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lowkeyokay | 2 months ago

In the company I’m at this is beginning to happen. PM’s want to “prototype” new features and expect the engineers to finish up the work. With the expectation that it ‘just needs some polishing’. What would be your recommendation on how to handle this constructively? Flat out rejecting LLM as a prototyping tool is not an option.

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Our_Benefactors|2 months ago

This could be workable with the understanding that throwing away 100% of the prototype code is acceptable and it’s primary purpose is as a communication tool, not a technical starting point.

rootusrootus|2 months ago

This is how I've handled it so far. But that is probably because the PM that does this for me knew going in that they were not going to be generating something I'd want to become responsible for polishing and maintaining. It's basically just a fancier way of doing what they would otherwise use SketchUp for.

jjmarr|2 months ago

I would accept this because it'll increase demand for SWEs and prevent us from losing our jobs.

necovek|2 months ago

Obviously, unleash LLM code reviewer with the strictest possible prompt on the change :)

Then innocently say "LLM believes this is bad architecture and should be recreated from scratch."

lurking_swe|2 months ago

sounds like a culture and management problem. CTO should set clear expectations for his staff and discuss with product to ensure there is alignment.

If i was CTO I would not be happy to hear my engineers are spending lots of time re-writing and testing code written by product managers. Big nope.

theshrike79|2 months ago

"You can't polish a turd" =)