If the boss forces you to use LLMs in your workflow... just say that you already do.
Posted by PoopsCodeAllTheTime@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 189 comments
Make up whatever story about it, uh sure I write code so much faster now, or my emails, or solve my questions, oh yeah I am spending so much more of my energy on the creative persuit of this job...
Just get em off your case, move on, live life, clock out 15 minutes early if your work is really stressful, otherwise clock out before 3pm while working as slowly as possible. How could they tell if you are in fact using LLM or not? It does not matter whatsoever.
Sure, some places might have recently gone through their metrics like "the metrics must improve with LLMs!", that must have been annoying... but that's pretty much over now, the metrics will have moved with all the people using LLMs, or, most likely, the metrics did not change at all.
And if your boss is on your case because they got a history of your metrics and they want to see your metrics do a 360 frontflip just by chanting the spell of magical text generation, then.... just switch jobs once, you are never going to switch jobs for this reason again, you only need to do it once, and when you get your next job just tell em that you already use LLM, no one will be able of harrassing you again for your metrics, after all the metrics could not improve more if you are already using the magic potion.
Lets get this over with because this dead horse isn't recognizable as a horse anymore... yeah sure we are all using the LLM and it is not making a significant difference, or it is already making a significant difference for anyone therefore there is no additional advantage to be found, it couldn't matter less which one it is!
Looby219@reddit
Very surprised by the amount of folks reluctant to use LLMs. Tells me your orgs are not providing the training necessary to enjoy them, because yea, GitHub Copilot is trash. Copy pasting into a chat window is trash.
But Cursor + o3 in agent mode? I guarantee you will love it.
marx-was-right-@reddit
Copilot gives my boss a spitout of how often i prompt it and how often i accept code autocomplete %. got formally reprimanded for having low numbers on this despite being the top dev on the team and all the people with "stellar copilot numbers" couldnt code their way out of a wet paper bag
dethswatch@reddit
serious q- is your boss nontechnical or stupid?
How often do they think that our bottleneck is "gosh- can't remember how to code a for loop..." or some shit?
marx-was-right-@reddit
Indian on a visa. Mindlessly passing down an edict without using his brain in fear of being fired im guessing.
saintex422@reddit
A tale as of as time
dethswatch@reddit
yeah, that's plausible and when we start gaming the system.
write some scripts to ask it about your codebase, refactor, whatever to blow through tokens, etc, just to hit the metric he's looking for and get on with business
cd_to_homedir@reddit
If I had to do something like this, I'd start looking for another job out of principle.
dethswatch@reddit
yeah, normally I would too- but I think this might be so out of line with reality that within a year or some reasonable timeframe, it comes back to where it should be.
It should be available and used to whatever extent benefits the team. Surely management will get it figured out... if they don't, then it's time to bail.
Fidodo@reddit
Same. I'm not going to stagnate wasting my time jumping through bullshit hoops. That would be a fun exit interview.
Wonderful_Device312@reddit
Better yet. Ask the LLM to write the script. Let it just churn those tokens and set a new high score.
dethswatch@reddit
Genius.
zoltan99@reddit
Is this tech life?
SmartassRemarks@reddit
Yes, and it's doubling down on itself
marx-was-right-@reddit
For me yes. The 3 layers of management above me are all Indians on visas and im one of 3 US citizens on a team of 17
zoltan99@reddit
For me too! It’s terrible. They have much less agency. Some lie at work to those above and also below them, to follow these edicts. Ethics and justice out the window. Also lie to potential new hires. Unethical af in my experience.
bernaldsandump@reddit
Guys there’s an obvious SHORTAGE of talented American developers…. We need more Indians! (((Majority hiring teams are Indian)))
theeburneruc@reddit
sounds like they are training their internal llm to try and replace you. Feed the llm enough info, hire someone new for cheap and see if they can complete your tasks with your trained llm, and if they cant then continue training the llm. It would be unethical to propose poisoning the well of data.
