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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

#481

Post by mrguyorama »

interestpiqued wrote: post #435
unselect5917 wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The spec is as much for humans as it is the machine, yes?

Spec should be made before hand and agreed on by stakeholders. It says what it should do. So it’s for whoever is implementing, modifying, and/or testing the code. And unfortunately devs have a tendency of poor documentation

Software development is only 70ish years old and somehow we have already forgotten the very very first thing we learned.

"Just get bulletproof specs that everyone agrees on" is why waterfall style software development doesn't work.

Now suddenly that LLMs are doing the coding, everyone believes that changes?

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

#482

Post by sarchertech »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #477
sarchertech wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t know sir, because you didn’t address a single lick of it. You went off and argued with some other argument you constructed in your head. I believe we have a name for that. It is an awfully good way to win arguments in your own mind and retain unshakable confidence in your position if that’s your goal though.

Again exactly what argument are you making then? Maybe you should spend more time being clear about your argument? An LLM might help…

Well there’s a numbered list if you’ll read back a few messages. That should be easy for even the most LLM addled brain to digest.

But instead you went off and had your own party arguing with someone (it certainly wasn’t me) about number of layers, GoF patterns, and “clean” code.

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

#483

Post by lovich »

wiseowise wrote: post #454
lovich wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you're a lunatic. If you look at the luddite rebellion they weren't actually against industrial technology like looms. They were against being told they weren't needed anymore and thrown to the wolves because of the machines. The rich have forgotten they are made of meat and/or are planning on returning to feudalism ala Yarvin, Thiel, Musk, and co's politics.

> The rich have forgotten they are made of meat and/or are planning on returning to feudalism ala Yarvin, Thiel, Musk, and co's politics. What are you realistically willing to do? How far can you go?

Get back to me when my fridge and bank account are finally empty.

Also you’ll never get an honest answer on a public forum because moderators remove them

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

#485

Post by kaffekaka »

esafak wrote: post #410
AgentOrange1234 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seniors are going to need to hold Juniors to a high bar for understanding and explaining what they are committing. Otherwise it will become totally soul destroying to have a bunch of juniors submitting piles of nonsense and claiming they are blocked on you all the time.

Make them first go through an AI reviewer that is informed by the code base's standards.

Due to recent events at work this is a venue I will start exploring.

I didn't grasp how quickly this would become a problem, but "juniors with a slop button" is indeed a reality now. And I lack the ability to let things slide.

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

#486

Post by kaffekaka »

qnleigh wrote: post #117
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…

I seriously doubt that they think senior reviewers will meticulously hunt down and fix all the AI bugs. Even if they could, they surely don't have the time. But it offers other benefits here: 1. They can assess whether the use of AI is appropriate without looking in detail. E.g. if the AI changed 1000 lines of code to fix a minor bug, or changed code that is essential for security. 2. To discourage AI use, because of…

Point 1 is important. Seniors (or any developer really) with experience in the code base in question can judge pretty quickly if a CR seems reasonable.

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

#487

Post by benmathes »

MikeTheGreat wrote: post #301
djb_hackernews wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When an SVP asks you to do something in a mass email, it's very much optional. Dave Treadwell is an SVP, his org is likely in the 10's of thousands, there is no way to even have a mandatory meeting for that many people. My SVP asks me to do things all the time, indirectly. I do probably 5% of them.

> org is likely in the 10's of thousands, there is no way to even have a mandatory meeting for that many people. Ok, this is pretty off-topic, but is this still true? I get that you can't have 10K people all actively participate in the meeting at the same time, but doesn't Zoom have a feature where you can broadcast to thousands and thousands? Doesn't X/Twitter have a feature like this? (Although, to be fair, the las…

that many people likely live in different timezones, or have conflicting meetings, etc. etc.

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

#488

Post by fmajid »

8note wrote: post #376
fmajid wrote: post #284

If they do not also increase the senior devs’ allotted time for code reviews to make up for the increased volume of changes due to increased productivity of the junior to mid level devs, or hire more seniors, this will just lead to burnout (on top of Amazon’s already high levels) and scapegoating seniors for having waved through a change because they materially can’t review them fast enough.

Id maybe consider spinning out a different job role for like "review engineer" who's not busy making strategic decisions and near term planning, just making sure the code is actually good still within the engineering IC role, but on a different track

I like to describe this as being "the person who know what good is".

Sounds supiciously like the return of the SDET role...

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

#489

Post by wackycat »

MikeTheGreat wrote: post #301
djb_hackernews wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When an SVP asks you to do something in a mass email, it's very much optional. Dave Treadwell is an SVP, his org is likely in the 10's of thousands, there is no way to even have a mandatory meeting for that many people. My SVP asks me to do things all the time, indirectly. I do probably 5% of them.

> org is likely in the 10's of thousands, there is no way to even have a mandatory meeting for that many people. Ok, this is pretty off-topic, but is this still true? I get that you can't have 10K people all actively participate in the meeting at the same time, but doesn't Zoom have a feature where you can broadcast to thousands and thousands? Doesn't X/Twitter have a feature like this? (Although, to be fair, the las…

> but doesn't Zoom have a feature where you can broadcast

they're probably using Chime haha, which as of my last use was lackluster

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

#490

Post by tcbrah »

PessimalDecimal wrote: post #433
tcbrah wrote: post #148

the funniest part is amazon literally started tying AI usage to performance reviews like 6 months ago and now theyre doing damage control. you cant simultaneously pressure every engineer to use more AI AND be shocked when AI-assisted code breaks prod. pick one lol

Why can't they?

because the incentive structure is broken. if my performance review rewards me for using AI more, im going to use AI more even when i shouldn't. engineers will rubber stamp AI suggestions to hit their metrics instead of actually reviewing the code. you cant optimize for quantity of AI usage and quality of output at the same time IMO
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