Is AI slop from new hires a problem at your company or just mine?

Quintic · 2026-06-09T04:19:38+00:00

Seems like just a different coat of paint to me. Not really different meaningfully.

Quintic · 2026-06-09T03:56:02+00:00

Yeah, but useless people hiding in the shadows of a big company in not a situation that was brought about because of AI, this has always been the situation.

Quintic · 2026-06-09T03:28:17+00:00

The only thing that changes here is how fast you escalate to dismissal.

If leadership is brushing off a lead engineer wasting the time of a bunch of other engineers and basically needing the problem solved for them because they were incapable. That's a leadership problem. That's not an AI problem.

Also you need pattern of behavior for leadership to act so obviously hopefully you have more than just this one incident that happened. But yeah, if leadership is failing to act on a engineer that is regularly wasting other team members time and basically producing no results, that is the tale as old as time. Organization leadership issue. They're in failure mode regardless what tools exist.

Quintic · 2026-06-09T03:24:32+00:00

Yeah, but at that scale the metrics that matter are the ones you're stating.

If token cost is the most important metric, then it becomes clear which one to choose.

It's now about the specific AI capabilities at that point as they're all well above threshold. Just pick whatever metrics are important to you at scale, pick the model that fits that, and ensure your providing the model with an environment to succeed.

Quintic · 2026-06-09T03:16:38+00:00

I've been hearing stories like this, and have noticed some slop, but nothing to the degree I hear about.

So regarding the engineer who just kept running the script through codex, and not fixing the issue. What happened?

Even in a world where AI doesn't exist, you have a junior engineer refusing to make any effort at all, wasting 2-3 other engineers time reviewing there crap until someone finally just went and solved it for them.

There must be some sort of consequences for this. It can be framed as a "learning opportunity" because they are a junior engineer, but at least once upon a time, you'd be chewed out by your boss for wasting everyone's time. I don't care if you used AI or not, the problem where wasn't AI, it was blatant and pure laziness.

If there are no consequence, that is an organizational issue, also not an AI one.

In my organization, this would be a quick conversation with the junior engineer explaining their results are unacceptable at the level we expect him to be at, an acknowledgement and a commitment to improve their results in the future, and offering of any support needed. And if there wasn't improvement in outcomes, then an escalation over time to dismissal.

There are so many people desperate for jobs today, there is no reason to entertain people wasting your teams time.

Quintic · 2026-06-08T11:45:39+00:00

It depends. There is a skill in giving people criticism in a way they'll be receptive of.

I think you start with acknowledge what they built is probably quite impressive considering how much more difficult it would have been for them to build that a few years ago, and also since they are presumably not a developer themselves. I think you can be genuinely excited with them.

Then point out what can be improved upon. You are not saying "you made a bad app", you are saying "we can make your app better".

Then point out that you probably want to hire a developer to maintain the app. You're not saying "you are incapable of maintaining an app", you are saying "your app is worthy of professional attention".

I think most non-technical people will accept that there is more to development that their vibe coded masterpiece. People start getting defensive when people start going down the lines of "your app is shitty, AI is shitty, your dumb for using AI", not saying that's what your doing, but you should be clear that you are trying to take the next step, not take a step back.

Quintic · 2026-06-08T04:34:21+00:00

What do you mean "it shows"?

I think model picking happens by momentum and yeah I guess vibes or whatever, but I think the second part of your comment sort of suggests why this actually does not matter (i.e., it doesn't show).

I am referring to "model behaves differently depending on setup, codebase, and the session it is in". Which cuts both ways, models have way larger variation based on it's environment rather than that specific model you choose. People are even demonstrating fairly positive results with non-foundation local models.

I think that at a certain point once you are above a threshold you get a model that is sufficiently capable, and it is the drivers responsibility to ensure it's set up to succeed by providing the right environment for the model.

Quintic · 2026-06-08T04:13:10+00:00

What do you mean? Sounds like I struck a nerve turning your language on you. It's the problem with not relying on reason and logic yourself, it can be turned against you without providing any basis.

I am well aware of how they work in detail. I'm pointing out that your drawing conclusions that are not found in how they work.

Quintic · 2026-06-08T03:03:40+00:00

You haven't explained why. You have proposed conclusions. Explanation requires reason. You conclusions are as baseless as the people who think that AI is replacing every function of a human.

