It is now significantly harder to figure out who understands the systems and is using AI effectively and who doesn't know shit and is just slinging LLM copypasta around. Before 2025, the underperformers/coasters were at least relatively identifiable by the paucity of their contributions. Now all of the sudden every single engineer is filing PRs, code reviews, technical design documents, and every other artifact under…
You'll recognise the good engineers as the ones that remove code.
AI demands more engineering discipline. Not less
191–200 of 234 posts
Re: AI demands more engineering discipline. Not less
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sure this is gated by where you work (especially by how technically savvy your manager is), but the most effective contributors at my job tend to be the ones with near-zero (or sub-zero!) net LoC. LLMs are prolific and they love to add shit. Truly capable engineers are able to achieve more business outcomes with less code / fewer moving parts.
The most effective contributors at your job remove more code than they add? That doesn't sound effective that sounds like digging ditches to fill them. Every line of code removed is a line that was previously added.
Re: AI demands more engineering discipline. Not less
#193Re: AI demands more engineering discipline. Not less
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sure this is gated by where you work (especially by how technically savvy your manager is), but the most effective contributors at my job tend to be the ones with near-zero (or sub-zero!) net LoC. LLMs are prolific and they love to add shit. Truly capable engineers are able to achieve more business outcomes with less code / fewer moving parts.
I really can't agree with this. Sure pure LoC is a bad metric. But there is a correlation between output and LoC. Outside of a very senior developer, maybe a Principal or Lead that is spending all day in architecture meetings and reviewing PRs, most high performers are also outputting code.
Re: AI demands more engineering discipline. Not less
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
The most effective contributors at your job remove more code than they add? That doesn't sound effective that sounds like digging ditches to fill them. Every line of code removed is a line that was previously added.
Thought experiment: if you can solve a problem with 100 lines of dependency free code, or with 10,000 lines of code that depends on hundreds of things - which is better? There's an obvious answer of course. And that is the direction that these effective senior engineers move towards.
Re: AI demands more engineering discipline. Not less
#196It is now significantly harder to figure out who understands the systems and is using AI effectively and who doesn't know shit and is just slinging LLM copypasta around. Before 2025, the underperformers/coasters were at least relatively identifiable by the paucity of their contributions. Now all of the sudden every single engineer is filing PRs, code reviews, technical design documents, and every other artifact under…
>I have a feeling that the fallout from this phase of the industry is going to be an exotic form of technical debt that is remarkable mostly in its enormity. This. I feel like it is going to become illegal for older engineers to retire until its all cleaned up. When the debt catches up its going to be civilisation level problem, like asbestos or lead.
Perfect framing! I was leaning towards "AI Chernobyl" analogy in my predictions, but I think "asbestos" or "fossil fuels" captures its nature much better. May I borrow it? I definitely see the harmful consequences of "AI" exceeding both, however with sad realization that it usefulness was absolutely below par with any.
Re: AI demands more engineering discipline. Not less
#197It is now significantly harder to figure out who understands the systems and is using AI effectively and who doesn't know shit and is just slinging LLM copypasta around. Before 2025, the underperformers/coasters were at least relatively identifiable by the paucity of their contributions. Now all of the sudden every single engineer is filing PRs, code reviews, technical design documents, and every other artifact under…
— Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord
These days it is so easy to appear hardworking (by volume of contributions) when you have LLMs. The difference is that the inept now can literally create orders of magnitude more than the careful, experienced engineer.
Re: AI demands more engineering discipline. Not less
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe the solution is to look out for the most silent engineers. Those that output less despite having the ability to create near infinite output.
Not sure how to understand that. You mean as the best engineers? Funnily at my company, the few engineer that did the majority of the work before AI still do the majority of the work now. By majority I mean tackling both more issues and better. However there is a general verboseness and over engineering trend across the board.
What I noticed for myself is that saying no to something is becoming harder by the day because, why wouldn't you try something if it's so cheap to do.
That makes having the strength to say no almost a quality in and of itself.
That is true both for external pressure and internal pressure.
Re: AI demands more engineering discipline. Not less
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
"High performers". Can't believe we have normalized this vocabulary, among us, "hackers".
Most of us work for business and on teams where performance matters.
Re: AI demands more engineering discipline. Not less
#200> What happened in 2025 was this: the economics of code production were turned upside down. Instead of being very hard, time-consuming, and expensive to generate code, it became effectively free and instant. Lines of code went from being treasured, reused, cared for and carefully curated, to being disposable and regenerable, practically overnight.
A little but further reinforced by this:
> I am just barely old enough that my first job title was “System Administrator”. [...] I lived through the shift from handcrafted server pets to immutable infrastructure cattle.
What is happening now is nothing new, we have seen it many times before: a shift in technology which is bringing changes in the ecosystem, required skills and so on. This happened with stocking frames, steam engines [1], automobiles, servers, and now the code. Just like before, many will be - and already are - harmed by this, but ultimately the world will adapt and accept the new paradigm.
[1] There's an infamous screenshot of a tweet being shared around, where someone suggests various names for writing code without AI, and someone else responds with "software engineering". Allow me to add my on contribution to this debate: codejamming.