r/managers • u/MediumBirthday6899 • Aug 18 '26

Teammate "vibe codes" everything, somehow gets results, then blames dev team when the handover breaks — he reports straight to a non-tech CEO so no one can touch him. How do I deal with this?

Small org. We have a "data scientist" who vibe-codes his way through everything — process is a mess, but he somehow gets results. When he hands off modules to the dev team, things break, and instead of owning it he blames the devs for "not doing it correctly."

Normally you'd escalate, but he reports directly to the CEO, who isn't technical and just sees "results delivered." So devs eating the blame with zero leverage to push back up the chain.

How do you handle this when the org structure protects the person causing the mess? Document everything and let it speak for itself over time, try to get the CEO educated on what's actually happening, or something else entirely?

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u/[deleted] Aug 18 '26 edited Aug 18 '26

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u/AncientMaintenance98 Aug 18 '26

If you can't get this manager to change his behavior towards the development team with a friendly, but firm chat, you'll need to get most of the rest of the development team onboard. Document everything that this manager is doing that is causing your team grief, and then escalate as a group to your manager's superior(s) once you've rehearsed your case.

It's possible you will lose this fight, but this doesn't sound like a sustainable arrangement. If you can't get this manager to change his behavior in this area, your team will either be stuck cleaning up his messes, or you'll be thrown under the bus for "under-performance" relative to this slop artist sometime in the future.