alt Hacker NewsI have no idea what AI changes about this scenario. It's the same scenario as when Mike did this with 1600 lines of his own code ten years ago; it just happens more often, since Mike comes up with 1600 lines of code in a day instead of in a sprint.
> I don’t blame Mike, I blame the system that forced him to do this.
Bending over backwards not to be the meanie is pointless. You're trying to stop him because the system doesn't really reward this kind of behavior, and you'll do Mike a favor if you help him understand that.
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> I have no idea what AI changes
> Mike comes up with 1600 lines of code in a day instead of in a sprint
It seems like you do have an idea of at least one thing that AI changes.
> it just happens more often
Which is extremely relevant, as it dramatically increases the probability that other people will have to care about it.
I think people can be in hard conditions, needing a job, under pressure, burnt out and feel like this is their only way to keep their job. At least that's how it felt with Mike.
At the end, I spent a lot of time sitting down with Mike to explain this kinds of things, but I wasn't effective.
Also, now LLMs empower Mike to make a 1600 line PR daily, and me needing to distinguish between "lazyslopped" PRs or actual PRs.
> I have no idea what AI changes about this scenario. It's the same scenario as when Mike did this with 1600 lines of his own code ten years ago; it just happens more often, since Mike comes up with 1600 lines of code in a day instead of in a sprint.
So now instead of reviewing 1600 lines of bad code every 2 weeks, you must review 1600 lines of bad code every day (while being told 1600 lines of bad code every day is an improvement because just how much more bad code he's "efficiently" producing! Scale and volume is the change.
> Bending over backwards not to be the meanie is pointless.
This thinking that we must avoid blaming individuals for their own actions and instead divert all blame to an abstract system is getting a little out of control. The blameless post-mortem culture was a welcome change from toxic companies who were scapegoating hapless engineers for every little event, but it's starting to seem like the pendulum has swung too far the other way. Now I keep running into situations where one person's personal, intentional choices are clearly at the root of a situation but everyone is doing logical backflips to try to blame a "system" instead of acknowledging the obvious.
This can get really toxic when teams start doing the whole blameless dance during every conversation, but managers are silently moving to PIP or lay off the person who everyone knows is to blame for repeated problems. In my opinion, it's better to come out and be honest about what's happening than to do the blameless performance in public for feel-good points.