Quarksperre@reddit
They don't train a foundation model. They just add context. If that's the idea to replace people.... we'll that's a pretty shitty idea
Hziak@reddit
Maaan, I have checked in soooooo much unused code as a result of this at a job I recently left. I’d use it to generate methods and classes that I’d leave in the code but never implement in used functionality (there were a lot of dead ends I created so that it wouldn’t be “orphan” code) because I didn’t want garbage in my code… It was evident based on my colleagues’ work that nobody was reviewing the code so it was never a problem for me that my PRs only made 50% sense. Nobody ever told me my CQ was bad or that I wasn’t using AI enough again. When I left they were very surprised because I had been vocally against LLMs in coding at first and they thought I had finally seen the light and was happy now. lol not even a little bit.
sleepyj910@reddit
This is the bad place
valgatiag@reddit
Accept changes
git add .
git commit
git reset HEAD~1
PoopsCodeAllTheTime@reddit (OP)
Oh thanks, you just wrote like 50% of the script for us! :D
nicolas_06@reddit
Tell them you use another AI a lot because it's faster but that you never send any company data to it.
OddWriter7199@reddit
Dang
callmejay@reddit
I could not imagine living with that level of monitoring and micromanagement, holy shit. And I use LLMs constantly!
thephotoman@reddit
Meanwhile, I turn off autocomplete because I genuinely detest it. It’s usually completely wrong.
Dry_Elk4681@reddit
For me he will get me to estimate a feature in a team meeting, and then ask how much faster it would be if I use LLMs. If I explain that chat GPT or whatever doesn't really work for this kind of project he will tell me that Gemini or Claude just came out with a new model and it can do "deep thinking".
Gm24513@reddit
Ask it what to name the workflow. It should at least be able to do that successfully 50% of the time.
AyeMatey@reddit
LLMs are super helpful when I’m trying to solve some novel problem in a language I am not expert in. For example , a maven build file with a particular kind of requirement. Did that today. LLM was not the 100% solution but it was a big help.
lorryslorrys@reddit
That's what AI is great at. Problems that have one solution based on public knowledge.
AI can't help with problems that have many possibile solutions that are based on internal business contex.
I use AI just like you, and I have some success with it. People who just scaffold basic apps also have a lot of success. But it's pretty terrible for doing most of what the software industry is asking from it.
I would suggest turning off auto complete, and to instead work with the chat. Ask it bounded questions that you might have googled, and then ask it to make snippets that do bounded things. It's also the case that one ough to trust but verify.
Capable_Hamster_4597@reddit
Business context isn't special, most systems just don't have access to it yet.
lorryslorrys@reddit
I think is is special. It's contains a lot of the decisions about what goals you have, what kind of system you want to build to address those and what trade-offs you want to make.
You could say "write those all down and feed it to the ai". Obviously deciding and writing those down is a lot of the work of being a programmer, but it's not a bad idea. I think doing something like writing BDD tests manually and then letting the AI go wild with the implementation is something that doesn't work very well now, but might in future.
SanityAsymptote@reddit
There's also liability concerns for giving a third party access to your code and proprietary data.
At that point you're one malicious query away from the AI barfing out secrets from a config file or sharing an algorithmic edge with the competition.
This can be partially allayed by using private instances of each AI, but that can get prohibitively expensive pretty fast.
Capable_Hamster_4597@reddit
The solution is to run a few H100s in your data center, unless of course you're broke as fuck. Begs the question why anyone would give a shit about your data in the latter case.
Which-World-6533@reddit
That's because that's what they were trained on.
I'm not sure how this is a revelation. It's like saying StackOverflow is useful because people submitted answers they know worked for them.
nullpotato@reddit
"By shear coincidence Wikipedia has more information about popular topics"
sampsonxd@reddit
I mean that’s great, but 99% of the time I’m not doing that. It’s the same when people say it’s great for boiler plate. That’s not my day.
pbvignesh@reddit
Just curious what kind of work / projects do you work on ?
sampsonxd@reddit
Previously porting engineer, that was focused on optimisaiton, code complience, and bug fixes.
Now lead dev with a small studio, doing a bit of everything.
thephotoman@reddit
Also, most people seem to be grossly overestimating their automation needs with respect to boilerplate.
sampsonxd@reddit
I dunno, saving me 30 seconds a day, huge velocity increase
AyeMatey@reddit
Choose to use it or don’t. No judgment either way.
IkalaGaming@reddit
People aren’t being given that choice though. They’re told to use it “or else” without any consideration of whether it’s helpful.
AyeMatey@reddit
Ok well you still have a choice. If you’re forced to use it in this particular job, then Find a way for it to be useful. Or, option 2: find a different job.
marx-was-right-@reddit
I havent had to do that in over a decade sooooo not really a great selling point
AyeMatey@reddit
I’m not trying to sell you!
