Episode 520: I came back to my former team and was shocked by AI and my team does not care at ALL about the code

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. Hey Dave & Jamison,

   Long time listener. Love the podcast.

   I recently rejoined a remote team that I worked with in the past. I was super stoked to rejoin this team because they were collectively one of the most competent and technically excellent teams I’ve ever worked with. And they’re all genuinely nice people as well.

   I left the team before AI coding had really caught on, but coming back to the team has been a huge shock to me. Almost everyone now exclusively writes code with AI. PR descriptions are all AI generated, and code review has become copy-pasting AI-generated comments into GitHub.

   Being a remote team it was already hard to connect, but now it feels like almost all interactions are their AI assistant talking to my AI assistant.

   I’m not anti-AI, and I get that writing code with AI can be much quicker. But I’m struggling with the loss of what made the team feel good to work on, specifically the craftsmanship, level of engagement, and the learning from eachother. The product itself is still high quality (even if the codebase is less-so), but the process itself is a lot less enjoyable now.

   I don’t want to be the person who shows up after being away and immediately makes it everyone else’s problem that I miss the old way of doing things. But I’m having doubts if I want to be a part of this team.

   Is this just what software engineering looks like in remote organisations now? And should I expect most teams are now operating like this?

2. Hi Jamison and Dave,

   Love your podcast.

   I was recently hired as a mid-level full-stack developer with the promise of leading a new squad. On day one, I discovered management scrapped the squad idea and promoted an existing developer to sole lead instead.

   The team consists of this new lead, two 20-year VB6 veterans, and me. The codebase is lawless: direct DB access, fat controllers, 1-2K+ LOC classes everywhere (copy/pasted boilerplate) and severe Broken Access Control (OWASP #1) where authenticated users can extract anyone’s PII (full name, home address, phone number) via a simple email query string.

   My coworkers rely heavily on generative AI but do not review the output. They constantly commit “AI slop” that barely functions and introduces endless bugs. I used to clean it up, but I recently realized they care so little about the codebase that no one even notices if I stop. Add in a “Senior Product Manager” whose entire UX background is a three-month internship, who invents customer requirements to defend her inconsistent designs.

   I am already applying elsewhere.

   My questions:

   How do you handle a bait-and-switch of this magnitude?

   When the team cares so little that no one notices if you stop cleaning up their AI-generated bugs, how do you stay sane and professionally sharp while riding out the clock?

Show Notes

• https://tombedor.dev/human-attention-and-human-effort/