5 ms·

Haven't seen this mentioned yet, but the worst part for me is that a lot of management LOVES to use Claude to generate 50 page design documents, PRDs, etc., and

by viccis 7mo ago

Haven't seen this mentioned yet, but the worst part for me is that a lot of management LOVES to use Claude to generate 50 page design documents, PRDs, etc., and send them to us to "please review as soon as you can". Nobody reads it, not even the people making it. I'm watching some employees just generate endless slide decks of nonsense and then waffle when asked any specific questions. If any of that is read, it is by other peoples' Claude. It has also enabled a few people to write code or plan out implementation details who haven't done so in a long (sometimes decade or more) time, and so I'm getting some bizarre suggestions. Otherwise, it really does depend on what kind of code. I hand write prod code, and the only thing that AI can do is review it and point out bugs to me. But for other things, like a throwaway script to generate a bunch of data for load testing? Sure, why not.

deadbabe 7mo ago
The best thing to do is to schedule meetings with those people to go over the docs with them. Now you force them to eat their own shit and waste their own time the more output they create.
- ceejayoz 7mo ago
  I had Claude review one. It was... not complimentary. Seemed to help a bit.
- caminante 7mo ago
  Love the intent, but isn't that wishful if you don't have any leverage? e.g., the higher up will trade you for someone who doesn't cause friction or you waste too much of your own time?
theshrike79 7mo ago
If you shove clearly AI generated content at me, I will use an AI to summarize it. Or I'll walk up to your desk and ask you to explain it.
- Arubis 7mo ago
  I actually think there’s almost an acceptable workflow here of using LLMs as part of the medium of communication. I’m pretty much fine with someone sending me 500 lines of slop with the stated expectation that I’ll dump it into an LLM on my end and interact with it. It’s the asymmetric expectations—that one person can spew slop but the other must go full-effort—that for me personally feels disrespectful.
  - SOLAR_FIELDS 7mo ago
    I also don't mind that. Summarized information exchange feels very efficient. But for sure, it seems like a societal expectation is emerging around these tools right now - expect me to put as much effort into consuming data as you did producing it. If you shat out a bunch of data from an LLM, I'm going to use an LLM to consume that data as well. And it's not reasonable for you to expect me to manually parse that data, just as well as I wouldn't expect you to do the same. However, since people are not going to readily reveal that they used an LLM to produce said output, it seems like the most logical way to do this is just always use an LLM to consume inputs, because there's no easy 100% way to tell whether it was created by an LLM or a human or not anymore.
    - roland35 7mo ago
      A true prisoners dilemma!
    - theshrike79 7mo ago
      Concept -> LLM fluff -> LLM summary -> Recipient This kinda risks the broken telephone problem, or when you translate from one language to another and then again to another - context and nuance is always lost. Just give me the bullet points, it's more efficient anyway. No need to add tons of adjectives and purple prose around it to fluff it up.
      - duskdozer 7mo ago
        Some day someone brilliant will discover the idea of "sharing prompts" to get around this issue. So, instead of sending the clean and summarized LLM output, you'll just send your prompt, and then the recipient can read that, and in response, share their prompt back to the original sender.
MarsIronPI 7mo ago
I've found in my (admittedly limited) use of LLMs that they're great for writing code if I don't forsee a need to review it myself either, but if I'm going to be editing the code myself later I need to be the one writing it. Also LLMs are bad at design.
- 0x6d61646f 7mo ago
  what code do you write that you don't need to mantain/read again later?
  - tikotus 7mo ago
    For me it's throwaway scripts and tools. Or tools in general. But only simple tools that it can somewhat one-shot. If I ever need to tweak it, I one-shot another tool. If it works, it's fine. No need to know how it works. If I'm feeling brave, I let it write functions with very clear and well defined input/output, like a well established algorithm. I know it can one-shot those, or they can be easily tested. But when doing something that I know will be further developed, maintained, I mainly end up writing it by hand. I used to have the LLM write that kind of code as well, but I found it to be slower in the long run.
  - tracker1 7mo ago
    Definitely a lot of one-shot scripts for a given environment... I've started using a run/ directory for shell scripts that will do things like spin up a set of containers defined in a compose file.. build and test certain sub-projects, initialize a database, etc. For the most part, many of them work the first time and just continue to do so to aid a project. I've done similar in terms of scaffolding a test/demo environment around a component that I'm directly focused on... sometimes similar for documentation site(s) for gh pages, etc. Soem things have gone surprisingly well.
- ignoramous 7mo ago
  > Also LLMs are bad at design. I've found that SoTA LLMs sometimes implement / design differently (in the sense that "why didn't I think of that"), and that's always refreshing to see. I may run the same prompt through Gemini, Sonnet, and Codex just to see if they'd come up with some technique I didn't even know to consider. > don't forsee a need to review it myself either On the flip side, SoTA LLMs are crazy good at code review and bug fixes. I always use "find and fix business logic errors, edge cases, and api / language misuse" prompt after every substantial commit.
BoneShard 7mo ago
I noticied what previously would take 30 mins, now takes a week. For example we had a performance issue with a DB, previously I'd just create a GSI (global secondary index), now there is a 37 page document with explanation, mitigation, planning, steps, reviews, risks, deployment plan, obstacles and a bunch of comments, but sure it looks cool and very professional.
- ionwake 7mo ago
