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Because companies are betting that this spending will allow them to reduce cost by firing people. Right now the AI LLM PRs we're seeing are just introducing mo

Because companies are betting that this spending will allow them to reduce cost by firing people. Right now the AI LLM PRs we're seeing are just introducing more work for other people, while these so-called builders are looking good with their new dashboards and functionality they're demoing. But you can't talk to them about the flow of the code. You can't ask them for their thinking as to why certain things are. It's not built up from the ground with experience from x people taken into account. It's materialized from nothing, with no foundational separation, and barely any abstractions. No one wants to touch it. The PRs are too large, and the 'authors' of the PRs aren't on call with us. They get all the glory, but do none of the work. It's kinda like designing a house and then sending it to an architect and engineer saying: make this work.

saulpw 4mo ago
> But you can't talk to them about the flow of the code. You can't ask them for their thinking as to why certain things are. You can absolutely do this. It's even right most of the time.
- datsci_est_2015 4mo ago
  I believe the “them” the OP was talking about was referring to the people opening the PRs, not the LLMs.
  - saulpw 4mo ago
    My mistake, that is definitely a different scene.
- chmod775 4mo ago
  Let's be real. Most of the time you ask an LLM "Why did you do it like this?", it responds with something along the lines of "Oops. My bad. You're right to point this out." You even have a fair chance of getting a response like that when there isn't anything wrong and the question wasn't rhetorical - which perfectly illustrates the level of the genuine understanding LLMs operate at.
  - baggy_trough 4mo ago
    Can't remember the last time that happened.
    - javier2 4mo ago
      Happened to me at least three times the past 14 days. I point out where it made a design decision that causes data loss. «Oops my mistake»
    - theshackleford 4mo ago
      I encounter it constantly with the latest models. Claude is particularly prone to it. > I shouldn’t have said that with confidence > I got ahead of myself there > I overstepped, allow me to correct that It’s wild seeing how often it’s wrong, and I only know it’s wrong because I am an SME or actually reading the sources. Most of my coworkers are not SMEs with what they are asking and do not read the sources. A huge part of my job now is fixing fuck ups and failures resulting from these slop jockeys who have already moved on to slop up the next task.
  - saulpw 4mo ago
    This has happened to me, so I put this in my global CLAUDE.md, and it seems to help (I don't remember getting the response you mentioned for awhile now): **Lead with the answer when asked how/which/whether.** Name the command/mechanism first; a question seeking understanding isn't a go-ahead to execute. Answer, then offer to act.
  - seventhtiger 4mo ago
    When you criticize AI, always remember that the alternative is the average employee. Today's models are pretty good.
    - devin 4mo ago
      A lot of people think they're above average. A lot of them are wrong. A lot of average people are producing gigantic messes. At least previous to this they were gated by their mediocrity.
- ssss11 4mo ago
  And you can certainly tell it the flow you want (and any other constraints) in the prompt.
HNisCIS 4mo ago
It's so fucking bad. I'm watching a team try to maintain a huge dashboard/control application that interfaces with a large amount of hardware using solely AI workflows. Literally nothing works, all the timers/time counters are different across the pages, constantly commands hardware to do stupid shit, breaks during critical moments/in front of clients. Eventually mgmt had to institute change freezes for high profile events because the team was breaking too much shit all the time. The average C suite dipshit doesn't realize that the performance drops off a cliff once your project is more than some fraction of the context window so they will make pretty dashboards all day long but once you need to cover all the edge cases of a real system it all explodes. AI isn't trained on the type of software style we'll need to create systems using AI, it's trained on how we used to write software. It doesn't reuse code or elegantly structure annoying, it just adds more code until the thing builds and passes some fake tests, even if half of it is functionally dead/unused.
scuff3d 4mo ago
Literally in the middle of ripping apart a vibe coded mess at work to figure out what's even worth keeping. Not fun :(
- foolserrandboy 4mo ago
  What happens if you just keep vibe coding is? Does it whack-a-mole fix one area and break another?
- bvcp 4mo ago
  use ai to do that
  - scuff3d 4mo ago
    Can't. It's a worse case scenario. It got vibe coded but I don't have access to AI tools to undo it. Basically the company was running a test on some tools, one engineer went ham and the thing ended up getting used, then the company decided to drop the ban hammer on the tools.
scubbo 4mo ago
> But you can't talk to them about the flow of the code. You can't ask them for their thinking as to why certain things are. There are plenty of valid criticisms or warnings about over-reliance on AI coding, but this is not one of them. Today, I am using a semi-autonomous agentic coding system which has an `interview` functionality built in - when it spits out the PR from the input, if you have questions about the motivation or context for a particular choice, you can start up a clone of the original agent in a sandbox to question it. Now, you might claim that those responses aren't always reliable, accurate, or consistent, and that claim has a little more weight (though, in my experience, decreasingly so) - but it is _certainly_ not the case that you cannot interview an agent about choices made. I'm literally doing it every day.
- OptionOfT 4mo ago
  Sorry, I meant interviewing the PR author for certain choices.
com2kid 4mo ago
> Because companies are betting that this spending will allow them to reduce cost by firing people. I've never worked at a company that didn't have a technical backlog measured in years.
- LtWorf 4mo ago
  If they don't hire to get it done it means they don't think it's really important to get it done.
  - tuesdaynight 4mo ago
    That is an amazing point that invalidates the backlog in my mind. Stated vs revealed preferences in the end.

