Comment by noman-land
17 hours ago
Have you considered talking about it? You're in a professional environment collectively working in a new way with a group of people. It's up to somebody to have opinions about what does and doesn't suck. If you silently go along and don't say anything you're dooming yourself and all of us to a lifetime of this garbage.
Fighting the ocean is futile
It's not the ocean, it's the poster's own team. A simple "AI comments suck" in a sprint retro would be trivially easy and would at least start the conversation.
While I agree with the spirit of what you're saying, it is very similar to whenever anyone complains about things where they work. "Well, why don't you just raise it with management?" You're assuming that management
1) Understands the problem ("what are comments?")
2) Accepts that it is a problem ("how can more comments be a bad thing?")
3) Cares enough to solve the problem ("is this issue really a priority to solve right now? just accept the PR and we'll go back and fix if needed some other time cough never cough")
4) Believes you (this can take many forms, but the most common is, subconsciously, "this other engineer says it's not a problem, so I'll just assume it's not since that's easier")
All of these logistical, political and social factors are "the ocean"
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Especially when it's "Model X's AI comments suck, Model Y does not have this problem". Honestly, I have never had these comment problems with Deepseek, and I'm sure there's non-Chinese models that are also similar. I'm definitely not regretting having cancelled my Anthropic subscription a few months ago.
Doesn't matter. You'll come off as the baddie. It's the foreseeable future. Best just to learn how to interpret AI generated shit, or learn how to run it through AI and have it translate it to a more concise format without all the buzzwords. It'll take getting used to, but it'll save your career.
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I think the biggest issue might not be the immediate team but upper leadership. Companies which have mandated AI usage override a lot of what an individual or individual team wants. If that’s the case then it would be a lot like fighting the ocean, especially if your immediate team sees having AI write docs as an easy way to move the needle on LT’s AI monitoring dashboard.
It's the management desired direction, if the place is anything like my workplace. Everyone is all in on AI, and if you're not using it for everything possible, you're on the chopping block.
And, really, it works. You can copy and paste between tickets and Claude, and then do manual testing. Then you tell Claude to self-review for clarity and minimalism, and stop worrying. Sure, today it's not as good as a human, but for almost all the code out there, it gets the job done. There's no skill needed any more, and if the boss doesn't care about quality, I don't see why I should.
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You're going to have convince upper management why the team's velocity is suddenly affected in feature releases once they stop using AI.
All the execs know that they can refresh the screen faster and see the features for marketing and sales.
When has engineering ever had a voice anyway? The bean counters have been looking to cut us out since the inception of our industry.
So is completely eliminating litter, but I still pick it up when I pass it.
Everybody generally agrees on what is garbage. Lot of senior management doesn't think AI is garbage or even if they privately think so, they don't say that openly. Falling in line, peer pressure, not wanting to come across as anti-AI luddite etc. All those issues affect the individual contributors too + the added challenge of perception in front of those who decide the bonus and lately, continued employment.
In this fucked up job market, it is easier said than done.
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Literally pissing in an ocean of piss.
Analogy-wise, wouldn't it be adding a cup of water to an ocean of piss?
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Yes, talking about it repeatedly has been my process. Individual PRs have been changed but the 4 the next day look the same. The typical response is that they did change the (massive and wordy) PR overview from what AI said, even if it was obviously a minimal change at best. I can’t really argue against lying and going through and picking out every LLMism is not so productive in my opinion.
I don’t have time to go through and flag everything or even read the thousands of lines of code changes that are happening.
I've tried doing this, politely pushing back on problems happening from AI use, and it led to a not-so-subtle implication from my manager that I need to STFU or I'll be out of here (Cisco).
No, if he speaks against it he gets labeled "anti-AI" and laid off or not promoted. If he stays silent he retains his job.
Corporate Capitalism's main innovation was virtualizing feudalism. Now anyone with a bit of cash flow can be a feudal lord with peasants to do his will. No need to maintain land or fight over it with other feudal lords. There's still fighting, naturally, but now the game isn't zero sum.
The serfs don't get any real say in this model. At best you can bend the lord's ear if you're sufficiently trusted an advisor. But part of the reason you're trusted is to be trusted not to treat the lord like he's too much of an idiot.
A huge problem is that capitalism rewards cash flows and accumulated capital so powerfully that lots of other things just don't matter, potentially for a very long time. Look at GitHub. This leads to immensely extended fuck around phases and "find out" looks like IBM (fossilization and bizarre holdings corporation / dead company parking lot) just as often as it looks like Enron.
> The serfs don't get any real say in this model
I am a programmer but also in management, and if I knew my team thought like that I would be horrified. We absolutely care about what the team members want , like, hate etc. I for once would love someone to bring up stuff like this to me. As long as they are as open minded about things as they would like me to be, there is no issue. But it’s a serious issue to pretend everything is fine while thinking like you say.
> We absolutely care about what the team members want , like, hate etc.
Do the people above you in management care as much? It's the top levels of management that decide hiring, firing and budgets.
I was nodding to your post for a short period, then you just had to throw in the usual anti-capitalism zeitgeist rant.
Reframe your context, pretend you're in a communist society, and you could be making the exact same point about speaking up against the grain being bad for you. It feels as though people are brainwashed by anti-capitalism sentiment at the moment, unable to see outside of that context.