  Im now out of the workforce and can’t even imagine the complexity of the systems as management and everyone else communicate plans and executions through Claude. It must already be the case that some code based are massive behemoths few devs understand. Is Claude good enough to help maintain and help devs stay on top of the codebase?
  - BoneShard 7mo ago
    The code is fine, strong reviews help and since we're slower due to all slop communication also helps.
- floydian10 7mo ago
  Not to mention that now you need an "alignment meeting" with a bunch of people
maxaw 7mo ago
I quit my last job because of this. I’m pretty sure manager was using free chatgpt with no regard for context length too, because not only was it verbose it was also close to gibberish. Being asked to review urgently and estimate deadlines got old real fast
solaire_oa 7mo ago
Similarly, managers at my workplace occasionally use LLMs to generate jira tickets (with nonsense implementation details), which has led junior engineers astray, leaving senior engineers to deal with the fallout.
gmerc 7mo ago
I instituted a simple “share the inputs” along with the outputs rule which prevents people doing exactly this. Your only value contribution is the input and filtering the output but for people with equal filtering skill, there’s no value in the output
prohobo 7mo ago
Getting similar vibes from freelance clients sending me overly-articulated specs for projects, making it sound like they want sophisticated implementations. Then I ask about it and they actually want like a 30 row table written in a csv. Huge whiplash.
alper 7mo ago
One group of people pretends to have written something and another group of people pretends to have read something. Much productivity is gained. Zizek had a great point about this.
- ZoomZoomZoom 7mo ago
  At least both get paid in not-pretend money.
  - andrei_says_ 7mo ago
    For the time being. Their manager is under constant pressure to lay them off and replace them with “ai”.
todteera 7mo ago
[flagged]
michaelteter 7mo ago
Obviously you should also use Claude to consume those 50 pages. It sounds cynical, but it's not. It's practical. What I've learned in 2 years of heavy LLM use - ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, is that the significance is on expressing and then refining goals and plans. The details are noise. The clear goals matter, and the plans are derived from those. I regularly interrupt my tools to say, "Please document what you just said in ...". And I manage the document organization. At any point I can start fresh with any AI tool and say, "read x, y, and z documents, and then let's discuss our plans". Although I find that with Gemini, despite saying, "let's discuss", it wants to go build stuff. The stop button is there for a reason.
- LordGrey 7mo ago
  I use an agents.md file to guide Claude, and I include a prominent line that reads UPDATE THIS FILE WITH NEW LEARNINGS. This is a bit noisy -- I have to edit what is added -- but works well and it serves as ongoing instruction. And as you have pointed out, the document serves as a great base if/when I have to switch tools.
Buldak 7mo ago
I've had this experience too. In the case of vibe code, there is at least some incentive from self-preservation that prevents things from getting too out of hand, because engineers know they will be on the hook if they allow Claude to break things. But the penalties for sloppy prose are much lower, so people put out slop tickets/designs/documentation, etc. more freely.
jermaustin1 7mo ago
I've been tasked with code reviews of Claude chat bot written code (not Claude code that has RAG and can browse the file system). It always lacks any understanding of our problem area, 75% of the time it only works for a specific scenario (the prompted case), and almost 100% of the time, when I comment about this, I'm told to take it over and make it work... and to use Claude. I've kind of decided this is my last job, so when this company folds or fires me, I'm just going to retire to my cabin in the rural Louisiana woods, and my wife will be the breadwinner. I only have a few 10s of thousands left to make that home "free" (pay off the mortgage, add solar and batteries, plant more than just potatoes and tomatoes). Though, post retirement, I will support my wife's therapy practice, and I have a goal of silly businesses that are just fun to do (until they arent), like my potato/tomato hybrid (actually just a graft) so you can make fries and ketchup from the same plant!
- windex 7mo ago
  >so you can make fries and ketchup from the same plant! We should be friends. I like your ideas.
  - jermaustin1 7mo ago
    I'm always looking for people to share my weird ideas that have absolutely nothing to do with software or computers. Unfortunately my only friends are all software people who have no interest outside of computers. Something I've found to have very little interest in anymore.
    - dendrite9 7mo ago
      Did you see this last year about the origins of potatoes? I'd like to get into grafting fruit trees, my uncle was a major fruit eater and filled the yard with many varieties of apples and pears. The apple tree where I live was a mess and I've jsut started the pruning to get it under control. https://www.npr.org/2025/08/13/nx-s1-5494517/strange-but-true-potato-origin-story-tomato-tuber https://www.npr.org/2025/08/13/nx-s1-5494517/strange-but-tru...
    - 7mo ago
romperstomper 7mo ago
And then you use AI to summarize those 50 pages :)
rxm233 7mo ago
I've definitely seen this, I have a theory as to how this kind of thing actually would affect AI predictions since people seem to only focus on the pure-productivity enhancing effects of AI and discounting the fact that a large portion of work was never productive to begin with... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47347983 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47347983
tmaly 7mo ago
If Claude Code can parse these design documents, I would recommend making a skill to do an adversarial review of the document. Then just generate that review, do some minor edits to make it look like a human wrote it and send it back to them.
- andrei_says_ 7mo ago
  Which is fine if we are fine with pretending to do our jobs. But deep down I know that slop is noise and words no longer represent understanding.
  - tmaly 7mo ago
    not everything is slop, sometimes you can just use it like a brainstorm session to see if you missed something.

