r/vibecoding • u/Suspicious_Fun_6338 • 3d ago
Help/Question Has working as software engineer become more stressful with AI???
I am getting things done faster but now I am bouncing all over the place figuring out more issues.. discovering new bugs.. Being tasked with doing everything from top to bottom related to the web app...
I thought AI would just get my current work done quicker and give me some time to relax .. but instead a new standard has been established, and I am working even more as I have many other things I am responsible for.
One iss I noticed is sometimes I am in such a rush I start fixing bugs with AI without understanding the big picture of what we are doing. So I had a nice long conversation with someone about high level what we are doing and why..
It is like you can't use AI for everything. At some point the human brain needs to grasp certain concepts and clearly understand them
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u/marloquemegusta 3d ago
Short answer : yes
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u/Suspicious_Fun_6338 3d ago
long answer?
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u/First-Tutor-5454 3d ago
adapt or perish
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u/Suspicious_Fun_6338 3d ago
tell that to the reddit users who are proudly quitting their job when they fidn the environment too TOXIC! .. sadly for me I need to survive and pay rent
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u/ForsakenCampaigns 3d ago
No, it's only helped, the main stress is the undocumented business processes and incomplete requirements at my job.
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u/Suspicious_Fun_6338 3d ago
I think if you have ownership of your code it helps.. I am a code monkey being thrown a new direction everyday by my boss
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u/AnteaterCreative2030 3d ago
Agreeeed! Sucks when people can't even tell you what their requirements are send you "feedback" post implementation.
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u/UnreasonableEconomy 3d ago
What I think is important is that you need to use AI to learn.
At the end of the day, software development is about development - not cranking out code. The engineering method is the use of heuristics to cause the best change in a poorly understood situation within the available resources (AI found the quote for me https://www.globalspec.com/reference/59061/203279/part-iii-some-heuristics-used-by-the-engineering-method)
If you don't use AI in service of your understanding of the big picture, YNGMI, I think. You can use it as your touchers and feelers to interrogate the system and the context.
But blindly solving tickets... it's probably not sustainable.
A ticket is an insight into someone else's perception of how your product interacts with reality. It's information you need to integrate into your personal understanding of the product, and you need to see how your own misunderstanding of the system and the system context caused this mismatch to occur in the first place.
I'm personally hesitant to use AI for bugfixes at all, especially not on a mature product. Cut off the infected module, regenerate it, check for parity.
You need to start thinking of software engineering as gardening, I think. You have incredibly vigorous growth, and your primary job is to cull and prune, and not to fix and patch and graft.
That's where I'm at right now.
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u/Remarkable-Anxiety84 3d ago
Slow down. That’s it.
This video is helpful. By the creator of pi AI coding agent.
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u/skinmiach 3d ago
My friend is forced to learn a new tool every week. He’s getting exhausted, and he tells me there’s no way to do good work in a tool you’ve only known for two days, but there’s no choice. Either he puts up with these experiments on people, or he gets fired.
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u/Suspicious_Fun_6338 2d ago
Same. I am setting up IIS sites and skimming through the commands as AI tells me what to paste in the iis and sql server. I just need to know enough so if asked.. where is the password ? I have some idea where it is storing things. I can't imagine everyone is needed any more so I am stepping up to be the do everything guy in hopes to not be the one getting fired
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u/VelumLucis 3d ago
If you still feel this way you just haven’t learned how to use it the right way yet. My codebase is literally dozens of orders of magnitude better than any of the companies I worked at before in every possible dimension. Approaching 200K LOC and both my productivity and the quality of code output are still increasing relative to when it was still a tiny project. And I already have plenty of ideas on how they can be improved further still.
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u/Suspicious_Fun_6338 2d ago
Mine is too. But I am dealing with a legacy codebase I didnt make that is full of bugs + somewhat paralyzed because every little thing I change must be approved and some are crossing boundries and just making it all confusing.
Would be better of to say. give me 2 week and redo all of section ABC and leave me alone
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u/zeroz41 3d ago
yes and no.
like architecture planning and adaptation has gotten quicker. still have to do the harder manual testing especially with real hardware/firmware at least for me.
All new funding opportunies 'want' AI, so sw engineers and technical managers are competing with non software people who happen to make a better buzzword plan.
As others have said, adapt and stay on top and leverage it, or you'll lose out.
But personally, im trying to take advantage and work LESS than i used to, while still getting out 'more' technically.
Like....don't just AI to AI and ship constant its tiring and pointless.
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u/Suspicious_Fun_6338 2d ago
I am thinking my issue is really the adlib requirments and ideas that are coming at me. No board. No written down requirments. No meetings (he is too busy to plan). Just random calls to fix random things .. many I never seen before
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u/Square-Yam-3772 3d ago
it is the new normal. it is what it is.
the good news and bad news is that AIs are still getting better and I guess eventually we don't have to worry about it...
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u/Vesuvius079 3d ago
Control the multitasking by breaking work into discrete human tasks that you don’t switch in the middle of and working related tasks to minimize the cost of context switching as you finish each task.
Control the understanding by taking “ownership” of the highest level of abstraction that lets you understand the system holistically. You’re right that you can’t just offload all thinking. The LLM doesn’t have the context or judgment to be making system level decisions.
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u/Suspicious_Fun_6338 2d ago
The thoguht I keep coming to is . It is all about figuring out what layer of abstraction the human brain needs to be involved. I should not waste my memory on syntax of API calls for example.
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u/Limp_Bus3865 3d ago
ah it is easier, I know do 5 projects at once while watching tv shows
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u/Suspicious_Fun_6338 2d ago
I think my issue is I am on a tight leash working on other people code... my 20+ personal project I can be drunk and work on them just fine
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u/franzee 1d ago
Yes and no. It is a weird place to be. In one hand my job completely changed from coding to orchestration, architecture design and testing, and honestly, I love it. I was never more productive since COVID and I don't feel stressed out. On the other hand we are the tipping point and the industry changes daily so I never know what will happen tomorrow and whose job will become obsolete.
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u/geoffreybyers 1d ago
The throughput trap is real. You're getting things done faster but the bar moves higher, so you have less time for the deep conceptual work that keeps the system from falling apart. The faster you go, the less you understand, until the whole thing becomes too complex for you to fix when it breaks. That's the trade you're making.
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u/Royal-Marsupial-8110 3d ago
fixing bugs without knowing what the code does is just playing russian roulette with production
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u/SilentNinja1337 3d ago
Just that instead of 1 bullet, you most likely have 3-4 bullets in the revolver
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u/Suspicious_Fun_6338 2d ago
We dont have time to step back and discuss the big picture with everyone. its GO GO GO!
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u/No-Mix4581 3d ago
the thing nobody talks about is how ai makes you productive while scattering your attention across 47 different things. you're moving fast but not necessarily in the same direction.
that high-level conversation you had is the real antidote. sometimes you gotta step back and let your brain actually chew on the problem instead of just feeding it to the machine and accepting whatever it spits out.