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If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

tombedor.dev

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Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#201

Post by goobatrooba »

niuzeta wrote: post #34

A very prolific coworker who fully embraced claude has inflicted the team with a flood of AI-generated PRs. About six months later, it is his frequent bemoaning at the standup that their PR don't get reviewed, languishing in inattention. I don't think anyone - including myself - _intentionally_ avoid his PRs. It's just that he doesn't make it easy for the team to look at. This single headline perfectly captures what…

An interesting question to him and management might be what his own role is now and whether he's still needed. If he's not doing any reviews then you could yourself directly prompt the code and review.

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#202

Post by madaxe_again »

jmeri wrote: post #188

Why should I bother to read something someone else has not bothered to write?

It really depends. In many cases, you absolutely shouldn’t.

In some however, you should. For instance, yesterday I sent a lengthy email in a language I barely speak threatening legal action against a business. I had an LLM translate/write it as it’s a language Google translate makes a mess of, every time.

So in that case, you’d be advised to read it lest you end up in court.

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#203

Post by suzzer99 »

niuzeta wrote: post #34

A very prolific coworker who fully embraced claude has inflicted the team with a flood of AI-generated PRs. About six months later, it is his frequent bemoaning at the standup that their PR don't get reviewed, languishing in inattention. I don't think anyone - including myself - _intentionally_ avoid his PRs. It's just that he doesn't make it easy for the team to look at. This single headline perfectly captures what…

I can't imagine working for a place that has a big bucket of PRs that either get reviewed or languish for some amount of time based on who feels like reviewing them. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it, just that everywhere I've ever worked, there are expected features with priorities and timelines and some project manager or product person breathing down your neck to get them out the door.

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#204

Post by BoingBoomTschak »

TFNA wrote: post #12
sshine wrote: post #3

> when [sending AI generated content to teammates], I take care to clearly label what is AI generated Reading AI-generated text for hours every day, it's obvious to me. I take care to make my messages easily readable. I don't care if they're AI-made, as long as they're short. I'm a very verbose person, and if I don't make an effort at being concise, I'm just as annoying as the average AI. Being flooded with AI text e…

Brevity is the big disaster of human-generated text since the rise of the phone as default device and the appearance of Twitter. To discuss matters with sufficient depth and nuance, one often has to write a few solid paragraphs. If people are now wincing at longform text because they automatically assume it was LLM-generated, then that bodes ill.

It is also the soul of wit!

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#205

Post by reverius42 »

beebmam wrote: post #190
niuzeta wrote: post #34

A very prolific coworker who fully embraced claude has inflicted the team with a flood of AI-generated PRs. About six months later, it is his frequent bemoaning at the standup that their PR don't get reviewed, languishing in inattention. I don't think anyone - including myself - _intentionally_ avoid his PRs. It's just that he doesn't make it easy for the team to look at. This single headline perfectly captures what…

Human PR review is a process smell

This would sound crazy in 2025 or prior, but I'm on board.

It's silly to have humans reviewing code that a human didn't even write.

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#207

Post by suzzer99 »

TFNA wrote: post #12
sshine wrote: post #3

> when [sending AI generated content to teammates], I take care to clearly label what is AI generated Reading AI-generated text for hours every day, it's obvious to me. I take care to make my messages easily readable. I don't care if they're AI-made, as long as they're short. I'm a very verbose person, and if I don't make an effort at being concise, I'm just as annoying as the average AI. Being flooded with AI text e…

Brevity is the big disaster of human-generated text since the rise of the phone as default device and the appearance of Twitter. To discuss matters with sufficient depth and nuance, one often has to write a few solid paragraphs. If people are now wincing at longform text because they automatically assume it was LLM-generated, then that bodes ill.

There's a sweet spot between AI slop and 144 characters. I can tell within a few sentences whether there's a human on the other end getting to the point, or an AI dancing around the point and finding 3 different ways to say the same thing.

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#208

Post by crjohns648 »

niuzeta wrote: post #34

A very prolific coworker who fully embraced claude has inflicted the team with a flood of AI-generated PRs. About six months later, it is his frequent bemoaning at the standup that their PR don't get reviewed, languishing in inattention. I don't think anyone - including myself - _intentionally_ avoid his PRs. It's just that he doesn't make it easy for the team to look at. This single headline perfectly captures what…

Even before AI, I've worked with people who would produce a huge wall of code and ask for review, and sometimes that code was completely off base or needed a significant rework.

I would always feel bad in those cases, because it's clear they spent a lot of time, and I'm going to have to say "no" and they will feel like they wasted a ton of effort.

The thought process around this has started shifting for me in the last few weeks. I'm a lot more comfortable saying "no" with a list of concerns when I suspect the code is AI-generated, and I see others doing the same. CLs that would be sitting around for days because no one wants to be the first to say, "this is bad, don't do this" now get quicker feedback.

The good thing is this feedback doesn't feel like as big a deal as it used to because people are less personally attached to code they generated in 30 minutes vs. code they hand crafted over a week. I had at least 2 LLM-generated PRs that were complete, correct, tested, and pre-reviewed by me, but I got feedback that they were going in the wrong direction. This would have been 8 hours of wasted effort a year ago, but now it's just an extra 30 minutes to rework the direction with LLM assistance.

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#209

Post by cameldrv »

goobatrooba wrote: post #201
niuzeta wrote: post #34

A very prolific coworker who fully embraced claude has inflicted the team with a flood of AI-generated PRs. About six months later, it is his frequent bemoaning at the standup that their PR don't get reviewed, languishing in inattention. I don't think anyone - including myself - _intentionally_ avoid his PRs. It's just that he doesn't make it easy for the team to look at. This single headline perfectly captures what…

An interesting question to him and management might be what his own role is now and whether he's still needed. If he's not doing any reviews then you could yourself directly prompt the code and review.

The question I’ve seen here is responsibility. If you submit a PR that means that it was your best effort, and you’re willing to stand behind it to some degree. With AI, some people, when the scathing review comes back, just say “haha look at that stupid AI.” The reviewer might just as well run his own AI to do the review, but it may make huge errors as well. In that scenario, who is held accountable when there is a big bug or it degrades the quality of the code base?

Ultimately what it means to be a professional is that you are responsible for your work. That’s why you get a salary instead of being paid by the token.

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#210

Post by throwaway132448 »

chii wrote: post #198
CoastalCoder wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like one potential interpretation of his behavior is that he values his own time more than your time. I wonder if that's occurred to him.

Everybody values their own time more than other's. The fix, imho, is for the reviewers to also use ai to review the code. However, the ultimate responsibility for the outcome(s) should be on the committer - you commit it, you own it, so to speak. If there's an incident, they need to be the one paged in the middle of the night. Bugs resulting from it will land on their desk. The reviewers aren't a shield/safety net.

> Everybody values their own time more than other's.

This is false, you’re just oblivious to people who grew up in conditions that would make them that way.

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