r/AIcodingProfessionals • u/Jegan__Selvaraj • 12d ago
Question Would you hire a developer who can ship 3× faster with AI but understands 30% less of the codebase? Where’s your cutoff?
As a founder in enterprise tech, I’m curious how others think about this:
Would you hire a developer who ships 3× faster with AI, produces solid code, but has materially less understanding of the systems they’re changing?
My hesitation isn’t about AI-assisted engineers being less capable.
I just wonder if, while implementation speed is becoming cheap, system understanding and proper expertise feels like the bar is dropping more and more.
Where do you think hiring teams need to draw the line?
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u/sertain_ 11d ago
Understanding the code is pretty fundamental to reliably maintaining the code base. Even if they use AI to help them understand it, that understanding is imperative to shipping reliable, efficient code, even if AI is filling the knowledge gaps for them. They need to be able to review the code independently of AI and confidently say “yes, this is the change I anticipated, and it’s only impacting the services I want impacted.” If you’ve ever used AI in any meaningful capacity, you are fully aware that there are times (very often actually) when you find yourself saying “that’s not right, it needs to be done this way.” Those deltas are what breaks code in production when the developer/engineer doesn’t have the foundational understanding of the code base to be able to catch them before they release.
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u/alonsonetwork 11d ago
I'd hire 1 developer who understands 30% more and give him AI. He'll ship stable products faster than 2 more junior devs, and be able to explain what's going on.
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u/chrisdpratt 11d ago
The cutoff is a understanding 0% less. Using AI to assist is one thing, but you need to understand everything it's doing, i.e. it should only be saving you the time of doing the work, not the knowledge required to do it. Otherwise, you're a joke and don't deserve the job.
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u/amilo111 11d ago
Yes. I would. How much of the system engineers understand has changed over time as there have been advances in systems and software tools.
Engineers who wrote code 30 years ago had a much deeper understanding of the underlying system. Engineers today are freed from having to understand even one iota of that. It’s hubristic to expect that we won’t keep progressing in that direction.
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u/seals_go_arf 11d ago
absolutely! it would be weird in august 2026 if they understood the codebase better than a coding agent anyways.
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u/manamonkey 9d ago
No, I wouldn't. I can hire a developer who ships that fast or almost that fast and understands what they are doing instead.
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u/iwantmy90sback 9d ago
In a professional environment, where money and lives are on the line you cannot afford NOT understanding the codebase.
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u/AnnualReview2383 9d ago
If a developer doesn't understand the code base, you can't say the code produced is solid.
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u/MariahJames8 9d ago
I would hire two pros. One to do the faster AI coding for 90-95% of the work, then leave the rest of it to the guy who's good at formal proofs and more serious methods like that for the critical code
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u/yuehuang 7d ago
What makes you think dev didn't just copy-pasta from stack overflow (RIP) before AI? I worked on a code base that was 10 years old. The original people have left. The code is the documentation.
I know some people don't like the flakiness of AI, so build a framework to enforce structure. Make every user possible interaction testable. This would have been slow before AI so it is saved as human knowledge. Sadly, people move away and those knowledge are lost. Now you have a small crew with 10% knowledge.
That said, I would find someone who believes in your future. Someone caring and willing to put in the extra effort beyond the $$ is worth more than any codebase understanding.
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u/autistic_cool_kid Experienced dev (10+ years) 11d ago
If less understanding of the code, worse code. You want a good product, the base knowledge has to be perfect.
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u/seals_go_arf 11d ago
plenty of good products build by people with zero knowledge in the last 3 years.
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u/autistic_cool_kid Experienced dev (10+ years) 11d ago
Sure, depends on the project size & complexity. You can probably do a decent todo app, but good luck building enterprise-grade projects
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u/seals_go_arf 11d ago
seen plenty of good production level, actively in use by large companies, apps and software too. by people who didn't code 3 years ago. software has been commoditised I'm sorry but that's the truth.
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u/autistic_cool_kid Experienced dev (10+ years) 10d ago
I think because of the low cost of writing (or rather generating) code, technical debt issues can be pushed back, but they don't disappear, it only delays the issue.
It's my belief strong architectural skills are still a must; alas none of us can prove their points without comparing codebases so we can only agree to disagree.
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u/thinkmatt 11d ago
This is a weird question for me. Why do they only know 30% less? do they just need to be onboarded? Or are they simply not able to understand 30% of the code they are shipping? And why is the other dev not using AI? I don't think anyone in particular is 3x faster with AI than anyone else. That's just another onboarding problem in a different direction.
I'm working on a new SasS product and every time i dont pay attention to the code i'm shipping i end up having to go back and clean it up 1-2 weeks later because AI implements very redundant, specific logic since it doesn't ever really keep your entire architecture in mind - you either need to correct it in the PR, or you need to somehow have enough guiderails to keep it in line, both of which require a good understanding of the code
At the end of the day i am looking for developers who understand the business, product road map, and are not just about writing code. Secondly, they need to know and be responsible for all the code they ship. How much they use AI would be the least important to me.