by viccis 7mo ago

deadbabe 7mo ago

The best thing to do is to schedule meetings with those people to go over the docs with them. Now you force them to eat their own shit and waste their own time the more output they create.

ceejayoz 7mo ago
I had Claude review one. It was... not complimentary. Seemed to help a bit.
caminante 7mo ago
Love the intent, but isn't that wishful if you don't have any leverage? e.g., the higher up will trade you for someone who doesn't cause friction or you waste too much of your own time?

theshrike79 7mo ago

If you shove clearly AI generated content at me, I will use an AI to summarize it. Or I'll walk up to your desk and ask you to explain it.

Arubis 7mo ago
I actually think there’s almost an acceptable workflow here of using LLMs as part of the medium of communication. I’m pretty much fine with someone sending me 500 lines of slop with the stated expectation that I’ll dump it into an LLM on my end and interact with it. It’s the asymmetric expectations—that one person can spew slop but the other must go full-effort—that for me personally feels disrespectful.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 7mo ago
  I also don't mind that. Summarized information exchange feels very efficient. But for sure, it seems like a societal expectation is emerging around these tools right now - expect me to put as much effort into consuming data as you did producing it. If you shat out a bunch of data from an LLM, I'm going to use an LLM to consume that data as well. And it's not reasonable for you to expect me to manually parse that data, just as well as I wouldn't expect you to do the same. However, since people are not going to readily reveal that they used an LLM to produce said output, it seems like the most logical way to do this is just always use an LLM to consume inputs, because there's no easy 100% way to tell whether it was created by an LLM or a human or not anymore.
  - roland35 7mo ago
    A true prisoners dilemma!
  - theshrike79 7mo ago
    Concept -> LLM fluff -> LLM summary -> Recipient This kinda risks the broken telephone problem, or when you translate from one language to another and then again to another - context and nuance is always lost. Just give me the bullet points, it's more efficient anyway. No need to add tons of adjectives and purple prose around it to fluff it up.
    - duskdozer 7mo ago
      Some day someone brilliant will discover the idea of "sharing prompts" to get around this issue. So, instead of sending the clean and summarized LLM output, you'll just send your prompt, and then the recipient can read that, and in response, share their prompt back to the original sender.