Use the tools that make sense for you.
marx-was-right-@reddit
Our management is forcing us to use it at every step of the development process :) its been a nightmare, and pushback has been met with formal reprimands from company leadership.
HiddenStoat@reddit
Yep - proudly saying "I don't use LLMs" is starting to sound like saying "I don't use unit tests" or "I don't use source control" or "I don't use CI/CD".
I mean, sure, you can manually test your code, copy the source code to a backup server, then build it on your local machine and copy the resultant binary to the production server, but no serious developer would work that way anymore.
Just like LLMs - the only people who shouldn't be using LLMs are juniors on the far left who just starting out (because they need to be learning and doing themselves, for their own education) and the PhD guys doing super novel stuff on the far right - the 90% of developers who are in the middle should be looking at where we can make use of it (as a StackOverflow replacement if nothing else!)
marx-was-right-@reddit
Yikes
Which-World-6533@reddit
Except its not. I can prove that such things work. What I get back from a LLM might work. It might not work. Who knows...?
It's the equivalent of saying "I examine the entrails of birds to write code".
dedservice@reddit
Saying "I don't use LLMs" is much more akin to saying "I don't use stackoverflow", I'd argue. Stackoverflow rarely has the exact right solution for your situation (like an LLM), but it usually can point you in the right direction (like an LLM), and for simple stuff it does have the exact solutions (like an LLM).
It also depends on whether you're using it more as a chat-based tool or as a code-completion tool.
Which-World-6533@reddit
I increasingly find a refer to StackOverflow less and less. It was useful ten years ago, but now it's very out-dated. It's much simpler to check Github issues or documentation.
Being able to find solutions is of critical importance to a Dev. Being spoon-fed all the time is not worth it.
HiddenStoat@reddit
Hence my last comment:
Just like you wouldn't blindly copy-paste from SO, so you wouldn't blindly copy-paste from an LLM output. LLMs are a much better SO/Google/Reddit for most programming questions - faster, more helpful, and more interrogable.
Will they hallucinate methods that don't exist? Sure, but SO answers will just as often be referring to outdated versions of a library, and most Google/Reddit answers are little better than cargo cult. All tools have problems and issues, and it's up to you as the developer to use them effectively.
Do I think LLMs can write production ready code with no oversight? No, of course not, because I'm not buying the ridiculous hype that comes with them.
Do I think they are a tool that professional programmers should have in their arsenal? Yes, absolutely.
BriefPaws@reddit
If you're org asks you to use it. Just do it. They're paying you under contract to do a job. Do it. If that compromises your ethics, quit or have an open dialogue about your concerns. Be open-minded.
Personally I've been struggling to integrate AI into my workflow because I just lack the creativity to find areas where it's better, faster or more convenient. But I recognize there are absolutely tasks where it is faster. No one is demanding that I do this. We're doing it as a team out of interest sake. Like any other new tool, fad, or pseudo-tech religion. Thats the job. We're all trying it out, we're all learning, we're all sharing our experiences. The good and the bad.
Like all things software theology, the answers lie in a middle-ground between slathering religious excitement and stalwart pitchfork-first rejection.
wtgjxj@reddit
Wait, using an LLM is fine if you want to, but don't blame yourself for its failings...
thephotoman@reddit
It isn’t better, faster, or more convenient. But Microsoft’s sales reps told your boss that it is.
BriefPaws@reddit
We're having an interesting time discovering common boilerplate tasks, especially around frameworks that it speeds up massively.
One-off scripting tasks as well regarding AWS APIs are much quicker.
We've also had promising success migrating legacy code bases forward, allowing us to make them security compliant. Freeing us from deprecated dependency hell.
I'm certainly feeling more positive than I did a few months ago.
The limiting factor right now is our ability to communicate the problem through typing in a way that will yield the results we're looking for. It's not a code problem per se, because we already have a healthy culture of avoiding working alone, and having good circulation of knowledge/reviews.
But I'll be sure to let me know there's a new reason to avoid Microsoft and it sales reps.
thephotoman@reddit
Wow, you managed to use a lot of buzzwords to say nothing.
BriefPaws@reddit
You do you. I'm just sharing my ongoing experience. Those who know, know.
