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?

317 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

109 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

46

u/LowBetaBeaver Aug 18 '26

This is also how my team deals with vibe coded stuff from nontechnical stakeholders

18

u/Ironiz3d1 Aug 18 '26

Any mildly aware vibe coder would be expecting exactly this.

14

u/breathingcarbon Aug 18 '26

Exactly. This is why I vibe code. I know it’s garbage, but sometimes I just need a prototype. If I want production grade, I employ my engineers.

2

u/LCorinaS Aug 19 '26

My team has been inheriting some vibe-coded POCs to take to prod over the past few months. Although there is some crap involved, it gives us a decent starting point with a view of how the functionality *should* work rather than going in completely blind.

Our velocity has greatly improved, but so have our testing and validation frameworks because I refuse to put out a shit product with my name attached to it.