> We've also had some management pressures where they think people are wasting time looking at code.

I feel like this is the actual problem, but it's not being talked about enough.

Logically, it shouldn't matter how a piece of code was written. It either meets our engineering standards or it doesn't. That's what code review is for.

But what has actually happened is that, because we have AI now, many organizations have normalized practices that weren't normal before, like submitting 10000-line PRs. And just, in general, submitting code that you yourself don't seem to fully understand.

If management doesn't push back on such things (or will even push back against people who try to do so), then reviewers have basically no incentive to push back either. Before I left my last job (for unrelated reasons), I had entered this mode, wherein I decided I couldn't really carefully review these monstrous AI PRs, while also getting my own work done, while also not burning out. So I chose the latter two.

Management can't "push back on such things". However, they can institute better quality assurance practices.

If an organization decides the engineering team should not be looking at code, that should be coupled with a mandate to figure out what good engineering looks like working that way - what constitutes a good contribution vs what's slop? How do we handle massive PRs? The problem is we are in the "messing around phase" of coding with clankers and have much to learn still