r/cscareerquestions • u/[deleted] • 16h ago
Experienced feel way too dependent on AI
[deleted]
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u/dmdport 16h ago
I would be careful, as someone who uses terraform everyday at my job, I can immediately tell when someone is using AI to write it for them since it can do a pretty terrible job at times. The other day I saw a for_each being used on a single object and using the lookup function instead of each.value to grab the variables outside of the object. It’s also pretty bad at staying up to date with provider changes. So not only can the code be unreadable, it also just doesn’t work.
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u/Beginning_Paint_6350 13h ago
I typically try to catch the AI hallucinations and understand the hcl it writes before I even try to do anything with it.
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u/chaos_battery 12h ago
Just use the context 7 tool with the LLM to get the latest and greatest documentation from the site as part of the context window. Boom done.
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u/These-Loquat1010 9h ago
Yes. I feel the same way.
I am in a small team that reports directly to CEO and the CEO doesn't really have time to manage or provide technical help. So whenever you ask for technical help, he just tells you to ask other engineers from different teams who have no idea what I am even working on. Asking my coworkers from my own division isn’t really an option either, since each of us is working on separate solo projects and we have no idea what the others are working on.
Because of that, I’ve started to rely on ChatGPT and Claude for technical help, and they’ve been very helpful. At the same time, I sometimes feel like I’m becoming too dependent on them, when ideally I should be solving more of these problems on my own.
Basically, my experience as a Junior Software Engineer has been a disaster so far. I’ve been with this company for about seven months, and I’m already considering leaving this company next year (Probably next September).
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u/Beginning_Paint_6350 5h ago
Is your experience bad because of lack of communication between teams or the deal breaker is that you rely on AI instead of your co-workers?
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u/These-Loquat1010 3h ago edited 3h ago
The former
I’ve been at this company for about seven months. Lately, I am starting to question how much I can really grow at my company.
The CEO doesn’t have much time to manage or guide us. On the rare occasions he does, the tasks he gives are often unrealistic and just make my work more complicated and bloated. There are times when I get completely blocked because I’m working alone and don’t have all the resources I need. When I mentioned this to the CEO, he told me that this is what “blaming” looks like and that I should be more proactive. He isn’t entirely wrong, but I wish he were more understanding about the struggles I go through. (One time, he asked me why a project was delayed. I explained that I didn’t have the credentials I needed from the IT department, that I had applied for access four hours earlier, and that the person responsible had already left the office for the day. The CEO flipped out, went on a rant about how this was “blaming,” and told me that if I wasn’t getting the credentials, I should have just gone straight to his desk and asked for them until I got them. Again, he wasn’t entirely wrong, but the way he said it was really condescending and rubbed me the wrong way. I just wish he would understand that, given how the organization is structured, it isn’t always that simple.)
Most of the projects I’m assigned are small. They often feel like college projects, no more than 2,000–3,000 lines of code. I’m not sure they’re the kind of experience you can put on your resume.
In my team, everyone works alone on separate “solo” projects. When something is ready to ship, we’re expected to sit in an all-hands bi-weekly meeting with the entire engineering team and present our work to the CTO, who then gives approval to deploy the following day. When I sit in those meetings and watch others report their work, I can’t help but feel jealous of my co-workers, because at least they’re working on things that seem more career-advancing than mine.
I’m a little worried that if I stay here too long, I’ll eventually become unhirable. Sure, as a junior software engineer, I’ve picked up a few things here and there, like docker/k8, nginx+pm2, vm provisioning and become okayish at frontend things. But honestly, at seven months in, I feel like I’m making very little real progress in my career. I am already grinding leetcode and practicing my interview skills so hopefully I get a better job at a different company by the end of next year.
Anyway.... Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.
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u/SnooDrawings405 51m ago
First off definitely put the position on your resume. You’re also only 7 months in so give yourself some grace. You clearly have a want to learn so I don’t doubt you’ll succeed.
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u/Junmeng 16h ago
You can say the same thing for Google or calculators tbh, it's a tool. you're never going to be in a situation outside of interviews where you wont have access to it, so go ahead and depend on it.
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u/Haunting-Speech2038 16h ago
Not being able to use it in interviews is a pretty big deal, kinda a huge downplay. It’s not like OP uses this tool to augment skills, they are dependent on the tool with 1 YOE, a manager could argue they have no skills
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u/ice-truck-drilla 15h ago
That manager would be an idiot. I learned how to code before gen ai tools, and stack overflow + google were constant resources for the first few years.
Similarly, the first few times I made Chiles en Nogada, I used a recipe and YouTube. Same with the first few times I made some variants of ice cream cake. You get the hang of it after a while and start to cook / bake and feel out the dishes yourself. If I want a new dish it’s back to the recipes. Coding is no different.
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u/Haunting-Speech2038 10h ago
I think this comment was written with AI. Comparing a recipe you have to read and follow yourself to AI literally doing it for you completely misses the point.
Part of using stack overflow or finding a recipe is exactly that, learning how to search and sift to find the correct answer. AI abstracts that.
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u/ice-truck-drilla 10h ago
“This comment on Reddit hurt my feelings so it must be AI”
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u/Haunting-Speech2038 10h ago
Weirdly making it personal and dodging 90% of what I said
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u/ice-truck-drilla 10h ago
Idk how that’s personal it’s just an observation. My comment was an easily understandable generalization of recreating a formula to get a result. Where that formula comes from is arbitrary. Using gen ai is a streamlined version of stack overflow.
