Is anyone else experience this thing where your fellow senior engineers seem to be lobotomised by AI?
-
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 The sad thing is, it's not just senior engineers. It's systems administrators as well - though the enshittification of the mind started happening long before AI. That started around the time that folks started using containers (Docker, K8s, etc.) and gave up trying to understand how their systems worked. And why would they - they can just trash the container and grab another one, right?
Well, it's lead to a LOT of brain rot and now we're seeing the effects of this all up and down the tech stack. Add in AI to the mix and it's all just an unreliable mess - sysadmins just going to the Magic Words Generator(tm) to get steps to "solve" problems that just create more and leave it for the increasingly few of us who care to clean up. -
@Purple The sad thing is, it's not just senior engineers. It's systems administrators as well - though the enshittification of the mind started happening long before AI. That started around the time that folks started using containers (Docker, K8s, etc.) and gave up trying to understand how their systems worked. And why would they - they can just trash the container and grab another one, right?
Well, it's lead to a LOT of brain rot and now we're seeing the effects of this all up and down the tech stack. Add in AI to the mix and it's all just an unreliable mess - sysadmins just going to the Magic Words Generator(tm) to get steps to "solve" problems that just create more and leave it for the increasingly few of us who care to clean up. -
@Purple I think there would be less stories like these if the industry was more focused on just programming rather than having overengineered cringe solutions to suck off investors, so people do things that are actually interesting and have a real impact for the good rather than putting stress, pressure and making engineers just hate their hobby
-
@Purple I think it’s more exposing than changing.
AI coding won’t make you able to do something you can’t do, it can give you code you must understand and verify.
It can’t replace someone with knowledge, but it can, if used sensibly, augment some parts. Like boring refactoring and generating some simple boring stuff.
-
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'll be looking for a new position next month and I'm scared
-
@Purple I'll be looking for a new position next month and I'm scared
@gkrnours I'm trying to find a new job but I'm so worried a lot of IT engineering jobs are like this now
-
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 don't worry it will only get worse since it hits every other industry eventually....
-
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've seen a lot of such results of LLM use (I've also seen genuinely constructive use, when properly handled, so I don't want to be seen as a complete naysayer).
So yes, GenAI is definitely a factor.I'd also raise the point that most have gone through repeated infections with a neuropathologic disease that literally alters the brain.
And we all live in a world of massive external stress that melts our minds.
Sooo LLMs are arriving at the best of all times.
-
@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
-
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.
-
@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
! -
@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.
-
@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.
-
@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.
-
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)
-
@schrottkatze@catgirl.cloud @Purple@woof.tech shiny previous employers and good contacts (I know, it's not fair)
-
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.
