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The human cost of 10x: How AI is physically breaking senior engineers

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Re: The human cost of 10x: How AI is physically breaking senior engineers

#51

Post by strange_quark »

Madmallard wrote: post #38
zthrowaway wrote: post #15

Can definitely attest to this. The frequency of outages at my company have increased drastically the past year, especially ever since incorporating agentic development. I’m seeing all of the dev best practices go out the window. We have a few vibe coders that are posting 15-30 PR’s per day. It’s way too much for us to review. We’re not a big shop. I think we’re going to have to hire more people just to review code ac…

Sounds like people need to speak up to management

Management doesn’t care. This sort of thing is becoming more common at my workplace too. More outages, more embarrassing bugs, even bugs that leak customer data. The solution is always more AI, and if you’re still shipping bugs and causing outages, it’s because you did’t use the AI correctly. Leadership makes all the right noises about quality and ownership, but when it comes down to it, the incentive structures clearly prioritize shipping things faster, all else be damned.

Re: The human cost of 10x: How AI is physically breaking senior engineers

#52

Post by chii »

stackskipton wrote: post #28
hgoel wrote: post #25

Using vibe coding for frequent PRs seems insanely reckless. In my scientific computing environment, the majority of my vibe coded output goes to one-off scripts, stuff that is not worth committing (correcting outputs, one-off visualizations, consistency checks), and anything worth committing gets further refined to an extent that it pretty much can't be considered vibe coded anymore. It's simply too risky, any bugs w…

Most people don't care. Leadership is demanding feature, feature, feature. IC are worried about losing their jobs and outages rarely cost most business actual money. So garbage gets shipped, outages rise, everyone is burned out but since they can't find another job, they remain.

In this situation, you raise the issue with management, with a paper trail that Cover Your Ass, that the pace is unsustainable and bugs will continue to accumulate faster than it can be fixed. Make sure that you are not responsible for it and ensure this is known by all (including management).

You then continue to vibe code as instructed by management. No burnout because you are not responsible anymore.

Re: The human cost of 10x: How AI is physically breaking senior engineers

#53

Post by sublinear »

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #26
zthrowaway wrote: post #15

Can definitely attest to this. The frequency of outages at my company have increased drastically the past year, especially ever since incorporating agentic development. I’m seeing all of the dev best practices go out the window. We have a few vibe coders that are posting 15-30 PR’s per day. It’s way too much for us to review. We’re not a big shop. I think we’re going to have to hire more people just to review code ac…

People pushing dozens of PRs per day need to learn to prioritize tasks, and balance a bit more towards quality over quantity.

This is the way. There's nothing inherently wrong with using AI as long as it's used responsibly.

I highly doubt there are any managers or executives who care how AI is precisely used as long as there are positive results. I would argue that this is indeed an engineering problem, not an upper management one.

What's missing is a realistic discussion about this problem online. We instead see insanely reckless people bragging about how fast they drove their pile of shit startup directly into the ground, or people in denial loudly banging drums to resist all forms of AI.

Re: The human cost of 10x: How AI is physically breaking senior engineers

#54

Post by sgarland »

ricketycricket wrote: post #44
PradeetPatel wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The proposed industry solution is to use agents to review PRs, as not to slow down the velocity of delivery... My current workplace is going through a major "realignment" exercise to replace as many testers with agents as humanely possible, which proved to be a challenge when the existing process is not well documented.

"Hey Claude, did Claude do a good job?"

I did an experiment today, where I had a new Claude agent review the work of a former Claude agent - both Opus 4.6 - on a large refactor on a 16k LOC project. I had it address all issues it found, then I cleared context, and repeated. Rinse and repeat. It took 4 iterations before it approached nitpicking. The fact that each agent found new, legitimate problems that the last one had missed was concerning to me. Why can’t it find all of them at once?

Re: The human cost of 10x: How AI is physically breaking senior engineers

#55

Post by aanet »

solomatov wrote: post #9
aanet wrote: post #5

I feel this is not discussed enough. I can attest to this 100%. Just the past weekend, I was talking with a very senior engineer (~distinguished engineer at a very large tech co) who basically said he's working 8-8-6 (8 am - 8 pm, 6 days/week), "writing code" (more like supervising 8-15 agents) for a product demo in 2 weeks, which otherwise would have taken at least 1 quarter's worth of time with a small team. He's z…

> more like supervising 8-15 agents How do they do it? (My own record is 5 agents, but it is not typical). Do they use gastown or something?