Your vitriol is surprising. I guess you're immersed in a culture that's quite different from my own.
The key takeaway from my root comment is that it's unhealthy/concerning to quietly lie to your colleagues, peers, and role models based on a weird ideology when this whole job is about trying new shit in a rapidly changing environment, sharing feedback, and adapting. Especially when the expectation is that you get paid a good amount of money to do a job. OPs post felt shockingly entitled.
I actually found it quite triggering.
Ive worked many shit jobs. The main draw being a software engineer is that I get to try new things among peers who share my interest.
thephotoman@reddit
You don't really seem to understand the problem, and you also don't know what vitriol even is. I haven't shown you vitriol, and if I had, you'd know it.
LLMs aren't living up to the ridiculous hype that's mostly being used to push Microsoft's stock price. They're occasionally a marginal improvement over older workflows, but the reality is that the average experienced dev simply isn't aided as much by an LLM as the marketing teams want our managers to think.
This isn't just some rando saying shit online. Someone posted some LLM-generated PRs that happened at Microsoft. The result is awful.
I'm also going to be quite clear about this next part: bosses mandating that we use LLMs is micromanagement. It's poor leadership. It's like the bullshit of shoving blockchains into processes that did not need that particular kind of data store, and did not benefit from it.
The purpose of our work isn't "trying new things". It's building systems that accomplish tasks.
BriefPaws@reddit
We're not looking for it to drive us. We're looking for it to supplement us. Not that different from autocomplete if you think about it.
It either works or it doesn't. Each team member has their own opinion. That opinion extends to different tasks, but also different AI products, used in different contexts. We're figuring it out.
The old workflow is still there, unchanged. It isn't going anywhere. The hope is that the more mundane part the job will be sped up. The dream, however unlikely, is that the rest of the job will also be sped up.
We're having fun. We're irritated. We're confounded. Mostly we're learning what kind of tasks are going to elicit what kind of results when paired with a certain kind of prompt.
No one's mandating anything. We're exploring and documenting. Then we're sharing stories.
I agree with you that our purpose may be building systems. But our discipline, is absolutely trying new things.
Cool down and do better. You are absolutely displaying vitriol.
thephotoman@reddit
Again, I haven't given you vitriol. If I were giving you vitriol, I'd be using considerably more profanity. And honestly, given that you're trying to present mere opposition as vitriol is a bad faith trolling tactic--an admission that you haven't actually said anything.
Blackbawtumz@reddit
The llm world is much larger than Microsoft and not all are created equal to Microsoft, seems you really hate microsoft
BriefPaws@reddit
It's the bitterness that makes it vitriol. And I'm sorry you feel I've argued in bad faith or tried to troll.
psychometrixo@reddit
The person you're replying to is triggered beyond the capacity for rational thought.
mmhmm.
BriefPaws@reddit
Also, I agree with you that blind mandate is terrible. Disastrous even.
I also agree that the hype is dangerous, especially to those who haven't experienced a "before" like Juniors, students, or hobbyist. Or even the bandwagon folks who will preach no matter what. But we're no shortage of hype in this industry, especially in web. So it's just more run of the mill religious zealotry. For and against.
Another day spent forming your own opinion, based on your own hands-on experience.
In the here and now, at this company with my team, its not dangerous. We're free to start, small, shop around and gain experience. I'm not saying we'll stick with it. I'm just saying it has promise.
We certainly didn't stick with pair programming, that's for sure. That shit didn't make it through the day. Although I understand others had a great experience, and swear by it.
BriefPaws@reddit
We're not looking for it to drive us. We're looking for it to supplement us. Not that different from autocomplete if you think about it.
It either works or it doesn't. Each team member has their own opinion. That opinion extends to different tasks, but also different AI products, used in different contexts. We're figuring it out.
The old workflow is still there, unchanged. It isn't going anywhere. The hope is that the more mundane part the job will be sped up. The dream, however unlikely, is that the rest of the job will also be sped up.
We're having fun. We're irritated. We're confounded. Mostly we're learning what kind of tasks are going to elicit what kind of results when paired with a certain kind of prompt.
No one's mandating anything. We're exploring and documenting. Then we're sharing stories.
I agree with you that our purpose may be building systems. But our discipline, is absolutely trying new things.
