Use AI for documentation and other stuffs that can still pump up your AI usage if you are not comfortable using AI for coding. Or use it for coding and modify afterwards. It still counts.
I would say as a developer you absolutely need to be comfortable using the tools and understanding the possibilities but how much you use it should be up to you within any token / licensing limits.
I remember back in the 90s when people were starting to use IDEs and other developers would use vi or emacs for everything. There was always a suspicion that each camp wasn't doing it properly! Management didn't care as long as the work got done.
They might be able to hide it for a while but in a few months/weeks, it will tell itself or break down. The speed at which an “AI powered” engineer can deliver is not within regular human capacity.
This is happening at several (typically big tech) companies. Not all companies and orgs are doing this, however. I'm very firm when I say that any type of "forced AI" usage is a huge mistake and it's also a slap in the face to the employees whom were presumably hired for their skill and talent and should be trusted to make such tool decisions, especially engineering and technical teams, to not trust their judgement on when AI should and should not be used. This is the first time in my career where I've seen leaders who are too high to understand what their folks in the trenches are doing, try to force them to use a tool. The architects and building engineers have a very interesting job, but telling the construction workers which hammer or heavy equipment to use is not and should not be one of them, for a reason. In my experience, engineers will use AI when they need to use AI, but at a handful of companies, AI is being pushed as a solution to problems where it doesn't even make sense, then the companies are backpedaling afterwards because their token costs are through the roof... So they get their employees hooked on using as much AI as possible, then have to come back and say "actually, we need to cap you at $XXX per month." So all of the AI automation that was developed with no limit now can hardly operate effectively and needs to be re-designed... It's completely absurd.
Start looking for a different job, or better yet, build your own business.
I understand and I agree with the side effects of too much AI use but this is inevitable. I think it's better to balance, use AI for work and at the same time, keep learning, maintain habit of writing logic to protect your brain.
They’re correct, albeit likely misinformed in their decision making.
Industry is changing. You either have to adapt to keep with the times or find a tech job where AI isn’t necessary - which practically speaking will become a rarity over time.
It started at the end of 2025, nothing new to me. Either adapt to it, work more on finding interesting features and use cases, and introduce them. Don't be a coder; be an engineer OR/ leave; It's a hard decision :)!
Just a case of management not knowing the history of tech ROI or current studies on AI project ROI such as the one from MIT.
Thinking off the top of my head... I could see AI filling some of the administrative roles of Surgical Team teams mentioned the classic book, "The Mythical Man-Month" by Fred Brooks.
On a positive note: The AIs make great super search and within certain domains are effective.
On a negative note: Often when I see AI used by others, I wonder if these people have heard of code libraries. :)
A lot of what is going on is FOMO...
AI Serenity Prayer
"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot use AI on,
Courage to use AI on the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference."
They want AI? Give a model your old computer and have it do your work from A to Z. It’ll free you to do what you want. Salary probably already covers the model’s plan.
Lean into it. Automate your code reviews. Automate ticket refinement. Automatically draft PRs with a demo video of every acceptance criteria. Automate status updates to Slack.
How would management know if you're using AI or not, and what you're using it for, other than the cost?
I have found most bosses to be pretty damn dense, mostly interested in making sparkling reports to THEIR boss. In fact, I rated them by how fast they stole my ideas. The ideas weren't so brilliant, so I was glad to let go of them, as long as they got a life somehow.
The sharpest bosses (rare) would steal them with a week. One took about 6 years, and got them wrong. A couple of us were and are real open source junkies and argued that instead of screen-scraping various Learning Management Systems, (LMS) all of which had proprietary databases to lock school systems into their software with no possibility of export, that we give away a database schema for all schools use open source, and sell the software around it in a competitive marketplace.
It's called giving customers choice. Nahhhhhhhhhh.
He later scrawled a big brainstorm map on a board, mentioning the open source LMS, Sakai [0] Showing his deep understanding of open source, he spelled it "Sockeye".
I read tech magazines and one issue of "Fast Company" (2005) was on my desktop. When the boss entered the office for who knows what, he couldn't get his eyes off the magazine cover. It was a picture of Mr. Burns from The Simpsons with a feature article "Is Your Boss a Psychopath?" [1] I would have gotten the magazine without it, but (surprise) he aced the quiz inside.
I'm not making this up. [2] Image hosted at x02.me
Conclusion: Try to outsmart management. It's easy. I did it many times. I'll share some later on.
dude can you believe this crap? i’ve been hand-writing manuscripts this whole time and now my boss wants me to… use a printing press?! like what the hell????
me and the other monks aren’t gonna do this crap, we’ve been doing it our way forever and there’s NO WAY those things can do it as good as i can
Only that this particular "printing press" could randomly include typos and even complete non-sense, that every page should be proof read separately....
Use AI for documentation and other stuffs that can still pump up your AI usage if you are not comfortable using AI for coding. Or use it for coding and modify afterwards. It still counts.
How will they know if you're using AI or not?
I would say as a developer you absolutely need to be comfortable using the tools and understanding the possibilities but how much you use it should be up to you within any token / licensing limits.
I remember back in the 90s when people were starting to use IDEs and other developers would use vi or emacs for everything. There was always a suspicion that each camp wasn't doing it properly! Management didn't care as long as the work got done.
Company pays for enterprise tools (say claude code) that track who is using it and how much
They might be able to hide it for a while but in a few months/weeks, it will tell itself or break down. The speed at which an “AI powered” engineer can deliver is not within regular human capacity.