saulpw 4mo ago

> But you can't talk to them about the flow of the code. You can't ask them for their thinking as to why certain things are. You can absolutely do this. It's even right most of the time.

datsci_est_2015 4mo ago
I believe the “them” the OP was talking about was referring to the people opening the PRs, not the LLMs.
- saulpw 4mo ago
  My mistake, that is definitely a different scene.
chmod775 4mo ago
Let's be real. Most of the time you ask an LLM "Why did you do it like this?", it responds with something along the lines of "Oops. My bad. You're right to point this out." You even have a fair chance of getting a response like that when there isn't anything wrong and the question wasn't rhetorical - which perfectly illustrates the level of the genuine understanding LLMs operate at.
- baggy_trough 4mo ago
  Can't remember the last time that happened.
  - javier2 4mo ago
    Happened to me at least three times the past 14 days. I point out where it made a design decision that causes data loss. «Oops my mistake»
  - theshackleford 4mo ago
    I encounter it constantly with the latest models. Claude is particularly prone to it. > I shouldn’t have said that with confidence > I got ahead of myself there > I overstepped, allow me to correct that It’s wild seeing how often it’s wrong, and I only know it’s wrong because I am an SME or actually reading the sources. Most of my coworkers are not SMEs with what they are asking and do not read the sources. A huge part of my job now is fixing fuck ups and failures resulting from these slop jockeys who have already moved on to slop up the next task.
- saulpw 4mo ago
  This has happened to me, so I put this in my global CLAUDE.md, and it seems to help (I don't remember getting the response you mentioned for awhile now): **Lead with the answer when asked how/which/whether.** Name the command/mechanism first; a question seeking understanding isn't a go-ahead to execute. Answer, then offer to act.
- seventhtiger 4mo ago
  When you criticize AI, always remember that the alternative is the average employee. Today's models are pretty good.
  - devin 4mo ago
    A lot of people think they're above average. A lot of them are wrong. A lot of average people are producing gigantic messes. At least previous to this they were gated by their mediocrity.
ssss11 4mo ago
And you can certainly tell it the flow you want (and any other constraints) in the prompt.

HNisCIS 4mo ago

It's so fucking bad. I'm watching a team try to maintain a huge dashboard/control application that interfaces with a large amount of hardware using solely AI workflows. Literally nothing works, all the timers/time counters are different across the pages, constantly commands hardware to do stupid shit, breaks during critical moments/in front of clients. Eventually mgmt had to institute change freezes for high profile events because the team was breaking too much shit all the time. The average C suite dipshit doesn't realize that the performance drops off a cliff once your project is more than some fraction of the context window so they will make pretty dashboards all day long but once you need to cover all the edge cases of a real system it all explodes. AI isn't trained on the type of software style we'll need to create systems using AI, it's trained on how we used to write software. It doesn't reuse code or elegantly structure annoying, it just adds more code until the thing builds and passes some fake tests, even if half of it is functionally dead/unused.

scuff3d 4mo ago

Literally in the middle of ripping apart a vibe coded mess at work to figure out what's even worth keeping. Not fun :(

foolserrandboy 4mo ago
What happens if you just keep vibe coding is? Does it whack-a-mole fix one area and break another?
bvcp 4mo ago
use ai to do that
- scuff3d 4mo ago
  Can't. It's a worse case scenario. It got vibe coded but I don't have access to AI tools to undo it. Basically the company was running a test on some tools, one engineer went ham and the thing ended up getting used, then the company decided to drop the ban hammer on the tools.

scubbo 4mo ago

> But you can't talk to them about the flow of the code. You can't ask them for their thinking as to why certain things are. There are plenty of valid criticisms or warnings about over-reliance on AI coding, but this is not one of them. Today, I am using a semi-autonomous agentic coding system which has an `interview` functionality built in - when it spits out the PR from the input, if you have questions about the motivation or context for a particular choice, you can start up a clone of the original agent in a sandbox to question it. Now, you might claim that those responses aren't always reliable, accurate, or consistent, and that claim has a little more weight (though, in my experience, decreasingly so) - but it is _certainly_ not the case that you cannot interview an agent about choices made. I'm literally doing it every day.

OptionOfT 4mo ago
Sorry, I meant interviewing the PR author for certain choices.

com2kid 4mo ago

> Because companies are betting that this spending will allow them to reduce cost by firing people. I've never worked at a company that didn't have a technical backlog measured in years.

LtWorf 4mo ago
If they don't hire to get it done it means they don't think it's really important to get it done.
- tuesdaynight 4mo ago
  That is an amazing point that invalidates the backlog in my mind. Stated vs revealed preferences in the end.