We strictly don't use agentic development, so it's not so much a problem for us. Copying and pasting from LLMs is about the height of our AI use, aside from the AI auto-complete in Visual Studio, and any new starters are made aware during the interview process that agentic dev isn't permitted, so we cut it off at the source.
Ask HN: Am I getting old, or is working with AI juniors becoming a nightmare?
31–40 of 57 posts
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting old, or is working with AI juniors becoming a nightmare?
#32Yes. It's even more frustrating when you land in an office full of them.
And tbh it get things done very quickly. So, it is also very hard to argue, for a different coding style
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting old, or is working with AI juniors becoming a nightmare?
#33There seems to be a disconnect, with some people claiming they don't write code any more, only specs, and me trying to get Copilot to fix a stupid sizing bug in our layout engine and it Not Getting It. Is this because the guys claiming success are working in popular, known, more limited areas like Javascript in web pages, and the people outside those, with more complex systems, don't get the same results ? I also not…
Don't forget how many people here (and elsewhere, but especially here) need you to think this stuff works better than it does because they're selling it or otherwise benefit from its success.
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting old, or is working with AI juniors becoming a nightmare?
#34We strictly don't use agentic development, so it's not so much a problem for us. Copying and pasting from LLMs is about the height of our AI use, aside from the AI auto-complete in Visual Studio, and any new starters are made aware during the interview process that agentic dev isn't permitted, so we cut it off at the source.
Nice! Although if you have new young team - things look different. Also, to be fair, agentic dev is something that might be just the right answer for the future.
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting old, or is working with AI juniors becoming a nightmare?
#35Ask AI to ruthlessly reduce cognitive debt, purge unnecessarily defensive code and be extremely pragmatic about what you want to build. If an AI junior is building you Vault when you just asked for a secret rotator script, he's just showing off. Gently pull him from the clouds, since this is also within the JD of a senior engineer.
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting old, or is working with AI juniors becoming a nightmare?
#36It's still crucial for senior level people to review and scrutinize code generated by Jr and AI developers. There's always been the need to verify the code matches the business requirement, right? It used to be when you asked someone why they wrote the code the way they did, they'd tell you they thought it was the right way because X or Y. But with AI they can respond saying they actually don't know why they wrote it…
It's still crucial to keep your hands on the wheel and be able to take over from a self driving car within seconds. But we know this isn't happening and won't happen. The nature of the invention nurtures the behavior to use it unsafely.
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting old, or is working with AI juniors becoming a nightmare?
#37[dead]
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting old, or is working with AI juniors becoming a nightmare?
#38There seems to be a disconnect, with some people claiming they don't write code any more, only specs, and me trying to get Copilot to fix a stupid sizing bug in our layout engine and it Not Getting It. Is this because the guys claiming success are working in popular, known, more limited areas like Javascript in web pages, and the people outside those, with more complex systems, don't get the same results ? I also not…
Indeed, there's quite the echo-chamber of agentic encouragement going on, but the overwhelming feeling is that everyone's shilling and no one's buying.
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting old, or is working with AI juniors becoming a nightmare?
#39Ask AI to ruthlessly reduce cognitive debt, purge unnecessarily defensive code and be extremely pragmatic about what you want to build. If an AI junior is building you Vault when you just asked for a secret rotator script, he's just showing off. Gently pull him from the clouds, since this is also within the JD of a senior engineer.
The defensive code is getting to me (it's adding a ton of bloat) and I'm trying to fight it but I'm not sure how best to word it. What I've attempted hasn't worked too well so far.
How do you get it to not add so much unnecessarily defensive code?
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting old, or is working with AI juniors becoming a nightmare?
#40Meta/Google/Anthropic report 75%+ of coding is now AI. For every engineer orchestrating AIs -- X will be let go -- but at what ratio 3:1? 5:1? 10:1? Seems like its at least 3.
Of course Anthropic is going to report whatever they want to sell more shovels. This metric from an AI provider is not interesting.