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Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

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Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#41

Post by JoelMcCracken »

DenisM wrote: post #26
anonzzzies wrote: post #19

I like fixing code made by AIs and others (outsourcing code is similar as someone else said already). Last week we found out some client tried to vibe some departmental tool; the result is some massive crap in nextjs that needs 10GB mem to compile, has 1000s of lint errors, dev logs in git (very noisy ones) and so on. Now we have to fix it: its basically free 10k-50k euros over and over again for this type of work. V…

In some ways they are giving you a spec and UI mocks to implement.

This is one of the things I keep thinking about. At the very least, these tools make prototyping and idea vetting remarkably cheaper.

Then we go back to the old “the prototype works; I’m the boss and I’m telling you to deploy it to production”

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#43

Post by vitally3643 »

AbbeFaria wrote: post #34
ramon156 wrote: post #7

I kind of envy people who need to clean up after others. At least you're puzzling. My current job is genuinely just boring. It's tasks that are so simple, a junior could do it. But no, instead they needed a medior. I'm not saying I'm better than this, nor that no medior will pick it up. I just cannot push myself to care about the code this company makes. It's old, dusty and it serves no one of importance. These custo…

You are not alone. I was in this exact same position at MSFT and I put in my resignation. I am an L63 but the work I was doing, was something an L60-L61 could do and I frequently felt I was in one of those Bullshit jobs (courtesy of David Graeber). I was paid handsomely but once the sign on stock ran out, I saw that I was staying in the job just for security. I felt like one of those Hooli engineers who were sunbathi…

> I am an L63 but the work I was doing, was something an L60-L61 could do

Maybe the problem is imagining that you need sixty three levels of granularity to describe experience or to establish superiority over sixty two categories of "lesser" engineers?

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#44

Post by Goofy_Coyote »

These two sentences hit home:

> The flow of data was so hard to follow, it seemed like someone was trying to cover up a murder.

> Just getting the code to run on your laptop took a week.

I always thought I’m the only one having problem understanding the data flow, or setting up a proper dev environment. Impostor syndrome (and sometimes toxic environments that pushed for “velocity”) didn’t help either.

Felt good to know I’m not the one.

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#45

Post by tyleo »

red75prime wrote: post #42

Is the "Cleaning up after hundreds of AI rockstars" part a description of an actual experience? I don't feel that it is. I would expect much more swearing if it were the case.

It could be but there’s always been so called “10x developers” who just make 10x messes. I think it’s the continuation of an existing phenomenon.

https://www.tyleo.com/blog/the-terminal-star

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#46

Post by AMerrit »

hilariously wrote: post #25
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #22

It’s literally no different than how to clean up old projects over the last 30 years of software engineering I don’t understand why all this stuff is all of a sudden “new.” It feels like we’ve got an entire generation of people who never had to spend their time factoring or doing hard infrastructure work It’s actually pretty baffling how rare it is to find somebody who has consistent experience in refactoring that is…

That's because the businesses got into the habit of new C level means new project, obviously the old code is bad. I even had a PE buy the company I worked at, put in a new CEO, and his goal was to rewrite the entire code base in a year. I asked him what problems this would solve and never got a straight answer besides "its yucky" and "people told me they dont like it." I have had multiple upper management teams decid…

Yep, I worked at a small company that got bought by a bigger one. We had a solid if aging product to support which was one of the big players for the niche. Once there was a leadership change, 2/3 of the devs got put on building a replacement software. Then in a couple of years our subgroup got spun off and sold to PE and the v2 project was shelved for another brand new design to align with the new ownership. I left just before the spin-off, but witnessed how the original software slowly rotted away and all of the marketshare dominance we had for that area slipped away.

Devs love new tech and the product people love something new to put their stamp on, but chasing that high can be ruinous.

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#47

Post by tyleo »

anonzzzies wrote: post #19

I like fixing code made by AIs and others (outsourcing code is similar as someone else said already). Last week we found out some client tried to vibe some departmental tool; the result is some massive crap in nextjs that needs 10GB mem to compile, has 1000s of lint errors, dev logs in git (very noisy ones) and so on. Now we have to fix it: its basically free 10k-50k euros over and over again for this type of work. V…

Lots of people are gambling on AI with big bucks. Some of it is promising but all those bets won’t pay off. I like to think of this mindset as being the human slot machine that people are shoving money into.

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#48

Post by rzmmm »

JoelMcCracken wrote: post #41
DenisM wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some ways they are giving you a spec and UI mocks to implement.

This is one of the things I keep thinking about. At the very least, these tools make prototyping and idea vetting remarkably cheaper. Then we go back to the old “the prototype works; I’m the boss and I’m telling you to deploy it to production”

Prototyping is widely underappreciated. People think it's waste to throw away stuff but it's more costly to build upon shoddy foundations

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#50

Post by SlinkyOnStairs »

pu_pe wrote: post #38
danjc wrote: post #14

As much as it's true that a novice will generally use AI to build a sloppy mess, I've also had success unsloppifying through some careful prompting.

Absolutely. I really don't think the future will be humans reading and picking apart an AI-generated codebase, there will be tech debt agents or whatever running overnight.

I think you misunderstand why tech debt lingers around. It's not a capacity or capability problem.

Organisations just don't want to deal with the accountability involved with "touching cold code". Whether it's a human or "AI agent" doesn't change the "It worked in prod, you touched it, you broke it, never touch anything again" dynamic.

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