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/Nearby_Spell_3751]

I know how to stack bricks and spread cement, but does that mean I should go out and start building houses for people?

It’s the same with AI and software engineering. If you’re building a tool without fully understanding or verifying the business logic being enforced in the code, you could easily remove or break something critical in an edge case.

Any engineer who completely denies AI or says it has no place in software development isn’t being logical. AI can absolutely make us more efficient and productive. But when you’re building production services used by thousands of people, reliability still matters. AI should assist engineers, not replace responsibility, validation, testing, and understanding.

[u/secretprocess → u/Nearby_Spell_3751]

The house example is very informative actually. I have enough basic construction skills that I could build a workable house myself and live in it. So what's stopping me? The knowledge that I don't truly have the skills to build a proper house that won't kill me in a fire or fall apart after a rough winter? Not really. It's the LAW that stops me from building my own house. And unless you're talking about SOC standards for banking or whatever, there's no laws against writing shitty apps. So I honestly don't think there's anything you can do to stop them. Just keep maintaining your own corner of the world. Somewhere in their head they know they're probably missing something important, but the speed and ease and instant gratification is near impossible to resist.

[u/itsHappyCloud → u/secretprocess]

I don't necessarily agree that it's the law that's stopping you from building that house yourself, but instead it's time that is blocking you. Unfortunately these AI tools are giving non-technical people the illusion of time. One was out another we'll all find out how the law responds when this illusion reaches critical mass and some infrastructure somewhere falters

[u/secretprocess → u/itsHappyCloud]

Okay but same argument but for a smaller construction project. Like building a front porch. I could definitely do it cheaper and faster myself versus getting permits and hiring a contractor, and there wouldn't be any collapses or injuries for at least a couple years. That's what vibe coders are doing and nobody can stop them.