We charge $10k a week to delete AI-generated code

Post by lenkite » Wed, Jul 08, 2026, 9:14 AM UTC

neitherboosh wrote: post #101

zie1ony wrote: post #2

Creator here, There is a new kind of task for software engineers these days. A client calls, asks for a "small refactor," and sends you 100k lines of AI-generated spaghetti. And this is great! This is something we can work with. Any experienced engineer can look at a codebase like that and quickly see what to refactor, where a library replaces a few thousand hand-rolled lines, and what smells bad. Removing the first…

The copy on your website itself kind of reads like LLM slop (eg. "One week. Three senior engineers. $10,000"). You may have written it yourself and marketing copy just tends to look like this, but it doesn't inspire confidence that your service will actually improve my code.

Post by joshstrange » Wed, Jul 08, 2026, 10:25 AM UTC

icase wrote: post #117

thraway3837 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, that question should trouble us more. But honestly we've all asked ourselves that same question and I think our collective response is too nuanced to try to type properly but I'll try. Tools are always made out to seem like the human could be replaced. We've seen that every time some new technology comes out that some people claim will replace humans once and for all! But this does not seem to be true. What…

writing code is the actual fun part of the job though. it’s a shame we automated that instead of the boring system design shit.

Post by pbgcp2026 » Wed, Jul 08, 2026, 10:37 AM UTC

icase wrote: post #117

thraway3837 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, that question should trouble us more. But honestly we've all asked ourselves that same question and I think our collective response is too nuanced to try to type properly but I'll try. Tools are always made out to seem like the human could be replaced. We've seen that every time some new technology comes out that some people claim will replace humans once and for all! But this does not seem to be true. What…

writing code is the actual fun part of the job though. it’s a shame we automated that instead of the boring system design shit.

Post by pbgcp2026 » Wed, Jul 08, 2026, 10:39 AM UTC

j45 wrote: post #99

blanched wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we ask AI to reference that ticket, code to it, and create a PR > none of them have read any more than a few lines of code So what do you / your team do?

Manage and oversee the engineering

Post by dzhiurgis » Wed, Jul 08, 2026, 10:40 AM UTC

tikhonj wrote: post #154

phil21 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So what do you / your team do? This is so funny to me, because I know it's asked in earnest but seems so obvious to me: They get actual work done. Programming isn't work. That's just a means to an end. A tool to get the actual job done. At least in most orgs. Obviously there are exceptions - but the vast economy is not a bunch of software companies. It's companies doing things to build a physical product, and softw…

It's interesting how people view software as a distraction and an annoying side quest/cost center, but never apply that to, say, 90% of what management does. None of that "directly" makes money either! That tells us a lot more about the leadership and management philosophies at modern companies than anything fundamental about what kind of work actually matters.