Is anyone else experience this thing where your fellow senior engineers seem to be lobotomised by AI?
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@gkrnours I'm trying to find a new job but I'm so worried a lot of IT engineering jobs are like this now
@Purple maybe instead ofba resume, I'll make a flyier advertising me, a webdev doing backend, bit of front, bit of infra, 100% human
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Is anyone else experience this thing where your fellow senior engineers seem to be lobotomised by AI?
I've had 4 different senior engineers in the last week come up with absolutely insane changes or code, that they were instructed to do by AI. Things that if you used your brain for a few minutes you should realise just don't work.
They also rarely can explain why they make these changes or what the code actually does.
I feel like I'm absolutely going insane, and it also makes me not able to trust anyones answers or analysis' because I /know/ there is a high chance they should asked AI and wrote it off as their own.
I think the effect AI has had on our industry's knowledge is really significant, and it's honestly very scary.
@Purple Who could have guessed it, after 5 years of an airborne virus, amongst whose primary characteristics is non-recoverable cumulative neurological damage, "smart" people are coming up with dumb solutions that an even dumber system suggested to them.
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@Purple maybe instead ofba resume, I'll make a flyier advertising me, a webdev doing backend, bit of front, bit of infra, 100% human
@gkrnours Good luck
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@Purple I experienced something similar with people around me. They ask me the weirdest questions. They would even ask me things like "how do I run this python script" even though they have done it before. They ask "I want this and that, how do I do that?" when I already explained it and documented it.
"As per my previous email...."
Folks don't read anything longer than a sentence.
My default mode of over communicating with a wall of text has been a challenge for me to overcome my entire career.
Lack of receptivity to a proper answer predates the current LLM problem, but is exacerbated by it.
"It depends" is almost always the right answer to a subtle technical question, but the asker wants a simple yes/no.
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@Purple someone compared this feeling to being one of the only humans left in a zombie apocalypse, the more I think about it, the more I agree.
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@Purple @danlyke One of the things I’m pondering as a user, is just not taking any more upgrades. That’s obviously not ideal from a security standpoint, but the alternative isn’t all sunshine and puppies, either.
Then again, one of the books I’m currently reading is “Threaded Interpreted Languages” and I’m pondering making a Forth OS on a laptop I’m currently building. It’s not unlike making my own damned screws because the local HW store didn’t sell what I needed, and I refuse Amazon.
It’s much easier to write your own Forth than to make your own screws! It’s a wonderfully simple and expressive language. Ages ago I wrote a tiny Forth that interactively compiled to 68000 machine code.
More recently I learned Elm — that was extremely mind-bending and hard in a very satisfying way.
I’ve also had fun making screw-like threaded inserts because I needed bigger ones than I could easily get.
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Is anyone else experience this thing where your fellow senior engineers seem to be lobotomised by AI?
I've had 4 different senior engineers in the last week come up with absolutely insane changes or code, that they were instructed to do by AI. Things that if you used your brain for a few minutes you should realise just don't work.
They also rarely can explain why they make these changes or what the code actually does.
I feel like I'm absolutely going insane, and it also makes me not able to trust anyones answers or analysis' because I /know/ there is a high chance they should asked AI and wrote it off as their own.
I think the effect AI has had on our industry's knowledge is really significant, and it's honestly very scary.
@Purple
no but i'm a uni student and i'm genuinely scared that i wont find a job because noone would want someone who doesnt use ai or they wouldnt believe me i dont -
@Purple
no but i'm a uni student and i'm genuinely scared that i wont find a job because noone would want someone who doesnt use ai or they wouldnt believe me i dont@schrottkatze@catgirl.cloud @Purple@woof.tech I think that's the least of your concerns because the biggest hurdle is to actually get a response
So, references, overselling yourself, luck, experience, and more references -
@schrottkatze@catgirl.cloud @Purple@woof.tech I think that's the least of your concerns because the biggest hurdle is to actually get a response
So, references, overselling yourself, luck, experience, and more references -
@schrottkatze@catgirl.cloud @Purple@woof.tech shiny previous employers and good contacts (I know, it's not fair)
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@schrottkatze@catgirl.cloud @Purple@woof.tech shiny previous employers and good contacts (I know, it's not fair)
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Is anyone else experience this thing where your fellow senior engineers seem to be lobotomised by AI?
I've had 4 different senior engineers in the last week come up with absolutely insane changes or code, that they were instructed to do by AI. Things that if you used your brain for a few minutes you should realise just don't work.
They also rarely can explain why they make these changes or what the code actually does.
I feel like I'm absolutely going insane, and it also makes me not able to trust anyones answers or analysis' because I /know/ there is a high chance they should asked AI and wrote it off as their own.
