What is described here closely resembles my experience too.

My company is full of managers who haven't written code in years. They hired an architect 18 months ago who used AI to architect everything. To the senior devs it was obvious - everything was massively over engineered, yet because he used all the proper terminology he sounded more competent to upper management than the other senior managers who didn't. When called out, he would result to personal attacks.

After about 6 months, several people left and the ones who stayed went all in on AI. They've been building agentic workflows for the past 12 months in an effort to plug the gap from the competent members of staff leaving.

The result, nothing of value has been released in the past 18 months. The business is cutting costs after wasting massive amounts on cloud compute on poorly designed solutions, making up for it by freezing hiring.

I think for a lot of companies, AI is a destabilizing force that their managerial structure is unable to compensate for.

When you change the economics to such a degree, you're basically removing a dam - resulting in far more stress on the rest of the system. If the leaders of the org don't see the potential downsides and risks of that, they're in for a world of hurt.

I think we're going to see a real surge of companies just like this - crash and burn even though this tech was sold as being a universal improvement. The ones that survive will spread their knowledge about how to tame this wild horse, and ideally we'll learn a thing or two in the future.

But the wave of naivety has surprised me, and I think there's an endless onrush of people that are overly excited about their new ability to vibe-code things into existence. I think we've got our own endless September event going on for the foreseeable future.

I saw something really similar happen at my last few jobs. 2 jobs ago vibe coding wasn't even viable but some of the people went so hard on making everything so much more bloated with LLMs it was so hard to get yes or no answers for anything. 1 line slack, 20second question would get a response that was 2 pages of wishy washy blog posts with no answer. Follow ups generated more hours wasted.

My last job we watched a PM slowly become a vibe manager of vibe coders. He started inserting himself into technical discussions and using ai to dictate our direction at every step. We would reply but it got so laborious fighting against a human translating ai about topics they didn't understand people left. We weren't allowed to push back anymore either or our jobs would get threatened due to AI. Then they started mandating everyone vibe coded and the amount of vibe coding as being monitored. The pm got so disorganized being a pm and an engineer and an architect(their choice no one wanted this)that they would make multiple tickets for the same task with wildly different requirements. One team member would then vibe code it one way and another would another way.

It was so hard to watch a profitable team of 20 people bringing in almost 100million of profit a year go into nonutility and the most pointless work. I then left. I am trying my best to not be jaded by all of these changes to the software industry but it's a real struggle.

I've personally witnessed this:

1. My own manager now gives "expert advice and suggestions" using Claude based on his/her incomplete understanding of the domain.

2. Multiple non-technical people within the company are developing internal software tools to be deployed org wide. Hoping such demos will get them their recognition and incentives that they deserve. Management as expected are impressed and approving such POCs.

3. Hyperactive colleagues showcasing expert looking demos that leadership buys. All the while has zero understanding of what's happening underneath.

I didn't know how to articulate this problem well, but this article does a great job!

Exactly what I expected to read after reading the first part of your post lol.

I’m starting to realise, many people and the management themselves don’t really understand why the firm exists, and what they do. Funny to watch tbh

We don't need AI for not producing anything of value in a large company, though it certainly helps us produce even less!

I'm sure they're even more all-in on AI every month. "We will surely succeed if only we AI even harder!" This is how self-reinforcing delusions work. "AI will close the gap" is the fixed belief, and any evidence that comes in is interpreted such that it strengthens that belief.

My company hired a lead architect and he stayed with us for less than a year. He introduced some overengineered shit we are still recovering from. How those people get to where they are and get hired for that kind of position is beyond me.

"hired an architect 18 months ago who used AI to architect everything"

Huh? 18 months ago? I've been using it that long - it wasn't able to do that back then....

Yes I get your frustration, the same thing is happening across orgs these days as claude and co-work has become widespread.

Wisdom is a thing, so is competence. Humans have it or they don't but machines do not (yet), but the massive capabilities of the tools are also something that can't be ignored.

We can't throw the baby out with the bathwater. It's going to take some cycles of learning the ropes with this technology for humans to understand it better.

I would push back -why couldn't the senior devs communicate these issues to senior management? It sounds like a broken human system not a broken tool or technology. All AI did was shine a light on the human issues on that org.

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