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Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

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Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#361

Post by mapleleaf1921 »

skydhash wrote: post #286
mapleleaf1921 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but I think you've not understood what the reply above is saying. You will never get the chance of "customers requesting changes" if you never ship. The company with the janky code that shipped will. And they will iterate and get better - as described by your process.

> You will never get the chance of "customers requesting changes" if you never ship. Why does good code imply never shipping? Managers and Developers have different thresholds for “good enough to release”. The former are not the one on call for bugs or the one that get blamed for outage, but they are the ones that get praised when projects are completed quickly. Anything that’s past demo level is good for them.

I'm not saying they're mutually exclusive. I'm just saying that we can't expect them to come as a packaged deal.

For example: Company A - janky code, ships quick Company B - great code, ships quick Company C - great code, ships slow Company D - janky code. Ships slow

The average survival rate will be in the following order: B > A > C > D

My point is company A will capture the market and iterate quicker than company C.

Company B is what you're probably thinking of , and what many people think they are building.

Company D is what most people are actually building.

Company C will win out in the long run over company B if they have capital and network.

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#362

Post by lefra »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #165
Lord_Zero wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in the before times, you learned a lot and walked away with knowledge on the deps needed, connections, .env secrets, and cleaned it all up and documented it so the next dev would have an easier time doing it.

Bullshit I just pasted random shit from google in until it worked and then instantly forgot which combination of the 20 things I tried got it there.

The second tome I had to do that for the same project (new computer), I sarted taking very detailed notes when doing this kind of unpleasant, supposedly one-off things.

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#363

Post by patates »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #322
patates wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False dichotomy. Of course not everyone has the same experience/skills, but any corporate system of putting individuals to tiers has little to do with experience/skills.

That's just not accurate. I've seen these systems run at multiple companies, and in every case they had a lot to do with skills and experience. It's true that they're not a perfect classification, and I think it's defensible that some people prefer a system where this kind of leveling doesn't happen. But the tradeoff is that career advancement becomes less legible in a way that other people often find frustrating. Wh…

> That's just not accurate. I've seen these systems run at multiple companies, and in every case they had a lot to do with skills and experience

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

So you and OP believe that, these systems are good indicators of skills, so much that the last statement sounds normal?

I was thinking like that once, as well, but I got disillusioned. These stuff tend to be gamed.

> Why does Alice get paid 3 times as much as me to work on cooler and more important stuff? "Alice is L7 and I'm L4" is often an easier answer to accept than "Alice is a better engineer than I am" or "People with Alice's experience have more options than I do".

Sure, that's why these system exist. They justify pay, that's all there is.

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#365

Post by lelanthran »

samrus wrote: post #204
DenisM wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is a very interesting thought. We complain about having to fix some MBAs vibecpded slop, but it actually might be faster, easier, and alot less painful than getting them to try to explain their vision to us and implement what they have in mind. Like they actually iterate on the UX alot when they are vibecoding things up, answer alot of questions that can onky be answered when you see an initial version of experi…

That's odd: all the other AI proponents on HN recently defended their decision to produce AI written code by saying the coding was never the hard part, it was the translation of business goals to a spec.

You're saying even that bit doesn't require them.

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#366

Post by neonstatic »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #35

I've met a handful of people across my life that i'd call truly brilliant. Like, holy heck how in the world is this person this smart? Two things I've noted about really smart people are (usually mutually exclusively) 1) Sometimes they do not realize how smart they are, because it's simple to them, or because they know the subject they assume everyone else, say with a computer science degree, knows and recalls and un…

IMO if the person doesn't understand the ethical and practical benefits of humility, they are not that smart.

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#367

Post by AbbeFaria »

patates wrote: post #363
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just not accurate. I've seen these systems run at multiple companies, and in every case they had a lot to do with skills and experience. It's true that they're not a perfect classification, and I think it's defensible that some people prefer a system where this kind of leveling doesn't happen. But the tradeoff is that career advancement becomes less legible in a way that other people often find frustrating. Wh…

> That's just not accurate. I've seen these systems run at multiple companies, and in every case they had a lot to do with skills and experience > I am an L63 but the work I was doing, was something an L60-L61 could do So you and OP believe that, these systems are good indicators of skills, so much that the last statement sounds normal? I was thinking like that once, as well, but I got disillusioned. These stuff tend…

> So you and OP believe that, these systems are good indicators of skills, so much that the last statement sounds normal?

Op here, yes I do believe, the levels aren’t perfect though. I believe in them because I was once L60 and L61, I knew intimately what was expected of me then and I can assure you the work I was doing as an L63 could be done by someone few levels down, which is to say I was underutilised. The team was also not the right fit for me.

Levels tell you two things, the scope and autonomy you get in your work and more importantly compensation. From the compensation view point, it does tend to be “gamed” frequently by developers hired from outside who might be out earning devs promoted within.

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#368

Post by jon_adler »

dale_glass wrote: post #329
beezlewax wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you honestly think an ikea desk has "more expert craftsmanship" than a hand crafted by a woodworker desk?

In some ways, sure. The LACK ( https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/lack-side-table-white-30449908/ ) is probably one of the most optimized pieces of furniture you can buy. There's no hand crafted desk that can be this cheap. A wood worker won't even get out of bed for $17. Now is it an amazingly beautiful, rock solid, heirloom quality piece of furniture? No, but it's not trying to be that.

They also double as a nice and cheap server rack!

https://wiki.eth0.nl/index.php/LackRack

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#369

Post by gyanchawdhary »

tomhow wrote: post #350
gyanchawdhary wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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[dead]

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#370

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

patates wrote: post #363
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just not accurate. I've seen these systems run at multiple companies, and in every case they had a lot to do with skills and experience. It's true that they're not a perfect classification, and I think it's defensible that some people prefer a system where this kind of leveling doesn't happen. But the tradeoff is that career advancement becomes less legible in a way that other people often find frustrating. Wh…

> That's just not accurate. I've seen these systems run at multiple companies, and in every case they had a lot to do with skills and experience > I am an L63 but the work I was doing, was something an L60-L61 could do So you and OP believe that, these systems are good indicators of skills, so much that the last statement sounds normal? I was thinking like that once, as well, but I got disillusioned. These stuff tend…

> So you and OP believe that, these systems are good indicators of skills, so much that the last statement sounds normal?

I do. I think it's good not to box people in, where certain work is only for (my company's equivalent of) L63s and an L60 isn't even allowed to try. But when I do see L60s try, they usually need someone to come by and intervene, because there are critical skills that come with seniority that they don't yet have.

To be more concrete, one thing I often notice in junior engineers I mentor is that they're very "task brained". They understand their job to be nothing more than a sequence of development tasks, so they struggle to understand what's happening or how to help when it comes time for important things that aren't tasks. One guy I knew was frustrated that he didn't understand how priorities are set, and yet would never read the customer stories in his email that the company used to set priorities.

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