I think the effect AI has had on our industry's knowledge is really significant, and it's honestly very scary.
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It’s much easier to write your own Forth than to make your own screws! It’s a wonderfully simple and expressive language. Ages ago I wrote a tiny Forth that interactively compiled to 68000 machine code.
More recently I learned Elm — that was extremely mind-bending and hard in a very satisfying way.
I’ve also had fun making screw-like threaded inserts because I needed bigger ones than I could easily get.
I’ve had so much fun learning new things to build stuff I wanted and needed.
Making tools to make this work easier is an essential part of this process — and making tools to make tools.
Some folks who are heavily into LLM-assisted programming seem to be getting lost:
Paraphrasing:
“This is the last month that programming will cost anything and I’m examining the implications of the cost of code going to 0
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I’ve had so much fun learning new things to build stuff I wanted and needed.
Making tools to make this work easier is an essential part of this process — and making tools to make tools.
Some folks who are heavily into LLM-assisted programming seem to be getting lost:
Paraphrasing:
“This is the last month that programming will cost anything and I’m examining the implications of the cost of code going to 0
@stepheneb I need to get my tap and die game on. But/and: I get so much more out of understanding older techniques and subtractive processes for making things, vs friends who 3d print or CNC route everything. And making tools to make tools is everything about long-term process improvement.
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@TheMNWolf @yon @Purple yeah, i suspect many teams understand their code less and less as the time goes.
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@stepheneb I need to get my tap and die game on. But/and: I get so much more out of understanding older techniques and subtractive processes for making things, vs friends who 3d print or CNC route everything. And making tools to make tools is everything about long-term process improvement.
Yes!
And sometimes I use my 3D printer to make jigs for precision work in wood or metal. It’s a wonderful affordance to be able to minutely change a dimension or angle and reprint.
It’s also great for this kind of work! Many iterations involved to get it to work just right.
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Is anyone else experience this thing where your fellow senior engineers seem to be lobotomised by AI?
I've had 4 different senior engineers in the last week come up with absolutely insane changes or code, that they were instructed to do by AI. Things that if you used your brain for a few minutes you should realise just don't work.
They also rarely can explain why they make these changes or what the code actually does.
I feel like I'm absolutely going insane, and it also makes me not able to trust anyones answers or analysis' because I /know/ there is a high chance they should asked AI and wrote it off as their own.
I think the effect AI has had on our industry's knowledge is really significant, and it's honestly very scary.
@Purple i have a lot of feelings about how many senior devs i am working with who are starting to rely on ai shit
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Is anyone else experience this thing where your fellow senior engineers seem to be lobotomised by AI?
I've had 4 different senior engineers in the last week come up with absolutely insane changes or code, that they were instructed to do by AI. Things that if you used your brain for a few minutes you should realise just don't work.
They also rarely can explain why they make these changes or what the code actually does.
I feel like I'm absolutely going insane, and it also makes me not able to trust anyones answers or analysis' because I /know/ there is a high chance they should asked AI and wrote it off as their own.
I think the effect AI has had on our industry's knowledge is really significant, and it's honestly very scary.
@Purple Oh hey I just posted about this a couple hours ago too. Yes. It's insane.
https://mastodon.slightlycyberpunk.com/@admin/115860580140572578
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Is anyone else experience this thing where your fellow senior engineers seem to be lobotomised by AI?
I've had 4 different senior engineers in the last week come up with absolutely insane changes or code, that they were instructed to do by AI. Things that if you used your brain for a few minutes you should realise just don't work.
They also rarely can explain why they make these changes or what the code actually does.
I feel like I'm absolutely going insane, and it also makes me not able to trust anyones answers or analysis' because I /know/ there is a high chance they should asked AI and wrote it off as their own.
I think the effect AI has had on our industry's knowledge is really significant, and it's honestly very scary.
@Purple asking people to explain "their" work needs to be a thing, both in work and in education. If they cannot, the inference is that they didn't do it.
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@stepheneb I need to get my tap and die game on. But/and: I get so much more out of understanding older techniques and subtractive processes for making things, vs friends who 3d print or CNC route everything. And making tools to make tools is everything about long-term process improvement.
@danlyke @stepheneb @Purple One of the things I did when I bought my KLR650 in 2012 was to buy a set of US and Metric taps and dies, both Lowe’s house brand, and both fairly cheap. I use them for all sorts of things, including threading the tang of a knife so I can use hardware-store hardware to form the pommel [1], restoring stripped threads in all sorts of household things, and most recently, making my own damn screws.
Buy cheap, use them, upgrade if needed.