Companies will have a breakdown of token/credit spend by user for team subscriptions, so they could know that way.
Using AI doesn't mean you're making yourself dumber. It comes down to how you use it.
That is not true see lighter
This is happening at several (typically big tech) companies. Not all companies and orgs are doing this, however. I'm very firm when I say that any type of "forced AI" usage is a huge mistake and it's also a slap in the face to the employees whom were presumably hired for their skill and talent and should be trusted to make such tool decisions, especially engineering and technical teams, to not trust their judgement on when AI should and should not be used. This is the first time in my career where I've seen leaders who are too high to understand what their folks in the trenches are doing, try to force them to use a tool. The architects and building engineers have a very interesting job, but telling the construction workers which hammer or heavy equipment to use is not and should not be one of them, for a reason. In my experience, engineers will use AI when they need to use AI, but at a handful of companies, AI is being pushed as a solution to problems where it doesn't even make sense, then the companies are backpedaling afterwards because their token costs are through the roof... So they get their employees hooked on using as much AI as possible, then have to come back and say "actually, we need to cap you at $XXX per month." So all of the AI automation that was developed with no limit now can hardly operate effectively and needs to be re-designed... It's completely absurd.
Start looking for a different job, or better yet, build your own business.
I understand and I agree with the side effects of too much AI use but this is inevitable. I think it's better to balance, use AI for work and at the same time, keep learning, maintain habit of writing logic to protect your brain.
They’re correct, albeit likely misinformed in their decision making.
Industry is changing. You either have to adapt to keep with the times or find a tech job where AI isn’t necessary - which practically speaking will become a rarity over time.
Modern commercial airline pilots manually fly less than 10 percent of a typical flight, using automated systems for the vast majority of the journey.
They don't get into the cockpit until they can do 100% properly.
It started at the end of 2025, nothing new to me. Either adapt to it, work more on finding interesting features and use cases, and introduce them. Don't be a coder; be an engineer OR/ leave; It's a hard decision :)!
It’s sad, but there’s no getting around it. Besides, I don’t think using AI in itself makes you less intelligent.
Just a case of management not knowing the history of tech ROI or current studies on AI project ROI such as the one from MIT. Thinking off the top of my head... I could see AI filling some of the administrative roles of Surgical Team teams mentioned the classic book, "The Mythical Man-Month" by Fred Brooks.
On a positive note: The AIs make great super search and within certain domains are effective. On a negative note: Often when I see AI used by others, I wonder if these people have heard of code libraries. :)
A lot of what is going on is FOMO...
AI Serenity Prayer "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot use AI on, Courage to use AI on the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference."
They want AI? Give a model your old computer and have it do your work from A to Z. It’ll free you to do what you want. Salary probably already covers the model’s plan.
Well, why wouldn't you use it, not for coding, but for reviews and research?
Lean into it. Automate your code reviews. Automate ticket refinement. Automatically draft PRs with a demo video of every acceptance criteria. Automate status updates to Slack.
How would management know if you're using AI or not, and what you're using it for, other than the cost?
I have found most bosses to be pretty damn dense, mostly interested in making sparkling reports to THEIR boss. In fact, I rated them by how fast they stole my ideas. The ideas weren't so brilliant, so I was glad to let go of them, as long as they got a life somehow.
The sharpest bosses (rare) would steal them with a week. One took about 6 years, and got them wrong. A couple of us were and are real open source junkies and argued that instead of screen-scraping various Learning Management Systems, (LMS) all of which had proprietary databases to lock school systems into their software with no possibility of export, that we give away a database schema for all schools use open source, and sell the software around it in a competitive marketplace.
It's called giving customers choice. Nahhhhhhhhhh.
He later scrawled a big brainstorm map on a board, mentioning the open source LMS, Sakai [0] Showing his deep understanding of open source, he spelled it "Sockeye".
I read tech magazines and one issue of "Fast Company" (2005) was on my desktop. When the boss entered the office for who knows what, he couldn't get his eyes off the magazine cover. It was a picture of Mr. Burns from The Simpsons with a feature article "Is Your Boss a Psychopath?" [1] I would have gotten the magazine without it, but (surprise) he aced the quiz inside.
I'm not making this up. [2] Image hosted at x02.me
Conclusion: Try to outsmart management. It's easy. I did it many times. I'll share some later on.
Cheers.
[0] https://www.sakailms.org
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20050709032131/http://www.fastco...
[2] https://x02.me/i/sCWcAj.jpg
Claude team and Enterprise memberships allow the primary account holder to see your Claude usage statistics.
> How would management know if you're using AI
Enterprise accounts have admin panels to see token spend/usage/set company wide guardrails and system prompts.
it is all over not just us
I’ve never felt dumber, at least googling back in the day was a skill
dude can you believe this crap? i’ve been hand-writing manuscripts this whole time and now my boss wants me to… use a printing press?! like what the hell????
me and the other monks aren’t gonna do this crap, we’ve been doing it our way forever and there’s NO WAY those things can do it as good as i can
>use a printing press?
Only that this particular "printing press" could randomly include typos and even complete non-sense, that every page should be proof read separately....
Yes, printing presses were still human in the loop :)
and a drunk monk would not make those mistakes?
A monk would at least know when they are drunk...
agree on that. stay safe out there
lol found the self-proclaimed 10x engineer
lmfao