Comment by locknitpicker
2 days ago
> LLMs are just replacing consultants as the #1 generator of sloppy code.
The "consultants wrote sloppy code" is one of those memes that never die.
The only thing that differentiates consultants from you is the contract type. All broad strokes accusations are just a consequence of in-house employees feeling threatened by their presence and having a vested interest in portraying themselves as infinitely better than any prospective replacement. You also see the same attitude in junior devs who complain that everyone else's code is shit, but the mess they themselves created is always justifiable and understandable.
If you were moved from your project right now and you placed someone at your spot under probation, I will guarantee that your work would be extensively criticized for being an unmaintainable pile of hacks.
> The "consultants wrote sloppy code" is one of those memes that never die.
Your comment is one of those that feel intuitively right, because what you say makes sense... until faced with reality.
Most consultants that most permanent employees are likely to find are those that will do a crappy job, then be gone when shit hits the fan. Source: anyone who's ever worked with them, myself included. Actually, both sides of the desk. They tend to do crappy jobs because those are the incentives they have.
You can argue till you're blue in the face, but your theory cannot push aside the actual experience of many if not most of us.
Of course, the occasional scenarios where the consultants are solid and doing top-notch work exist, but what matters is the majority of what happens... and it's not good.
So the meme won't die, because it reflects reality.
No, it’s mainly because consulting firms love running their bait-and-switch scam and use their junior consultants to do the actual work while the seniors move on to butter up the next sucker.