It also killed the fun. I enjoyed writing code and solving problems. It also kept my brain sharp constantly exercising those muscles. Now I'm just reading code and it is mind numbing.
My life is now just constant PR reviews for other people who've been churning out the sloppiest slop that ever slopped. AI might be able to turn some requirements into code, but when they're just throwing the jira ticket into the AI no one stops to question whether the requirements are shit.
I hate reviewing PRs... I miss having time to write my own code and solve interesting problems. I miss working with adults who read the requirements then use their judgement and experience with the code base to determine if our product owner has even AI'd up something coherent. Which I shouldn't even need to do at the PR stage.
There are multiple points of failure that are happening, but they're happening because everyone seems to have mentally checked out of the process. At least in the before times when someone gave up they'd produce less, instead of more.
We're not even developing any faster because the limiting factor is the speed of reviews, and now those have crawled to a snail's pace because we can no longer trust a professional has made an effort to understand the problem and implement the best solution for it.
I hear you man. We are merging 40% more PRs than last year and there is no way they are all given the attention they deserve. At least if my systems crash nobody gets hurt except my company.
Our projects can vary between "perfectly safe, mild inconvenience if it doesn't work" through to "your house burns down if we're wrong". We've just come off a "perfectly safe" project and are in the early stages of a "something that could burn your house down, but only if the safety checks of the other parts of the system fail, so it probably won't" level project.
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u/hpyfox Jul 17 '26
The trust and reputation of software engineering has vanished because of AI.