MarsIronPI 7mo ago

I've found in my (admittedly limited) use of LLMs that they're great for writing code if I don't forsee a need to review it myself either, but if I'm going to be editing the code myself later I need to be the one writing it. Also LLMs are bad at design.

0x6d61646f 7mo ago
what code do you write that you don't need to mantain/read again later?
- tikotus 7mo ago
  For me it's throwaway scripts and tools. Or tools in general. But only simple tools that it can somewhat one-shot. If I ever need to tweak it, I one-shot another tool. If it works, it's fine. No need to know how it works. If I'm feeling brave, I let it write functions with very clear and well defined input/output, like a well established algorithm. I know it can one-shot those, or they can be easily tested. But when doing something that I know will be further developed, maintained, I mainly end up writing it by hand. I used to have the LLM write that kind of code as well, but I found it to be slower in the long run.
- tracker1 7mo ago
  Definitely a lot of one-shot scripts for a given environment... I've started using a run/ directory for shell scripts that will do things like spin up a set of containers defined in a compose file.. build and test certain sub-projects, initialize a database, etc. For the most part, many of them work the first time and just continue to do so to aid a project. I've done similar in terms of scaffolding a test/demo environment around a component that I'm directly focused on... sometimes similar for documentation site(s) for gh pages, etc. Soem things have gone surprisingly well.
ignoramous 7mo ago
> Also LLMs are bad at design. I've found that SoTA LLMs sometimes implement / design differently (in the sense that "why didn't I think of that"), and that's always refreshing to see. I may run the same prompt through Gemini, Sonnet, and Codex just to see if they'd come up with some technique I didn't even know to consider. > don't forsee a need to review it myself either On the flip side, SoTA LLMs are crazy good at code review and bug fixes. I always use "find and fix business logic errors, edge cases, and api / language misuse" prompt after every substantial commit.

BoneShard 7mo ago

I noticied what previously would take 30 mins, now takes a week. For example we had a performance issue with a DB, previously I'd just create a GSI (global secondary index), now there is a 37 page document with explanation, mitigation, planning, steps, reviews, risks, deployment plan, obstacles and a bunch of comments, but sure it looks cool and very professional.

ionwake 7mo ago
Im now out of the workforce and can’t even imagine the complexity of the systems as management and everyone else communicate plans and executions through Claude. It must already be the case that some code based are massive behemoths few devs understand. Is Claude good enough to help maintain and help devs stay on top of the codebase?
- BoneShard 7mo ago
  The code is fine, strong reviews help and since we're slower due to all slop communication also helps.
floydian10 7mo ago
Not to mention that now you need an "alignment meeting" with a bunch of people

maxaw 7mo ago

I quit my last job because of this. I’m pretty sure manager was using free chatgpt with no regard for context length too, because not only was it verbose it was also close to gibberish. Being asked to review urgently and estimate deadlines got old real fast

solaire_oa 7mo ago

Similarly, managers at my workplace occasionally use LLMs to generate jira tickets (with nonsense implementation details), which has led junior engineers astray, leaving senior engineers to deal with the fallout.

gmerc 7mo ago

I instituted a simple “share the inputs” along with the outputs rule which prevents people doing exactly this. Your only value contribution is the input and filtering the output but for people with equal filtering skill, there’s no value in the output

prohobo 7mo ago

Getting similar vibes from freelance clients sending me overly-articulated specs for projects, making it sound like they want sophisticated implementations. Then I ask about it and they actually want like a 30 row table written in a csv. Huge whiplash.

alper 7mo ago

One group of people pretends to have written something and another group of people pretends to have read something. Much productivity is gained. Zizek had a great point about this.

