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.
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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.
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?
The code is fine, strong reviews help and since we're slower due to all slop communication also helps.
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
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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
The first point is so true. How do people expect me to work with their 20 page "deep research" document that's built by a crappy prompt and they didn't even bother to proofread.
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