Cool down and do better. You are absolutely displaying vitriol.
thatVisitingHasher@reddit
This is how Salesforce got to 50% of our code is being written by AI.
TheMiracleLigament@reddit
Time to sell my salesforce stock
LargeHard0nCollider@reddit
I’m surprised this is a hot take amongst experienced devs, but I’ve been using ai a lot recently and it’s actually been pretty useful. Been using it for everything from writing automation/testing scripts to debugging what’s going wrong. Once you learn to use MCP servers and give it the proper context, it’s actually pretty helpful in speeding up the boring parts of software engineering
mastermindchilly@reddit
You know the enterprise integrations all have analytics on the LLM usage, right? They won’t be optimizing who can use LLMs the most, but who will use them efficiently and effectively.
b1e@reddit
Write an agent to call the LLM with plausible sounding tasks. If someone looks at the prompts they won’t be suspicious either.
I normally wouldn’t encourage something so unethical but if a company is pushing this they don’t give af about you.
OnlyTwoThingsCertain@reddit
Or just ask Ai but don't use the output.
nullpotato@reddit
Copilot reports the acceptance rate of prompts. So you could hit accept and then delete it manually I guess
SignificantlyASloth@reddit
This is amazing, we have gone full circle! Instead of AI doing our work, AI creates more bullshit work for us that we now have to automate. Perhaps using AI, see? And someone thought LLMs would steal our jobs, go figure.
mastermindchilly@reddit
Developing your own agent to tap into things out of the box will be a thing, akin to writing and maintaining your own dot files.
cbusmatty@reddit
Trust me, they already know about this guy and the pain he is probably to work with
Synor@reddit
"Start lying to your boss"
EliSka93@reddit
You guys have to start?
JediRingBearer@reddit
I started on my resume!
IkalaGaming@reddit
None of you should be lying on your resume. It makes mine do worse in comparison 😬
JediRingBearer@reddit
It's a joke, I know we shouldn't. If anything, some creative phrasing can get you a long way.
youareafakenews@reddit
Whoa there. I thought that was my secret.
crecentfresh@reddit
In this country where getting a job is like a science experiment poking and prodding your whole life, yeah you’re gonna need to lie eventually
Dan8720@reddit
This does work because they can see from the metrics your not using it
shigdebig@reddit
"The metrics" oh okay
Sargasming@reddit
You joke, but at my company, all of us have API keys to use our in house LLM and our managers can look up our usernames and see our activity just like you can see how many commits and stuff we make to GitLab
tb0mb@reddit
100% this. My direct manger is the one who oversees it for my company. He said he can’t see what is in the requests, but he can see how many requests are made by each user, and the acceptance/rejection rates.
nicolas_06@reddit
Then you can make a script that send random requests so that he is happy.
tb0mb@reddit
Haha! luckily for me, he doesn’t care nor is my company pushing any metrics around it. It was just something we had spoken about casually because he thought it was interesting to see.
Recent-Blackberry317@reddit
Write a script to automate calling the LLM api in a loop. Burn those tokens!!
worst_protagonist@reddit
Every LLM provider has a dashboard that outputs usage metrics by key, which is tied to individuals
Total-Skirt8531@reddit
yeah the idea that they know close to enough to have actual metrics.
aaaaargZombies@reddit
they are part of your permenant record
Jmc_da_boss@reddit
You can just go have it generate a bunch of random stuff and accept that then delete it lol
Few-Equivalent8261@reddit
Which takes time out of your day
PoopsCodeAllTheTime@reddit (OP)
so make it a cron job
Few-Equivalent8261@reddit
Good point!
evergreen-spacecat@reddit
A study has shown very little productivity gains or increased earnings by LLMs in a large set of companies. https://www.nber.org/papers/w33777 Maybe show your boss some actual research on the topic? Anyway, I use AI all the time, but it’s mostly a replacenent for switching to a browser and googling. Only significant the days I need to do full greenfield, like setup a new micro service boiler plate or a new big form. Yes, I usually rewrite everything
g1ldedsteel@reddit
Cute of you to assume that usage isn’t also being logged
ClittoryHinton@reddit
If I’m ever working at a company where managers spend their time analyzing my LLM usage statistics instead of concerning themselves with my actual output, please just fucking fire me, I beg
marx-was-right-@reddit
Happening at my company :(
beaverusiv@reddit
You're fired
g1ldedsteel@reddit
Oh trust me they’re concerned with both. You wouldn’t want to throw millions at a tool and not analyze its effectiveness, right?
