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After outages, Amazon to make senior engineers sign off on AI-assisted changes

arstechnica.com

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Re: After outages, Amazon to make senior engineers sign off on AI-assisted changes

#361

Post by 8note »

devonbleak wrote: post #100
jetrink wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could create the right sort of incentives though. If I'm a junior and I suddenly have to take my work to a senior every time I use AI, I'm going to be much more selective about how I use it and much more careful when I do use it. AI is dangerous because it is so frictionless and this is a way to add friction. Maybe I don't have the correct mental model for how the typical junior engineer thinks though. I never wan…

What you're actually going to see is seniors inundated by slop and burning out and quitting because what used to be enjoyable solving of problems has become wading through slop that took 10 minutes to generate and submit but 30+ minutes to understand and write up a critique for it.

not even that. implementing this requirement could be a general work stoppage whenever the senior engineer is in all day meetings or on vacation

With a layout of 4 juniors, 5 intermediates, and 0-1 senior per team, putting all the changes through senior engineer review means you mostly wont be able to get CRs approved.

I guess it could result in forcing everyone who's sandbagging as intermediate instead of going to senior to have to get promoted?

Re: After outages, Amazon to make senior engineers sign off on AI-assisted changes

#362

Post by lokar »

rossdavidh wrote: post #231
lokar wrote: post #27

If this is true, it misunderstands the primary goals of code review. Code review should not be (primarily) about catching serious errors. If there are always a lot of errors, you can’t catch most of them with review. If there are few it’s not the best use of time. The goal is to ensure the team is in sync on design, standards, etc. To train and educate Jr engineers, to spread understanding of the system. To bring mor…

As Deming once said in regard to manufacturing inspections: "Inspection does not improve the quality, nor guarantee quality. Inspection is too late. The quality, good or bad, is already in the product." The fact that software is "soft" makes it seem like this doesn't apply, but it does, not least because of the fact that once you have gone down the wrong path with software design, it is very difficult to pull back an…

I agree, but it's worse. Even a "simple" coding error (so, no long term arch issues) is a problem, if the review that catches it does not educate the author.

The analogy to manufacturing would be something like if the parts coming out a machine are all bad, just sending them to re-work is not a solution, you need to re-calibrate the machine.

Re: After outages, Amazon to make senior engineers sign off on AI-assisted changes

#364

Post by paxys »

Someone should teach the decision makers how pipelines work. If AI-created diffs are being churned out at 10x the previous rate but manual reviews are the bottleneck then the overall system is producing at the exact same rate as before. The only thing you have added is cost, uncertainty and engineers being less familiar with the system.

Re: After outages, Amazon to make senior engineers sign off on AI-assisted changes

#365

Post by rhubarbtree »

sizzzzlerz wrote: post #357
rhubarbtree wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI will fix it, same way AI wrote it. At the behest of a human. When they fire everyone, juniors will fix it with AI. This is in general. I wouldn’t recommend this at critical services like AWS.

Or in airplanes, nuclear power plants, spacecraft, CAT scanners, ECGs, traffic control systems, navigation devices, warehouse management systems, banking. Feel free to add your own.

Doubt warehouse management systems will fit in there, and only critical systems at banking.

But yes agree with the rest, which probably makes up a tiny tiny fraction of the software created today, and will be orders of magnitude smaller as a fraction in the future.

Re: After outages, Amazon to make senior engineers sign off on AI-assisted changes

#367

Post by grogenaut »

dude250711 wrote: post #236
malfist wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only is having too many comments on your PRs bad for you, but so is not leaving comments on other people's PRs. Both are metrics used

I'd leave lots of comments out of spite whenever I would feel my PRs had been treated unfairly. If I am going down, you all are coming with me.

I specifically look at the quality / substance of the comments when I'm reviewing someone for promo/transfer/fire.

Re: After outages, Amazon to make senior engineers sign off on AI-assisted changes

#368

Post by encom »

tmoertel wrote: post #346
javcasas wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With tens of thousands in a meeting, cracking a 30-second stupid joke is probably costing several thousand dollars.

Unless that 30-second stupid joke is what gets the audience to take your request seriously. Sometimes people will help you when you don't come across like a self-interested corporate tool.

I have never in my long life heard a joke from upper management during a meeting/presentation that wasn't awkward and cringe. Just get to the point - tell us how many people are getting fired, so the people who aren't fired can get back to work, and you go back to running this company into the ground.

Sorry, I got flashbacks...

Re: After outages, Amazon to make senior engineers sign off on AI-assisted changes

#369

Post by rectang »

rsynnott wrote: post #272
rectang wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not my experience — I'm significantly faster while guiding an LLM using this methodology. The gains are especially notable when working in unfamiliar domains. I can glance over code and know "if this compiles and the tests succeed, it will work", even if I didn't have the knowledge to write it myself.

> I can glance over code and know "if this compiles and the tests succeed, it will work", even if I didn't have the knowledge to write it myself. ... Errr... Yeah, that's not a great approach, unless you are defining 'work' extremely vaguely.

Haha I have usually found myself on the conservative side of any engineering team I’ve been on, and it’s refreshing to catch some flak for perceived carelessness.

I still make an effort to understand the generated code. If there’s a section I don’t get, I ask the LLM to explain it.

Most of the time it’s just API conventions and idioms I’m not yet familiar with. I have strong enough fundamentals that I generally know what I’m trying to accomplish and how it’s supposed to work and how to achieve it securely.

For example, I was writing some backend code that I knew needed a nonce check but I didn’t know what the conventions were for the framework. So I asked the LLM to add a nonce check, then scanned the docs for the code it generated.

Re: After outages, Amazon to make senior engineers sign off on AI-assisted changes

#370

Post by mmcconnell1618 »

rco8786 wrote: post #337
happytoexplain wrote: post #19

>Junior and mid-level engineers can no longer push AI-assisted code without a senior signing off Review by a senior is one of the biggest "silver bullet" illusions managers suffer from. For a person (senior or otherwise) to examine code or configuration with the granularity required to verify that it even approximates the result of their own level of experience, even only in terms of security/stability/correctness, r…

Going to systemically turn off your senior staff over time also. Most Senior Engineers aren't that interested in doing even more code review.

Also, have massive layoffs every few months just to keep people on edge. AWS wants people to leave with RTO and badging policies, comp range shifts lower unless you have year over year ratings, and an obsessive push to force AI into every process. Top talent is leaving and will continue to leave AWS.
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