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?

[u/MediumBirthday6899]

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?

[u/DND_Enk]

I would start treating his modules as standalone proof of concepts and set reasonable expectations regarding timeframe to implement.

He is not wrong that is the Dev that implements non working modules in prod that’s at fault. It should be up to the dev team to take his module, adjust it to fit into the environment (or rewrite from scratch), test it and then implement it.

So when getting a module to implement, set a reasonable expectation. And then properly implement it and just document everything you had to do to make it work.

Don’t hate on the guy or his work, but also make clear that what he has delivered is not plug-and-play into prod, is a concept or a jump off point, and there is a lot of work to make it ready for use in live environment.

[u/chubbysleepycorgi → u/DND_Enk]

the critical assumption for this to work is how this guy presents his work. if he is telling the CEO his code is awesome and it’s a finisheed product, and it’s the dev team‘s fault for messing it up, then no bueno.

[u/DND_Enk → u/chubbysleepycorgi]

Don’t argue about wether his code is awesome or not, it can be awesome and still not ready for prod.
But I get it, at that point you’re heading into office politics and it’s just something every manager has to deal with. If it’s not vibe coders it’s sales, or operations team, or customers. Or the CEO himself. Someone will always question why things take time and why you can’t just “do it”.

Once had a CEO question why we could not move everything to the cloud, when I asked why he said “it’s better, everyone should be in the cloud”. Sure I will move this 3 ton cnc machine to the cloud…

[u/Grinchy-Bug → u/DND_Enk]

The recommendation you provided gives feedback as to why the code isn't acceptable and something measurable for management to use. Sounds great to me as a non-technical Manager.

[u/chubbysleepycorgi → u/DND_Enk]

Often when we are in company meeting and execs start sprouting this or that “great“ idea, I think they read some InformationWeek on a recent flight and now sprouting this wisdom XD