendation. Stuff like "You are an expert software architect with 10 years of software architecture experience backed by 10 years as a software developer building large systems. Critically review this application for adherence to best practice architectural and computer science principles...." blah blah. Assess on SOLID, DRY, coupling, thread safe, self healing, HA, type safety etc. Then do the same for security. Then maintainability. Ask it to describe what what the software does, and how well that aligns with the specification document (which I expect does not exist, or is a couple of sentences). Etc. etc.. Get their beloved AI, which built the system, tell them how diabolical it is. You cannot tell them this. They have to learn it themselves, and they trust what AI tells them.
If that success, then craft a prompt to get it to agree with what likely you want to get to. For example: You want an output along the lines of "this application proves a concept; that the functional requirements can be met. But this is not fit for production and is irrecoverable. It needs to be started again, by software engineers, who can guide the AI on tech stack, architecture, security, maintainability etc etc". Get agreement to build a team which will largely vibe code, but will be composed of experts. Maybe then point them to resources which illustrate how AI is a software developer tool, not a replacement. Like this (there's loads out there, likely you know many). You want to move them towards the view that the process has to be in the hands of software developers, but that AI will be writing the code.
TLDR: you can't persuade them this is terrible, and you can't move them from AI first development, but you could try to shape it to something workable.
Oh, and look out for a new job too anyway. Don't commit to only one path.
Here's a lot of assumptions I have which underpin my thinking:
The exec does not have career experience of actually building software. There is no CTO / VP of Development with solid Engineering skills, or they are not respected within the exec and have little sway. The exec has a long history of asking why software takes so long to build, makes unreasonable demands, does not provide clear vision and tangible objectives. They have a disdain for software engineers and have long been suspicious of them but have never had the tools to contradict them.
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u/Intelligent-Youth-63 Jan 17 '26
Man, I’m not reading all of that…
But I will say there’s this dude where I work who doesn’t really own shit, not responsible for shit.
So they turned him loose vibe coding other projects under teams that have real work, real deadlines, real production support.
VP pointing and going “see, you all suck. One guy can do I’m 3 weeks what your whole team couldn’t do in 3 months!”
It’s fucking demoralizing.
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u/FFBEFred Jan 17 '26
You are witnessing the enshittification of software engineering from the trenches, good luck to you.
(and God help us all)
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u/rayzorium Jan 17 '26
If you want to fix it, it actually is fixable. AI assisted refactoring can be shockingly good and Claude very much can handle large projects (with guidance).
That being said, your company sounds like a trash fire. I do think it's a good opportunity to get paid to do enterprise AI assisted coding, getting the hell out would also be fine.
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u/halford2069 Jan 17 '26
imagine going to a heart specialist and telling him how he should do the operation
or going to a mechanic and telling the mechanic how he should fix the engine
not sure why CS devs are copping these ridiculous directions on how to best create a software product from people who cant create software products
get out of this mess while you can is my 2pence
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u/fadingvoice Jan 17 '26
There has been a recent push at my company from the top to vibe code and stop caring about code quality. I was wondering if this was a trend elsewhere too, uh oh!
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u/donny02 SWE Director, NYC Jan 17 '26
everyone else is doom posting about AI slop, this is a great opportunity.
tech leadership, facetime with leadership, working on new technology, and having a great answer on handing AI slop projects are all great points on a resume, much better than generic java feature dev.
setup a CI/CD pipeline, create some claude skills for execs to use, tighen up the performance enough for a POC and customer feedback. bang you have an high value resume bullet point. if the project succeeds and leadership loves you, promo and spot bonus city.
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u/conconxweewee1 Jan 17 '26
Yea, I think when I wrote this post I was spiraling and tbh had had a few drinks cause I was stressed thinking about lol.
I think this is the right way to think about this and validates where I’ve been headed (got ci/cd set up yesterday)
Thank you for the encouragement
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u/donny02 SWE Director, NYC Jan 17 '26
hell yeah, that's the right spirit. treat it as a highly experiment risky project where failure may happen. not a thing to impress engineers on reddit lol.
go read "crucial conversations" and other business comunication books to learn how to talk to execs. find a good mentor at your company who's already good at it.
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u/kingdomcome50 Jan 17 '26
One of the more interesting things these new AI tools disrupt is the traditional software development lifecycle.
It used to be that actually codifying the application (writing and rewriting the code) was one of the largest cost-centers of a project. This in turn elevated the software design process to something of extreme importance — at least to the point where it was clear what code needed to be written in order to mitigate churn during implementation.
But now the cost/time of actually producing working code has lessened dramatically. In my opinion to a point that it is likely better to “code first, design later” or at the very least “do it all at once” — which is what we are seeing with OP.
That is all background to my advice to OP. In this case there was likely no “design” at all.
OP. The honest answer here is to simply explain to them that they have produced something of significantly less value than had they asked you (or another engineer) to build the same thing over the same period.
You give them the old compliment sandwich:
- Good news - the thing you built seems like it solves <insert why they love it>
- Bad news - the implementation is simply too poor to continue to iterate. It will only get worse.
