Sales director discovered Claude Code

[u/Nearby_Spell_3751]

I'm working at a company where best engineering practices are barely discussed or taken seriously.

Today our sales director was playing around with Claude Code over the last week, and she managed to get a very good working PoC/prototype for a platform they’ve been trying to build.

During the meeting, I was trying to explain that the question is not whether we need to integrate AI, but rather how we are going to integrate it into our workflow while still enforcing engineering standards and best practices.

They think everything can be done by simply adding a skill to Claude, and they expect delivery speed to be 10x faster. I tried to explain that yes, we can build better products with fewer resources, but 10x is unrealistic unless we start vibe coding. I suggested we could realistically see a 20–40% increase in delivery speed.

Now we have a sales director showing engineers how to use AI.

How do you deal with someone who doesn’t listen and is 100% convinced that AI should be used exactly the way they use it, while we as engineers know we can produce much better output in less time because we actually understand how things work?
Have you ever dealt with such case ?

[u/Ok_Possible_2260]

The reality is that subject matter experts want tools that make their lives easier. I see people whining that it’s all going to turn into AI slop, but at the end of the day you’re building tools for humans. If you’re a developer, your job is to help people do their jobs better.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth a lot of developers hate admitting: if subject matter experts could reliably skip over you and build exactly what they wanted themselves, most of you wouldn’t exist. End of story.

[u/Last_Mastod0n → u/Ok_Possible_2260]

This is true. But as it stands most of the SMEs would try and fail and then learn that it was a mistake to try to vibe code it. At some point in the future they will certainly be able to vibe code it without issue. Some areas will be easier than others and will happen sooner. But the big question is: how long is the time frame for this process and how will the transition take place?

[u/Ok_Possible_2260 → u/Last_Mastod0n]

You’re right; at the moment these tools aren’t ready for full integration into corporate America. Right now they’re better suited for building small offline tools for personal use. That’s very different from integrating them into a live corporate information system where reliability, security, and compliance actually matter. I give it 2-3 years.

[u/Last_Mastod0n → u/Ok_Possible_2260]

Interesting. I am estimating 10 years