IkalaGaming@reddit
Boy are they going to be shocked when it turns out they wasted millions on something that made everything worse
killer_unkill@reddit
Lol. It's happening in Pipazon.
marxama@reddit
Use LLM to generate logs!
account22222221@reddit
Hey guys, we can see everything you prompt on corporate accounts. Just so’s y’all know.
Individual-Praline20@reddit
Mouhahaha that’s pretty clever. 👍 No AI will make you better anyway. 🤷
dreamingwell@reddit
Or, just try to use some LLMs??? It’s not that hard, and there are a lot of good use cases.
Antoak@reddit
I don't like this advice because some orgs only allow specific LLMs, typically ones where there's a contract involved.
The org knows who's consuming those licenses.
Saying you're using one when you don't have a license associated to your acct might get you a visit from security/compliance, and explaining to them that you lied to your boss is hardly a good look either.
One-Employment3759@reddit
I used the LLM in my head
opideron@reddit
I joke that when my fellow devs have a question about something, they should feel free to ask "opideron-AI" (with my real name, not "opideron"). Usually gets a chuckle.
Fleischhauf@reddit
how do we use token usage as a metric then??
dentinn@reddit
Ask me how tired I am
Fleischhauf@reddit
we need numbers though, not true all the time
farmer_maggots_crop@reddit
a) kinda
b) quite
c) very
Fleischhauf@reddit
letters are great for doing arithmetics with.
One-Employment3759@reddit
With LLM tokenization, letters are now numbers!
Fleischhauf@reddit
even array of numbers!
You are right! We can then do operations like is "King" better than "quite" if we project it on the vector between kinda and quite.
dentinn@reddit
a) 1 b) 2 c) 3
DaRadioman@reddit
d)4
OddWriter7199@reddit
Nice
UntrustedProcess@reddit
So much is logged that never gets analyzed.
hoopaholik91@reddit
It's crazy to me that people even in a subreddit like this think metrics are just something you can pull out of your ass on a whim. There are entire career paths dedicated to data analytics for a reason.
A report detailing API usage with sufficient granularity to prove that OP wasn't using it would be an entire project. The actual LLM system isn't going to be keeping track of raw employee names, so you'll have to join IDs with your internal employee DB. Who even knows if individual API calls are tracked or what their aggregation strategy looks like. And then you would need someone with the will to parse that report to go yell at people who haven't been using it. OP is completely fine lying 99.9% of the time, and if he did get caught out, all he says is, 'yeah I guess I hadn't been seeing much benefit so my usage has been tailing off, I'll try using it more.'
marx-was-right-@reddit
Copilot is integrated with microsoft 365 so if your company IT uses that for SSO they can easily map it to you
Brief-Translator1370@reddit
Can't you just use the license?
madareklaw@reddit
Keep asking it to tell you jokes all day. They won't know it's not writing code for you.
valgatiag@reddit
Cursor has metrics showing how many lines of code were generated and accepted.
DagestanDefender@reddit
or write a foor loop where you have two instances of the LLLM talking to each other
MonochromeDinosaur@reddit
Accept the license and just have it vibe code something on the side while you work.
Live_Fall3452@reddit
Very few places are coordinated enough to actually have the people who monitor usage talking to line managers. And even if so, it’s pretty easy to just write a script that burns through some modest amount of api usage.
PeachScary413@reddit
You can use it to generate funny song lyrics or poems about cats? Doesn't have to be code.
darkveins2@reddit
Non-technical managers love telling devs to use whatever AI fad is hot.
There shouldn’t be a need to lie, though. Simply tell the boss that you’ll create an experiment to see if it improves performance. Provide a time cost for this experiment. Then present the results to management.
armahillo@reddit
Doesn't this then reinforce to your boss that LLMs work?
Either use it because you want to, or use it because you have to and track the burden it adds for you.
radressss@reddit
LLMs are not magic, but sounds fishy when a developer never uses it. They are generally full of ego to claim that it doesnt help them.
