51–60 of 147 posts
I work at MSFT and I feel burnt out too and am in a similar situation where I feel like resigning would be better for my mental health but AI isn’t a big contributing factor. I do have some arguments against speculative uses of AI though. Experimenting with speculative uses is fine, technological breakthroughs require lot of iterations and some would naturally never make it but with the enormous amounts of capex that…
The way AI is being used feels like it is proving that, in many orgs, what has always mattered has been the appearance of work, not results of work. Will we wake up in a few years and find out we’ve fired all the doers and are now overloaded with the fakers?
I find that to be a very defeatist take. It always mattered how much value you provide to the business. Writing pretty code or arguing about some implementation detail never really mattered. If you are good at coming up with solutions to problems AI is just one additional tool in your toolbox and personally it allows me to do much more than before. There were fakers before, and there will be fakers after.
I agree there is some value in AI tools, but implementation details do matter. People shouldn't be pushing unread code to prod. That's how you end up with security holes and other bugs. That's how you end up dropping millions of orders on Amazon.com.
People caught up in this line of beliefs generally tend to be more neurotic and unhappy about most things.
I feel like all this hype around generated code overlooks a distinct opportunity for enterprising focus on excellent, clean, maintainable, curated code - baked by humans, for other humans.
> You join a meeting with a coworker. Your coworker has enabled an AI tool to automatically take notes and summarize the meeting. They do not ask for consent to turn it on. The tool mischaracterizes what you discuss.
Asking for consent to what is more or less meeting transcription (already enabled, presumably) seems a little odd. If you don't like it, why not just talk to the coworker and ask them not to use it? Offer to take notes yourself, perhaps.
> A team lead adds an AI chatbot to a Slack channel. Anyone can tag the bot to answer questions about the company’s products. Coworkers tag the chatbot many times a day. You never see someone check that the bot’s responses are correct.
Why would that happen in the Slack channel? Presumably you'd be googling it or reading documentation to do this, not posting in the channel.
> An engineer adds 12,000 lines of code affecting your app’s authentication. They ask that it be reviewed and merged same-day. Another engineer enlists a “swarm” of AI agents to review the code. The code merges with no one having read the full set of changes.
This is an insanely reckless thing to do with or without AI. If this actually happened at your company...I think there were deeper issues than overuse of AI.
> One of your pull requests has been open for a few days. You ask other engineers to leave a code review. Minutes later, an engineer pastes a review that was generated by an AI tool. There are no additional thoughts of their own.
Again, I think you should communicate with your coworkers on this. Possibly even bring it up in 1 on 1s with your manager. Not "I want to discourage use of AI" but "copying and pasting AI responses shows a lack of respect for others' time" and "lack of due diligence," show a horror story of an AI deleting someone's PROD database, etc. it's a useful but imperfect tool, not a replacement for thought.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find that to be a very defeatist take. It always mattered how much value you provide to the business. Writing pretty code or arguing about some implementation detail never really mattered. If you are good at coming up with solutions to problems AI is just one additional tool in your toolbox and personally it allows me to do much more than before. There were fakers before, and there will be fakers after.
Are you willing to wake up at 3 AM when that "valuable" AI-written code pages on-call? I agree there is some value in AI tools, but implementation details do matter. People shouldn't be pushing unread code to prod. That's how you end up with security holes and other bugs. That's how you end up dropping millions of orders on Amazon.com.
And major corporations certainly don’t seem to care that much about leaving massive amounts of money on the table from jr level tech issues. I see it all the time. I mentioned a few from Walmart, Meta, and Amazon recently.
Everyone talks like these things matter, but the results say everyone is just playing pretend.
I'm asking myself the same question for a different reason: nobody will even interview me. I've been out of work for a while. Savings are running out. I apparently don't even know how to look for a job anymore.
The era of anyone interested in programming for fun being able to make upper 10% incomes is drawing to a close. You'll unfortunately have to join the rest of us who work for money and program for fun. I suggest engineering (the real kind, not software 'engineering')
There's also the matter of going back to school, and the associated debt I'd have to take. I'd never be able to pay the loans off if I did that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm fine with "not big tech," along with a "not big tech" salary. In fact, I prefer "not big tech." My cost of living is not absurd for the Bay Area. I'd even be willing to take a little less than what I made before. After all, less than before is still better than 0. I'm using AI to tailor my resume to every posting, and still not getting calls.
You’ve got nine years of experience, so work your network and get referrals. It’s very hard to get mid-career jobs through the front door; most people want someone they trust to vouch for you.