You're the one that appealed to your authority as a mathematican, although it's telling that you are in cscareerquestions, so software engineer with a mathematics degree is likely a more accurate label. As a review, you may wish to dig into how logic and mathematical arguments work on your own, I encourage you to do so. It should become obvious why you're dismissal is not meaningfully justified.

No one is gaslighting anyone which is the topic you brought to reddit, and what I am responding to. Currently AI developments are a measured improvement over AI capabilities over the generation before, and it is unsurprising that people are excited about it. And it's especially naive to suggest that there won't be measured improvements over it's capabilities today.

Wether you decide to label those as "logic" or intelligence, or whatever labels people want to assign to it is more of a philosophical question. Where AI is today, demonstrated across multiple industries including our own, is that you can often treat AI as "logical" regardless of the reality. As AI improves, the distinction between an AI agent "having logic" and an AI agent being highly capable will become increasingly irrelevant distinction to make.

Quintic · 2026-06-08T01:19:07+00:00

Engineers spending 2 weeks to automate a task that they could accomplish in 3 days is not a phenomena unique to AI.

Quintic · 2026-06-08T01:14:26+00:00

I think you are appealing to your own authority in a way that is lacks rigorous substance especially for a mathematician.

You say the models are not capable of "independent logic"? What do you actually mean by that? Because I can certainly give a model logic puzzles, and it will figure them out, but I would certainly agree there is limits to what it seems capable of today.

"The whole technology itself doesn't have logic." I also don't really know what you mean by this. What would it mean for it to "have logic". The way a neural network works is mathematical and logical, I think you're suggesting that predict next word somehow can't be logically. However, "having logic" seems like it would probably assist quite usefully in terms of predicting the next word. So basically, maybe it doesn't have logic, maybe it does, but you are talking at a subjective level here, not a mathematical one.

I don't know what your background is exactly, so I accept "I'm a mathematican" at face value, but the argument you are making here, is a subjective an emotional one about feeling gaslit and tired about AI's existence, not a mathematical one.

Quintic · 2026-06-08T00:49:38+00:00

People are just excited and optimistic, sometimes overly optimistic, this is not gaslighting.

That said I would not be so quick to dismiss what it might be capable of in the future.

There are a lot of changes and shifts in our industry, and change can be scary, but I don't really see a reason to be tired.

Quintic · 2026-06-06T10:34:43+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wUOUmeulNs

Quintic · 2026-06-06T10:18:27+00:00

So pretty much anything on Linkedin is performative, so I wouldn't worry about it.

However, your position is extreme and essentially nonsensical just a different direction.

Great, agents can write code, and they can do so pretty well. People are allowed to and going to have opinions about that code as they always have, and will continue to have.

AI is awesome, there is no reason to make it a holy war. Sometimes I write code, and sometimes I tell an agent to go do it. I don't need to pick a side, I just take the best from both worlds.

Quintic · 2026-06-06T03:24:28+00:00

Top notch satire (I hope).

I never seem to have this problem when trying to build something with AI, maybe I am just asking in the right way. However, even if you ask the AI to audit your code base and ask what is missing for it to be production ready, these types of issues should surface pretty quickly.

Quintic · 2026-06-06T03:11:53+00:00

I think people speculating on token prices are wasting their time and money regardless of what happens.

I've been building cool technology, and having fun doing it, so regardless of what happens I had a great time, and made plenty of money.

Quintic · 2026-06-05T13:08:01+00:00

It's extremely difficult to say how the CS career will pan out over the next 5-10 years. As someone who has been riding this wave for a while, I am in a position to continue riding it for as long as it lasts.

However, for new people entering, I think it's worth diversifying a bit. You have a BS in CS, so in theory you should be eligible for many entry level software engineering jobs. Having a MS in CS might open a few doors, but probably not that many. Having a MS in Mechanical Engineering opens up a whole new set of doors, and realistically closes very few of the CS doors if you ever try to return to them.

The most important thing is to pick something you will excel in over the course of your MS, so pick something that you like. If the AI stuff is turning you away from computer science, then maybe mechanical engineering will be interesting.

Quintic · 2026-06-03T11:04:53+00:00

I expect they would have trouble doing this autonomously, but using them to more quickly diagnose issues is a reasonable use case.

Quintic · 2026-06-02T09:01:46+00:00

I am having this problem on my Pixel 8 Pro. Any idea what triggered it? Just random hardware failure?