HolyPommeDeTerre@reddit
I am not sure if it's my ego that :
uses so much water and energy for a result I could have done one minute longer using less water and energy...
can't understand basic ties to realities and so it can't even make the difference between actual requirements and something along the lines of hallucinations
when I need to use FAR more words to explain exactly what code is already stating briefly enough but very precisely (add two to two > 2 + 2)
Yeah it's not magic, it's deceptive marketing for a tool that is mostly useless unless you are talking about boring but easy things (like little refactoring over multiple files).
BNeutral@reddit
Your computer uses more electricity and creates more heat just idling than all the queries you can send in a day, what the fuck are you talking about? Only someone who never ran an llm locally would say something this absurd
HolyPommeDeTerre@reddit
Thank you, random guy on the internet. But I'll choose my own experiment in inference and training and also articles on the subject instead of believing you. We clearly don't have the same opinion.
BNeutral@reddit
And yet you are unable to say anything relevant, random guy on the internet. Please, feel free to explain to me how running an llm query on your GPU that takes a second or two, maybe 200 times a day, is an ecological disaster.
And? You can use them. Or buy more hardware.
HolyPommeDeTerre@reddit
I am not going to use more energy than this last comment on you. Your tone and behavior are lame since the first message. You don't deserve my time.
Awkward-Audience690@reddit
Ah, so you make up shit, then run away blocking people when it turns out what you said is complete bullshit. Great work dude, have fun "discussing" on a discussion website.
nickbob00@reddit
The energy and water use is large in aggregate yes, but per user is really not that much. Probably similar to if you used an elevator when you could have used the stairs, or drank an extra cup of coffee
HolyPommeDeTerre@reddit
And the elevator brings me to my floor every time I ask for it, without hallucinating, without requiring me explaining why I am going to that floor.
The cost of the answer is expensive in the case of the LLM. Mainly because the output isn't good enough.
Let's remember the CEO of Open AI complaining about the "thank" and "please" words that cost millions... I gladly say please and thanks, I don't even have to think about it as it's natural for me.
CoroteDeMelancia@reddit
You just gave me an idea. GPT powered elevators.
HolyPommeDeTerre@reddit
"I understand you are asking to get to the 5th floor. In order to do that I'll make a plan in multiple steps, first going to the first floor then to the 7th (for the view) then get to the 6th floor. From there you can get the stairs"
2053_Traveler@reddit
“You’re absolutely right, I kept too many people waiting when I should have stopped on every floor.”
marx-was-right-@reddit
The LLM pushers at my job are some of the worst and laziest devs i have ever seen
DanishWeddingCookie@reddit
This subreddit turned into a complain about AI, old person get off my lawn crying fest…
BNeutral@reddit
...? Or you can just install some stuff and actually enjoy some small amount of increased productivity with selective use of the technology.
Yes, and? Who said anything like that other than idiots on twitter and reddit? You just press a key to autocomplete boilerplate code, and don't use it where it sucks, it's not rocket science.
This thread and the replies are insane.
authenticyg@reddit
I basically told my team that since management wants us to use AI, anywhere we're seeing at least a net neutral impact, please don't fight it. If you're seeing a net negative impact on productivity, document it and we can bring that to management.
crecentfresh@reddit
I mean if y’all aren’t using it to at least boiler plate stuff you’re missing out
messick@reddit
"Become shitty at your job and lie to your boss"
Stupendous advice, sir.
HaMMeReD@reddit
You do know that copilot and other llms have usage metrics your boss can probably see too.
callmejay@reddit
Even if you don't want to code with it how about just asking it every now and then if it has any suggestions for improvement. I don't see the harm in that and it could help sometimes.
Buckweb@reddit
Or...just use them? They speed up the development process and make often tedious tasks become non-relevant.
DustinBrett@reddit
Or learn how to use AI to become better.
ALAS_POOR_YORICK_LOL@reddit
Imo it's a good idea to generate usage on these things daily even if not of immediate use.
If there is ever a big corporate layoff wave, guess which metrics will be an easy way to pick out "late adopters" to let go ...
d33pnull@reddit
nah
stevefuzz@reddit
Just add comments to your code like "add a loop to calculate the blah blah blah" and add some obvious bugs like you don't understand the context of the task.
bicx@reddit
Not a fan of this unprofessional approach to dealing with something you don’t personally agree with.
Beregolas@reddit
i let ai write all of my unit tests!
you delivered 0 tests over the last year!
