Episode 503: Hardware is hard and my PMs are pushing AI slop code

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p>

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<p>I’m a software developer with about 15 years in the industry, and I am soon starting as the CTO of a robotics company with about 50 employees.</p>

<p>Though I have years of experience and an academic background within the field of robotics, I have always been focused on the software side of things. In my new role, I am ultimately responsible for the hardware team as well.</p>

<p>How do I go about earning the respect, and becoming an effective leader, of my new colleagues working in a field in which I am not an expert myself?</p>
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<p>Hi, I’m meowmeow, and I’ve enjoyed your podcast for a long time.</p>

<p>I’m working at a small engineering company which don’t have lots of profit.</p>

<p>Recently, the PMs at my company(including the CEO) have started “vibe coding” directly on our product. They’ve even added PMs to the project planning list as contributors.</p>

<p>Whenever they open a PR, the code is AI-generated and reflects their personal working style. The code quality is fairly low and engineers end up spending a lot of time reviewing and fixing it, even though we’re already under a heavy workload.</p>

<p>Our CEO comes from a product management background. He believes PMs should write code and deploy their own implementations, and that engineers are not fast enough and should simply move faster.</p>

<p>I’ve already been feeling stressed due to the workload, and this situation seems to be making it worse. Engineering leadership doesn’t seem able to push back effectively.</p>

<p>What should I do?</p>
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