ZoomZoomZoom 7mo ago
At least both get paid in not-pretend money.
- andrei_says_ 7mo ago
  For the time being. Their manager is under constant pressure to lay them off and replace them with “ai”.

todteera 7mo ago

[flagged]

michaelteter 7mo ago

Obviously you should also use Claude to consume those 50 pages. It sounds cynical, but it's not. It's practical. What I've learned in 2 years of heavy LLM use - ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, is that the significance is on expressing and then refining goals and plans. The details are noise. The clear goals matter, and the plans are derived from those. I regularly interrupt my tools to say, "Please document what you just said in ...". And I manage the document organization. At any point I can start fresh with any AI tool and say, "read x, y, and z documents, and then let's discuss our plans". Although I find that with Gemini, despite saying, "let's discuss", it wants to go build stuff. The stop button is there for a reason.

LordGrey 7mo ago
I use an agents.md file to guide Claude, and I include a prominent line that reads UPDATE THIS FILE WITH NEW LEARNINGS. This is a bit noisy -- I have to edit what is added -- but works well and it serves as ongoing instruction. And as you have pointed out, the document serves as a great base if/when I have to switch tools.

Buldak 7mo ago

I've had this experience too. In the case of vibe code, there is at least some incentive from self-preservation that prevents things from getting too out of hand, because engineers know they will be on the hook if they allow Claude to break things. But the penalties for sloppy prose are much lower, so people put out slop tickets/designs/documentation, etc. more freely.

jermaustin1 7mo ago

I've been tasked with code reviews of Claude chat bot written code (not Claude code that has RAG and can browse the file system). It always lacks any understanding of our problem area, 75% of the time it only works for a specific scenario (the prompted case), and almost 100% of the time, when I comment about this, I'm told to take it over and make it work... and to use Claude. I've kind of decided this is my last job, so when this company folds or fires me, I'm just going to retire to my cabin in the rural Louisiana woods, and my wife will be the breadwinner. I only have a few 10s of thousands left to make that home "free" (pay off the mortgage, add solar and batteries, plant more than just potatoes and tomatoes). Though, post retirement, I will support my wife's therapy practice, and I have a goal of silly businesses that are just fun to do (until they arent), like my potato/tomato hybrid (actually just a graft) so you can make fries and ketchup from the same plant!

windex 7mo ago
>so you can make fries and ketchup from the same plant! We should be friends. I like your ideas.
- jermaustin1 7mo ago
  I'm always looking for people to share my weird ideas that have absolutely nothing to do with software or computers. Unfortunately my only friends are all software people who have no interest outside of computers. Something I've found to have very little interest in anymore.
  - dendrite9 7mo ago
    Did you see this last year about the origins of potatoes? I'd like to get into grafting fruit trees, my uncle was a major fruit eater and filled the yard with many varieties of apples and pears. The apple tree where I live was a mess and I've jsut started the pruning to get it under control. https://www.npr.org/2025/08/13/nx-s1-5494517/strange-but-true-potato-origin-story-tomato-tuber https://www.npr.org/2025/08/13/nx-s1-5494517/strange-but-tru...
  - 7mo ago

romperstomper 7mo ago

And then you use AI to summarize those 50 pages :)

rxm233 7mo ago

I've definitely seen this, I have a theory as to how this kind of thing actually would affect AI predictions since people seem to only focus on the pure-productivity enhancing effects of AI and discounting the fact that a large portion of work was never productive to begin with... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47347983 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47347983

tmaly 7mo ago

If Claude Code can parse these design documents, I would recommend making a skill to do an adversarial review of the document. Then just generate that review, do some minor edits to make it look like a human wrote it and send it back to them.

andrei_says_ 7mo ago
Which is fine if we are fine with pretending to do our jobs. But deep down I know that slop is noise and words no longer represent understanding.
- tmaly 7mo ago
  not everything is slop, sometimes you can just use it like a brainstorm session to see if you missed something.