(Although I was a bit para-phrasing as I don't remember the exact story but something similar was definitely said.

I agree and I feel that that company in particular's response to that statement was also the same in terms of: you are responsible for your code no matter what and prompted to fire the engineer.

but there was also this dual level of hypocrisy from the company as well, in terms of asking the engineers to be 10x'd and putting pressures on it and internal lying by teams on how much productive they really are with AI and many other things in general.

I feel like engineers are within pressure of being asked to replace themselves within some (IMO) toxic workplaces by having the expectations of being 10x'd, something which previously was just an hyperbole but is now being expected as reality.

As much as I'd like to place the fault on that engineer isolated itself which in some sense you can consider that. I also think of it as a probability of a person like that existing.

Within the hyperfocused hyper-growth mentality without much safe-guards AI 10x agentic intent focused engineers (I have exhausted my AI vocabulary), the chances of a person like that existing simply rises magnitudes more which could probably be why I heard of a story like that in first place.

This might be one of the reasons I am worried about the hyper-focus on using AI as an everything tool or the investor/company focus on using AI for everything. I have said it elsewhere and I might say it again but if we treat AI as a hammer, then we need to stop treating everything as a screw and forcing/dog-feeding AI inside it, we need to treat a screw as a screw otherwise we will probably end up with some very messy foundations.

I would agree on you to have a cultural annotation on this being bad but unless we also add a cultural annotation on the last thing that I mentioned, I find it very hard to be achievable but I suppose that the last thing is what the AI companies and everyone is betting trillions of dollars on, on AI being used for everything and anything and I find it hard for the culture to be expected to change from top-down manner especially when its inverted and managers expect you to build things with AI given the investment.

There should be a balance and push-back from engineers alike, but as mitchell has said, even some really smart engineers who should know better are completely within AI psychosis and the philosophy of using AI as a hammer and hammering everything.

As such I would find it hard to create a cultural disturbance.

Would you like to know the disturbing part? When someone who worked at that company was honest and told higher-ups that they weren't being 10x'd by AI while all other engineers said that they were (they were in fact lying and working till 1 AM to finish the work as AI was ineffective). The management just treats this honest employee as the one ineffective and it has created a bit semi-toxic workplace for them. Imagine asking for cultural disturbance if everyone involved from top to bottom is involved in covering up for AI, because investors want to jump in on AI, and companies want that sweet investor money and management wants to satisfy the company and engineers want to keep their job and keep management happy and honest people get punished for being honest.

This got a bit long but this is everything wrong with AI. Not really the tech but rather everything around it.

I hope the culture around things get better but its an uphill battle.

on the other hand of things, I am optimistic because it seems that honesty would matter more when the bubble pops and everyone would become hopefully more selective on complete AI consumption or more intentional around it. (I am happy with developers building tools and prototypes that they previously couldn't have and even monetizing it somewhat, but just being honest and also more than capable of switching from slopware sunk costs. TLDR: being authentic/transparent.)