It's kinda surprising to me that even the people who are all in on ai haven't internalized that there's no inherent value in producing a big lump of code. They've massively decreased the work they put in but still expect the same pre-ai reaction/gratitude when submitting a big PR.
In that context, I wouldn't expect an idiot (of which there has always been far too many in this industry) to change their behaviour in a post-ai world. They were always out of line & continue to be.
Fwiw, a non-technical employee in my workplace has begun submitting ai-generated prs to internal repos I maintain & they're of excellent quality, with review feedback graciously received & expediently addressed, so this isn't a matter of the idiots not being technical, it's an attitude problem.
Moreover, as these tools become more expensive, people with money to blow on tokens will be able to drown maintainers that don’t have enough token-cash to help them deal with it. People see this as mostly a matter of time and energy, but I reckon it will soon be a financial issue.
I think we'll need to revert to artificial barriers such as bonds, e.g., if you want to do a PR to my repository you need to pay a 10 dollar bond. If the PR is good and I want future PRs, you keep your bond. If it's slop and spam, I get 10 dollars for my time.
It is seen in the way they approach contributions but also in regular language. I created X, insistence that their 'curation' was very influencial to the output, difficulty to mention LLM contribution, attitude of 'I care about building while others lose time in details', refusal to engage with potential flaws, and so on.
It is surprisingly different to what I'm used to from senior devs, which behave like they always suspect their own work is flawed and half assed. Like impostor syndrome was reversed.
- Receive a huge vibecoded PR for complicated new feature.
- Complain that this needs some design doc to figure out the right approach first.
- Author says no need for design doc, easier to have vibed implementation and discuss the concrete code instead of abstract document.
- I disagree (obviously), but review the PR with feedback along the lines: this entire approach is flawed, throw this out and start over.
- Author gets defensive, says "but this is already working and ready, let's just merge".
- I tell them there is no chance in hell this is getting merged. They go sulk to their manager that I'm not interested in helping them launch.
The original post sums it pretty well, such big output inherently meant big effort, which was a proxy for good faith. Now that's gone.
It's 100% an issue with the people with submitting these PRs. So, if someone has a history of having no issue with breaking project rules (let alone being arrogant about it), it should be a massive red flag about the person for any possible employer or future collaborator checking their profile, etc.
Why people are wilfully destroying their own reputation like that is beyond me. It's infinitely better to have no activity at all on your profile than to create a track record of bad behaviour.
Why is it surprising that some people who expect results without spending any effort also feel entitled to receiving gratitude without putting in any thought?
I would be more sympathetic if they actually spent meaningful time on these contributions and could maybe see an argument for wanting their work to be given due consideration (lots of caveats here), but from what I’ve seen that’s the exception rather than the rule with a lot of these case.
If a feature and ignored, it can forked to provide more value to the users.
If unaccepted bugfixes, the maintainers are just silly. They need to be forked off.