Honestly, I dont know. I could be mistaken about the exact number of agents - but not wrong about fact of AI-driven workflows which is heavily automated, and goes on for hours.

He's one (small) step from distinguished engineer, with 20+ patents to his name, and is an embedded programmer (largely C/C++) with 30+ years of experience in the field; and I've known him for nearly as long, so I put a lot of credence to his words.

But we don't usually talk work; he's the guitarist in our band :) [I'm the bass] So we mainly chill over music + beer. And lately, it's been less chill ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: The human cost of 10x: How AI is physically breaking senior engineers

#56

Post by lopsotronic »

PradeetPatel wrote: post #33
zthrowaway wrote: post #15

Can definitely attest to this. The frequency of outages at my company have increased drastically the past year, especially ever since incorporating agentic development. I’m seeing all of the dev best practices go out the window. We have a few vibe coders that are posting 15-30 PR’s per day. It’s way too much for us to review. We’re not a big shop. I think we’re going to have to hire more people just to review code ac…

The proposed industry solution is to use agents to review PRs, as not to slow down the velocity of delivery... My current workplace is going through a major "realignment" exercise to replace as many testers with agents as humanely possible, which proved to be a challenge when the existing process is not well documented.

The fact that anyone in leadership would ever think this is even remotely possible - given my experience in the general state of requirements / contracts / integrations / support - makes me bleed from my earholes just a little bit.

It's starting to just feel a little like an excuse to call everyone on deck for "a few weeks trying 9-9-6". But even then the lack of traction isn't between the eyeballs and the deployment. You'll still be spinning wheels in that slippery stuff between what a customer is thinking and what the iron they bought is doing.

Re: The human cost of 10x: How AI is physically breaking senior engineers

#57

Post by spaqin »

basilgohar wrote: post #32
rvz wrote: post #10

> The industry calls this “10x productivity.” I call it what it is: a system that generates output at machine speed and forces humans to process it at biological speed. The question is can you tolerate the amount of PRs thrown at you per day on top of reviewing the exponentially growing mess of code that continues to double every hour and being paid less for it. Just learn to say no and leave. Why do you tolerate the…

The job market under our Great Leader has taken away a lot of this agency. Software engineers have gone from having the pick of the market for themselves to becoming (perceived as) next to disposable.

That's a very American-centric point of view; the job market worldwide for developers is getting tougher and tougher.

Re: The human cost of 10x: How AI is physically breaking senior engineers

#58

Post by storus »

Madmallard wrote: post #38
zthrowaway wrote: post #15

Can definitely attest to this. The frequency of outages at my company have increased drastically the past year, especially ever since incorporating agentic development. I’m seeing all of the dev best practices go out the window. We have a few vibe coders that are posting 15-30 PR’s per day. It’s way too much for us to review. We’re not a big shop. I think we’re going to have to hire more people just to review code ac…

Sounds like people need to speak up to management

Management wants to get rid of people; they want to have their "wish-machine" that does what they say without any need to deal with nerds or ethical issues.

Re: The human cost of 10x: How AI is physically breaking senior engineers

#59

Post by stackskipton »

chii wrote: post #52
stackskipton wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people don't care. Leadership is demanding feature, feature, feature. IC are worried about losing their jobs and outages rarely cost most business actual money. So garbage gets shipped, outages rise, everyone is burned out but since they can't find another job, they remain.

In this situation, you raise the issue with management, with a paper trail that Cover Your Ass, that the pace is unsustainable and bugs will continue to accumulate faster than it can be fixed. Make sure that you are not responsible for it and ensure this is known by all (including management). You then continue to vibe code as instructed by management. No burnout because you are not responsible anymore.

People still get burnout if not from constant pages, the late nights and worry about their job.

Re: The human cost of 10x: How AI is physically breaking senior engineers

#60

Post by Incipient »

I'm a mostly solo dev, and I'm finding that being purely code-review for an AI is sub-optimal. Too often the AI runs off down bad paths which you only realise later, and unpicking the mess is most likely a productivity loss.

Working more as a pair, or essentially doing code review as you go, in small chunks, is significantly better.

I personally don't have the setup of tokens to spend to say "go build this entire thing" and then review 15k loc. I also find even opus is poor at coming up with tests to justify the business logic it's meant to be implementing.

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