Is anyone else experience this thing where your fellow senior engineers seem to be lobotomised by AI?
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@Purple me, an unhired watching all the experienced people melt their brains:

@kirakira Not sure if jealous... Maybe a little bit if we ignore the financials of it

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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 One of my coworkers (very much not a senior though) is in a particularly dangerous spot for how he uses it, as he frequently doesn't have the foundational knowledge to understand how the output is only convincing-sounding bullshit, and he's leaning on it so hard I'm not sure if he's actually learning those foundations...
Meanwhile I'm the resident stick-in-the-mud who knows how the damned things actually work under the hood, trying to temper the marketing-wank everyone's blindly repeating... My boss is appreciative though, as he understands that it's coming more from simple pragmatism about the environment the tech exists in than "fear of change" (even if it did actually work, (which it usually doesn't) VCs are currently shoveling money into a furnace to subsidize it, and when that money dries up it's going to skyrocket in price to the point it's likely not cost-effective)
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@kirakira Not sure if jealous... Maybe a little bit if we ignore the financials of it

@Purple no no the financials ruin everything else, i'm 32 and i've never had autonomy over my own living situation, i can remember every time i've been on an airplane, and i can't even go to local cons anymore unless people help pay for it. i think a moderate tech salary is my yearly income every 2-3 months, there's a reason i'm still trying to get in

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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 was asked today why I don't want to teach juniors and beginners how to use AI to write code. This. This is why
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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 Well, I am benefitting from others stupid vibe coding, but yes, I can't wait until the AI bubble bursts so we can get back to sane industry practices.
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@Purple I was asked today why I don't want to teach juniors and beginners how to use AI to write code. This. This is why
@Archivist @Purple i mean, that would be a short lesson: Don't.
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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 think once a week I'm either told I'm going to get left behind if I don't get up to speed on .... prompting an LLM idk.Or mocked for trying to save the world/rainforest, being contrarian for not using AI.
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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 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.
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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 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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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.
"...just ask Copilot to turn it into a curl" from next to me the other day.
So that would be a yes, and not just the once either. (But for other items than not even writing your own curl command line.)
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@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
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@Purple I think itβs more exposing than changing.
AI coding wonβt make you able to do something you canβt do, it can give you code you must understand and verify.
It canβt replace someone with knowledge, but it can, if used sensibly, augment some parts. Like boring refactoring and generating some simple boring stuff.
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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'll be looking for a new position next month and I'm scared
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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

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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 don't worry it will only get worse since it hits every other industry eventually....
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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'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.
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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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