Yes, and none of them hand written! I call that efficiency!
planetwords@reddit
This is the way these days - bosses are so uninformed about what engineers do that we just have to say we are doing the things they ask of us anyway, and just get on with the actual job in ways we know will work.
Although having said that I do use Github co-pilot. It's just not the huge productivity boost that everyone in management seems to assume it is.
loptr@reddit
Literal metrics?
I've only experienced GitHub Copilot at enterprise scale but it shows usage aggregated per team (or org), with suggestion count, accept rate, models and IDE used etc.
NoleMercy05@reddit
Then he'll ask you why you're 40% slower than everyone else.
dijkstras_revenge@reddit
Just use the LLM
EliSka93@reddit
Why?
dijkstras_revenge@reddit
Because you’re dumb if you’re doing software development without an llm in 2025
EliSka93@reddit
Idk, I think someone who can code on their own actually sounds smarter than someone who needs an AI to do it for them...
dijkstras_revenge@reddit
Do you use google? Stack overflow? Documentation? Intellisense? If you answered yes to any of those then you’re not doing it on your own. You’re using tools to help you. It’s the same thing, you’re just using worse tools.
EliSka93@reddit
If you use it like Stack overflow and Intellisense, sure, but the issue at hand as I understand it is actually letting it code for you.
marx-was-right-@reddit
Lmao
Shazvox@reddit
I don't use LLM:s. I AM an LLM!
haseen-sapne@reddit
You don't seem to be a believer.
Why fake about something which is true?
Please try any of the coding agents (Cursor, Cline, etc.). I have no shame in saying that I don't need a junior devs in my team 80% of the time.
Venthe@reddit
Yeah, I've tried them. They spit out something really impressive looking. Then I had to spend more time than I would use normally to bring the code to my standard.
And then i go to fix the bug because someone vibed with the agent.
It's hard to "believe", when even the Microsoft staff with the copilot agent are struggling to make it do any actual work.
haseen-sapne@reddit
Try adding “important rules” with all your coding standards, etc. documented. Regarding the bugs, make it a test cases driven development for better results. (ask Cline to always run the test cases before/after changing the codebase)
marx-was-right-@reddit
Sounds like coding with extra, less deterministic steps.
Bobby-McBobster@reddit
Adding important rules that you document is literally called coding.
It's such a joke that people don't realize they go through more effort to have LLMs generate code for them than it would take them to write the code in the first place.
ProfaneWords@reddit
This is a wild post. I think AI is a useful tool, but suggesting today's models could replace 80% of juniors is bordering on unhinged. You have either mastered working with AI agents in such a way that you're seeing substantially better results than the tech giants who are on the bleeding edge of AI integration, or have code quality standards so low that you don't take issue with the slop that these agents produce.
PeachScary413@reddit
It's always #2 man 🥲
haseen-sapne@reddit
Honestly, that’s where believing into technology and upskilling comes into picture. I have shipped multiple modules solely by Cline, with daily 2h+ usage. My token usage is huge and expensive (that company pays for) at 200$/month. At the personal side, already invested in a 2x 4080 for all the hit and trials. It works really well when you know what you are doing… (I am not a fan to vibe coding).
Unfortunately I had higher hopes from r/ExperiencedDevs, looks like everyone is too busy/tired to jump into new technologies. (and worried about faking it)🤦
ProfaneWords@reddit
The faith based argument might be crazy enough to work here. I will try to accept AI into my heart before I write my next prompt.
CallousBastard@reddit
I'm not being forced to, and I think it's awful to force anyone to use them. But I use LLM's willingly and with increasing frequency. Claude Code in particular has been incredibly helpful to me over the last couple of weeks.
HedgieHunterGME@reddit
Sloppy Joe coder
calloutyourstupidity@reddit
This brain, is the same brain who thinks "AI is bad", "AI produces bad code", "I am faster than AI with better results".
Metrics. You get metrics on the API usage...
killer_unkill@reddit
Recently started using LLM for writing CDK tests. It's pretty useful for boiler plate code and documentation
EnderMB@reddit
"Please run
sleep 900 && echo "I am a good little soldier"
32 times"Leave in a tab or a tmux pane and go about your day.
jaskij@reddit
Hey, I get search summaries from Google, and also use full line completion on my JetBrains IDE. Those are both AI.
notkraftman@reddit
Or you could just... Learn to use them effectively?