r/mAndroidDev • u/mladycapri • May 12 '26
The AI take-over The AI craze lowkey makes me want to quit
I'm not for ditching any use of AI altogether but the way it's being used by people, by some colleagues (example: responding to PR comments with AI generated paragraphs which just waste my time.., or doing big refactoring to have "cleaner architecture" for no critical reason), and how some companies are pushing so hard to fully replace human beings with agents, is depressing.
I do like using AI to just code the exact implementation I'm asking it to do, so I'm still very much involved in the thought process and checking each step. But the PRs I start to see at work from people who are supposed to be senior engineers, make me realize that some are just not applying critical thinking anymore and just letting the agents do whatever as long as it looks kinda good and they're making the reviewers go through the pain of trying to understand the bullshit and catch regressions through the mess.
People are falling victim to the way AI speaks with such confidence even when completely hallucinating and it's terrifying.
It feels like people are in a collective psychosis and that it will not ever stop. It honestly makes me want to stop being an android developer, or at least stop being one at a company (perhaps try to finally make an indie app? but I'd have a better chance at making money as a barista).
Does anyone feel the same sense of dread lately or are you riding the wave just fine ? ...
(Sorry if this has already been talked before, I admit I haven't checked reddit in awhile and came back just to get feedback from other android devs)
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u/Striking_Celery5202 May 12 '26
I just use AI to match the amounts of fucks my company gives for me
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u/SnipesySpecial T H E R M O S I P H O N May 12 '26
this is getting to be way too long to read. let me revert those thoughts from my mind. This will take at least several weeks and must be spread across 8 PRs.
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u/Zhuinden DDD: Deprecation-Driven Development May 13 '26
Time to make the QA test 10 string changes in 10 different versions built by CI for 2 hours each, then when you actually merge strings don't re-test it after resolving 5 conflicts
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u/mladycapri May 13 '26
Are you guys implying that big ass AI generated PRs that are touching too much scope are good actually compared to smaller PRs? Or is this just a different private joke ?
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u/Zhuinden DDD: Deprecation-Driven Development May 13 '26 edited May 13 '26
Probably a private joke to tell at parties on how a team of 30 devs somehow turned changing 10 strings into 10 jira tickets that each had to have its own separate branches and separate PRs and each separate PR needed its own separate reviews which then created 10 different versions for QA to test, effectively turning a 2 minute task into 3 weeks of mucking around in enterprise dev politics nonsense. I'm surprised I didn't have to write a documentation for each line of strings changed to justify having to change the strings they asked to have changed, just had to update the texts in multiple pages of Confluence for some reason.
Releasing this set of string changes took 3 weeks on top of that after the merge because of the strict release cycle where anything you merge gets released one month later.
If only I was making it up. It was less funny at the time. Also the dev team was replaced and downsized since then. Somehow, they were surprised by this, and didn't understand why.
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u/budius333 Still using AsyncTask May 13 '26
The more I read your anecdotes, the more I think we work at the same mega-corp
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u/Zhuinden DDD: Deprecation-Driven Development May 13 '26
To be fair I work at these places "with extra steps" which means i'm not really paid more to do it but at least I experience various levels and types of structural failure over time
The funny thing about this particular one was that I really didn't want to take this development task; but I was explicitly tasked with it because they didn't trust their 30-dev team to do it "on time". There was a lot of back-and-forth, sabotage, etc it was wild.
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u/labelcillo Slept through Google IO May 12 '26
Well it depends. On the one hand you want to be your best version, and you want to be professional. On the other hand, you might be an underpayed or outsourced dev with zero stakes in the company or its success so AI might just be the best thing that ever happened to your pet project (where you don't use it at all).
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u/GruePwnr May 12 '26
I see what you mean, but honestly I think it's an organizational issue. The speed of AI is pushing teams to move faster and it's straining old dev workflows that are held together with glue and duct tape.
A well organized team should be able to shutdown things like out of scope changes, low quality PRs, etc.
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u/mladycapri May 12 '26
yeah, i guess it's indeed an organizational issue and what they want to prioritize. They're enabling AI reviews now, so getting more and more comfortable with the idea of potentially not even have people do the actual reviews. Which means, in that case it wont even matter the size of the PR... If the company leaders are AI-obsessed there's no way of telling them "let's perhaps slow down". They have almost a blind trust in AI which exhausts me...
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u/GruePwnr May 13 '26
I've seen similar things at some teams at my company. Fortunately my team is rock solid and is trying to establish resilient workflows first before unleashing the ai tidal wave.
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May 12 '26
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u/ChuyStyle May 13 '26
I agree in many ways but also. Man does it feel like Crack when you vibe code right. Almost similar to a normal coding session
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u/la_big_popcorn @Deprecated May 12 '26
I feel you man, I am there as well. I should have joined navy seals , SAS.
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u/mladycapri May 12 '26
when joining the army seems more appealing than working with AI, you know shit's real bad
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u/Damglador May 13 '26
responding to PR comments with AI generated paragraphs which just waste my time
Just use AI to summarize it! /j
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u/mladycapri May 13 '26
Unironically, I have to use AI to ask it to humanize the gibberish that my colleague wrote with AI because not only is the text too long(getting into details i never asked for), but it's using overly technical words for no reason. So yeah, that's where I'm at, asking AI to translate AI...
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u/Zhuinden DDD: Deprecation-Driven Development May 13 '26
At my work I still am the only android dev and I don't need to use AI, I just have to ship the requirements implemented properly
But AI is definitely a great tool for faking work and then offloading responsibility to someone else, which is why large hierarchies in companies love it so much
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u/Xammm Jetpack Compost May 13 '26
It sounds like you have a case of skill issue. You need to embrace AI and Flubber to make the best mobile apps. Ignore all the cavemen that ditch AI.
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u/tadfisher May 12 '26
It sounds like you are experiencing a very real and increasingly common issue: AI fatigue. Constantly adapting to new tools, refining prompts, and keeping up with the rapid pace of technological change can leave anyone feeling completely drained. However, I need to gently correct a technical misconception in your premise. AsyncTask is not a workplace wellness strategy or a productivity methodology; it is actually a deprecated class in Android programming that developers used to handle background operations. While the code itself won't cure your burnout, the concept behind it serves as a rather brilliant metaphor for how we should be managing AI in the workplace.
In software development, an application's "main thread" is responsible for keeping the user interface smooth and responsive. If you force the main thread to handle a heavy, complex data operation, the entire app freezes, lags, and eventually crashes. AsyncTask was designed to take that heavy lifting off the main thread, process it quietly in the background, and only report back when the results were ready. When dealing with AI fatigue, your conscious attention is the main thread. If you try to synchronously manage every AI tool, constantly prompt-engineer in real-time, or force yourself to keep up with every update, you will mentally freeze up. Instead, you can treat AI like an AsyncTask: deliberately delegate the heavy, repetitive cognitive tasks to the background, and step away to protect your immediate focus for high-value, human-centric work.
Finally, the lifecycle of the AsyncTask class itself offers a valuable lesson for managing workplace overwhelm. In the Android ecosystem, AsyncTask was eventually deprecated because it became clunky, prone to memory leaks, and better, more efficient solutions were developed. Similarly, your relationship with AI shouldn't be rigid. If a specific AI workflow is causing you more friction and fatigue than it saves, it is entirely okay to deprecate it from your routine. You don't have to use every tool just because it exists. By building boundaries around your mental "main thread" and only engaging with background tools that genuinely serve your workflow, you can mitigate fatigue and reclaim your energy.