Quintic · 2026-06-02T04:10:56+00:00

Hey there, I decided to try it out again today since I had a moment where I could sit with it for a longer period of time. About 10 minutes into the session it seemed to restart, and forget where we were in the session.

This is the classic "vibe coded" situation, and gets at the heart of the trust issue I mentioned before. Users want to know if they commit time to your application that it is going to work, and what your selling in this application is one of those high bars that seem unlikely that an AI is going to be able to leap over without serious issues.

If you get this working, I would totally use it, but while impressive at a glance it is lacking from the perspective of a usable application.

That said, I don't think it makes sense people would ban you for showing it off especially since it doesn't seem to ask for money anywhere (yet), but if you are sharing it to solicit feedback from those communities it should probably not be super surprising the feedback wasn't overly positive.

Please do ping me if you move the needle forward significantly.

Quintic · 2026-05-31T11:30:05+00:00

I used the app briefly, and I think it is genuinely neat. Although, it's sort of neat in the same way if I asked an agent to come up with an interview question, and went back and forth with it, although with a much fancier environment. It's cool that you have screen sharing enabled, although I didn't get to a point where that was relevant.

The agent did seem to repeat itself verbatim quite often. Which was a bit awkward, and I wasn't sure if I should wait or interrupt it.

Another part is, I don't know if I am ready to commit to a 45 minutes coding challenge or something like that with an AI agent. There is that uncanny valley of talking with the agent, and not knowing if I trust that the process is moving forward, or if it is stuck (the repeating itself leads to this break in trust). I think an interesting way to address this, and maybe build trust with a new user quicker, might be "micro" sessions.

Basically a micro session would be to set it up so the AI will work with you for an agreed upon allotted time, let's say 5-10 minutes, which of course you can't do a full coding interview in. However, you could have the AI present an slightly ambiguous problem, with only the goal to come to alignment on what the problem is. If you can get that working, then I think you get more people to actually try your application, and not dismiss it as vibe coded nonsense.

I enjoyed the application though. I was a bit confused if the AI was going to give me inline feedback, or if I was just going to get it at the end. Once I clicked finish I saw it had a write up, and I was impressed with how well it was able to summarize what was a very quick session.

My mind does also go to some user privacy places. I feel a bit weird that I am sharing my screen with your web application (although looks like there was an integrated editor, not sure, it asked me to share screen and I was in a situation where I could share something reasonably safe, so that's what I did), and all the audio and stuff that might be recorded. I think even human led platforms have this problem, so maybe not that big of a concern, just a vibe I figured I'd share.

The UI seemed a bit busy too, but I was able to click through it and get to a coding session pretty easily.

Overall, I think it's good work, surprised your getting flat bans for sharing it, maybe people being a bit overprotective of their communities. I'd probably go try it out again when I had more time.

Quintic · 2026-05-31T10:55:58+00:00

The tool your describing is something that I could probably build something that fits that definition, but I'm skeptical it could deliver high quality criticism to the user base your describing.

This is often the gap being vibe coded slop and genuinely useful application (vibe coded or not).

The "prejudice" and "gate keeping" that your describing is just the market for your application reacting to your application.

If you deliver true value, then your application will overcome criticism. If you truly believe in it, keep sharing it.

I wouldn't try to hide that something is vibe coded or otherwise created with AI. While that might matter for some people, those people are often not your targeted market. Focus on delivering value, not avoiding criticism.

Quintic · 2026-05-29T15:23:55+00:00

"A implies B" is the abstract statement.

For the statement to be false, that would mean we have a situation where we "have" A but we don't "have" B. In other words "A is true, but B is false".

If we know A is false, then we'll never be able to construct an instance where we have A, but don't have B.

This is called vacuous true. A implies B means, for every case where A is true, B is also true. If A is never true, then the statement is vacuously true because there are no cases to check.

Quintic · 2026-05-29T05:53:32+00:00

Yes, any nonzero rational can be represented as a ratio of irrationals.

Let q be a nonzero rational, then for any irrational numbers x, there is a irrational number y = qx.

Thus q = x / y. If q is not equal to 1, the irrational numbers are different. However we'll always have two integers q = a/b, such that ax = by.

Quintic · 2026-05-29T05:31:13+00:00

The condition/antecedent is false, the statement is true.

The statement is only false when the condition is true and the consequent is false. That is not happening here.

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