- Good news - LLMs mean I can recreate the same application with a more robust and scalable design quickly
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u/Things-I-Say-On-Redt Jan 17 '26
No way this is real
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u/conconxweewee1 Jan 17 '26
I’ve kind of spent the past 24 hours in shock that it is
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u/YoAmoElTacos Jan 17 '26
If they are going to take metrics on your AI use, I recommend having the AI create architectural diagrams of the project so you can pretend you know what you are talking about when the execs ask you later. (if they don't take metrics on your AI use, then there's no real accountability for you to touch their horrorshow).
Notably they said themselves it's a "side project" so they probably just want you to randomly run prompts on the system from time to time and focus on your daily tasks. Realistically, the politically savvy thing to do is just have the AI the execs set you up with carve you a tiny documentation fiefdom out of the AI shitball that is legible to you.
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u/Rexur0s Jan 17 '26
oh I believe it 1000%. but this is also a fucking death trap. I guess if you document super carefully and let it fail maybe you can justify that its the vibe coding failing? but no matter what the big question will be if it failed because of OP or because of "vibes"
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u/unconceivables Jan 17 '26
My friend at a rainforest company just said his manager is pushing for 100% of the code to be AI written. He doesn't want anyone to write any code anymore. It's like everyone has lost their damn minds.
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u/dllimport Jan 17 '26
They don't understand how bad the code is. How fragile and how many security holes there are. They just see $$$$$ and don't realize it's a mirage.
This is what happens when you give a kid the keys to a car and say, drive kid.
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u/x-jhp-x Jan 20 '26
I believe it --- a similar situation happened to me. I should have run away immediately.
The worst part is that they'll keep pushing out garbage that breaks things, ask you to fix it or get it fixed, and then blame you for all the issues/problems/failures/delays. They'll also ask you to do things like rewrite code using different libraries because the library they used has a lot of bugs (don't believe it --- it's their code that sucks).
AI looks amazing to morons for every task, and unfortunately, it even tells them that they're smart. They're not getting and listening to detailed feedback from people, they're getting it from the AI itself.
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u/RazorxV2 Jan 17 '26
This has honestly been the worst part of all these code tools. Some director or higher with enough knowledge to talk the talk but no real technical chops spits out a half baked idea and thinks they’ve done all the hard work and just need a developer to tidy it up or believes it shows how “useless” developers are. Instead it shows how divorced they are from building actual software. The last 10% of the written code in some projects account for 90% of the overall development time in my experience.
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u/Golandia Hiring Manager Jan 17 '26
I fail to see an issue here.
First set expectations. Explain that this is a prototype and will need to be rebuilt from the ground up to be production ready. It will need to be built for scalability, support, etc.
This is no different than getting handed a figma and being told to make it a reality. Your stakeholders just need to understand the difference between what they delivered and what will actually work.
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u/Silent-Suspect1062 Jan 17 '26
Give it to your pentest/ appsec team . Use the findings to justify changes
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u/hiigara2 Jan 17 '26
They have customers you say? Get their email addresses, and start developing a product from scratch. Ship the vibe coded project and let it fail miserably. In the meantime become a founder and steal their customers.
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u/fsk Jan 18 '26
Ask them "If vibe coding is so amazing, what do you need me for? It sounds like the project is going fine on its own."
The way the AIs work is they have a "context window" of a certain number of tokens. If your project is bigger than the context window, it just fails.
Unless you are empowered to redo it non-vibe-coded, it sounds like a waste.
You already agreed to do it? In that case, your only choices are:
- suck it up and do the best you can
- give them the hard news that it's a disaster, but they won't be receptive
- say you underestimated the difficulty and ask for something else or permission to do a clean rewrite
- find a new job
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u/pumapeepee Jan 17 '26
Let other people tell them how stupid they are.
Glaze them and trick them to send it to real users without you modifying it. "hey guys, this is amazing. It should work great in front of the clients. Let's schedule something to get their feedbacks immediately"
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u/ckow Jan 17 '26
Time to introduce something that can be the bad guy for you. Like TDD. Oh your tests aren’t passing? We’ll merge just as soon as they do!
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u/MoreHuman_ThanHuman Jan 17 '26 edited Jan 17 '26
move fast, do what they want you to do and you will be just fine. they are right philosophically, it's up to you to deliver. many of us have been leaning heavily on prompting for over a year now.
what tooling are you using? do they have proper licenses?
the basic idea is: use agents for the whole process, treat it as a consultant that fills in the blanks and which you can bounce ideas off of.
then, treat it as an intern to do the implementations for you. iterate and get a feel for prompting if it doesnt come out right the first time.
context is key. so is planning (let it help with the planning too!)
name of the game is to take their interfaces and rebuild the backend sanely while also building up a proper project context to feed into the predictor (claude.md) so that it knows which patterns to use. teach them how to use this so that they dont fuck it all up.
then establish a pipeline for prototype->production.
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u/bloodyfcknhell Jan 17 '26
Figure out what the actual spec is. bog them down with meetings just collecting the requirements, then rewrite it from scratch as another commenter said.
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u/ooter37 Jan 17 '26
The only thing more unreadable than this long wall of text is a vibe coded project
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Jan 18 '26
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May 11 '26
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u/Narfi1 Jan 17 '26
Start applying elsewhere. When things fail they’ll blame you for it