I didn’t dodge what you said, I just thought it was really dumb and didn’t think it was worth responding too. But I’m petty so I will now
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u/Haunting-Speech2038 16h ago edited 16h ago
You said it best, you now need a life vest to swim, aka you cannot swim. You have become dependent on someone else writing your code.
AI written code is also very obvious
There have been studies done where two groups write papers, one group used AI and another does not. A week later the group who hand wrote recall everything, and the AI group barely recalls anything. By using AI when you studied and completed certs, it sounds like you never actually learned terraform and dev ops practices.
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u/Beginning_Paint_6350 12h ago
It's not like I asked AI to give me a lecture so I can pass the those certs. I mainly asked it to plan my learning journey. Quiz me. and ask it things that I didn't understand or confuse with other things during my studies. like I think this is a good use and it's fine (let's discuss it further if anyone would like).
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u/Haunting-Speech2038 10h ago
I think your dependence on AI is clear just from that paragraph you typed lmao.
“So I can pass the those certs”
“Quiz me. and ask it”
“. like I think this is a good use and it’s fine”
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u/thephotoman Veteran Code Monkey 13h ago
The old ways are good to know.
I don’t see the LLM era having much more steam left in it. These systems are expensive to build, and nobody seems to have a good idea of their total cost of operation per query save accountants bound to real and legitimate NDA’s that are bog standard in the field.
But this doesn’t mean the AI era is over. I’m noticing that I get better results with smaller, more specific models than with the big ones. I’ve actually complained to my boss that we don’t really have access to any of those through Copilot right now, and that’s my biggest AI problem.
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u/Chili-Lime-Chihuahua 12h ago
Practice more. A lot of people learn through repetition. Certain things are hard, then they get easier as you get exposed to them.
Do first and second rounds by yourself. Learn from your mistakes. Acknowledge that your productivity will drop a little bit, but it will improve with time and overall in the long run. You'll start building up your confidence, and things will get better. Be OK with failing and making mistakes (ideally not in Production).
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u/IllResponsibility671 15h ago
It sounds like you’re not coding outside of work. I recommend you find some personal projects to work on and build them without the help of AI. For me, the best way to learn is through repetition. Asking an AI to compete a task several times doesn’t count haha. You need commit things to memory by doing it yourself.
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u/Bobby-McBobster Senior SDE @ Amazon 15h ago
Yes you're cooked. You literally don't know how to do your job.
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u/Ozymandias0023 10h ago
Stop using it to write code, and just treat it like a research assistant. LLMs are pretty good at distilling large volumes of text into an answer to a specific question. Then, when it teaches you something, go read the referenced links. Don't offload your thinking to these things, just use them to surface information you didn't know to look for.
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u/Particular_Maize6849 10h ago edited 10h ago
Are you getting paid? If so then who tf cares. You're not in school. There is no professor to be teachers pet to. Do your job. Use the tools you are allowed to to make your life easier. Get paid. You're being used for your value to the company. They don't care if you entirely use your brain or know how to prompt AI to do it for you. They just want the value you produce to make shareholders happy and they want it fast. If AI speeds you up, great. Stop being such a try-hard.
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u/verypointything 15h ago
I don’t know if it matters. Just keep working and eventually you will learn it. I don’t see a problem with using tool that greatly helps you with your work.
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u/01010101010111000111 15h ago
Some companies have strict "no AI usage of any kind for any reason" policies, while others will fire you if you do not use AI enough.
Personally, I do not care if people write code by slamming their appendages on keyboard, use voice to text, or AI. When PR is up, it has your name attached to it and you are the only one bearing 100% of responsibility for its content.
In your case, it is not over dependency, it is just "not wanting to do boring things". There are plenty of AI friendly employers who are seeking people just like you! Don't worry about it, just focus on ensuring that your PRs don't break prod.
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u/mathinferno123 12h ago
With all due respect you do not understand enough. You think you do. All those skills have become rusty. You need to quit using AI unless you really need to so that you keep your skills sharp.
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u/Titoswap 15h ago
Those who don’t use ai will be outpaced by those who do so it’s a loose loose situation either way
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u/ObstinateHarlequin Embedded Software 14h ago
So just... stop doing that? There's literally nothing preventing you from doing your work yourself. This problem is 100% self-inflicted and equally solvable.
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u/Competitive-Ear-2106 14h ago
Keep using AI and don’t stress, if it gives you an extra 15 mins at the end of the day use that time to build your skill/ figure out why AI did it a piece of code a certain way.(ask ai ask it to tell you why and give you other examples
Another good tip is to read everything it spits out don’t just blindly copy paste
And Another good thing is to just type the code yourself use AI just copy it manually.
You will grow your skills regardless
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u/ThinkingWithPortal Software Engineer 15h ago
I feel like the perks I've gotten from AI are mostly just the time savings of digging through Google searches for similar issues. The hours of debugging by searching has been reduced to quick trial and error sometimes, but I'm not so dependent on AI where i hit an impassible wall when it can't help me through something.
My rule has always been to not submit code I do not understand. That way I'm learning and covering my ass at the same time.