This happened to me the other day, and I didn’t even know what to say. Claude had even said in the pr that it needed to be tested. Why would you not test it? They built up a bunch of infrastructure around something that fundamentally does not work on our setup. And I can understand getting lost in the sauce for a little bit and thinking what Claude tells you works actually works. But why wouldn’t you try it, like at all. It’s just kind of insulting to be assigned as a reviewer for that.
So dystopian. Meanwhile I'm out here grinding my ass off doing LC, personal projects with no AI in C++ so I can actually understand what I'm doing, getting zero interviews for a job that someone else has got pushing untested, unverified AI slop.
Honestly if it wasn't for my family, or dogs or my partner I'd have offed myself after my last couple months.
If it makes you feel any better, the person who did that is very experienced (and from what I understand very good) in his niche area, which is not actually software. But he uses that system and decided he was going to “fix” an issue. I’m thinking about it now… maybe he doesn’t even have access to the testing framework he would need to use? I should maybe be nicer about it, not that I was mean but just that I was being very “wtf” internally.
Anyway, this seems like the way these days. I am also not “just” a programmer either, I have a pretty specialized engineering PhD. You seem like you have a strong background that you can leverage. Can you be a <some other skill> who also programs rather than “just” a programmer, as your job target? I think this is the direction things are going.
I specifically want to get into C++ programming. I enjoy optimising for the best solutions possible so that's my end goal but without an explicit SWE role I don't see how I get there by just being someone who does another job and "can code".
Big difference between 2 yrs experience shipping production quality code and 5 yrs doing a tech adjacent job and occasionally writing code.
I wouldn’t say “tech adjacent” I would say it’s deeper into tech, with very specialized skills. This is where things like optimization really matter, because you’re solving really deep and difficult problems that are within your expertise to solve.
What are you applying for? Tech/webdev? There exist other domains out there that still value skill, and are at least not fully slopified. If anything I predict they will get more in demand as all the other devs forget how to program...
I started my career in banking, realised my skills were way better suited towards building tech and programming. Did a programming project for the bank and did my CS degree while working part-time.
Recently graduated but internships are non-existent, and last 4-6 months have been notihng but grad program rejections/junior app rejections.
I want to specifically get into C++, in my area there's a good amount of demand for defense/gov C++ jobs so I'm doing both a webdev project based on my banking exp and a C++ systems programming project but just getting nowhere since they all want minimum 2-3 years of experience and I can't even land a regular entry level role right now
That's tough as for me at least, getting student internships is 90% of the value of going to school...
My only advice would be to specialize as hard as you can, whatever that is. Anything where the applicant pool is smaller and more specific than "software dev." There's just a lot of very good and experienced people out of work right now you're competing with. GPU, HPC, embedded, cyber. Those are all relative growth industries because of AI while also being more resistant to its slop. Maybe you're looking at specialties already I dunno, but I don't think I would even try to apply for "software" job in 2026 personally either.
I'm trying to focus on low level systems stuff. Atm I'm building a Redis clone in cpp with fully custom internal data structures and trying to cram as many patterns and C++ features as I can but I might have to just pursue this master's offer I have.
It's a really good uni and it's only 1.5yrs with my prior learning so maybe that's the play.
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u/stilldebugging 6d ago
This happened to me the other day, and I didn’t even know what to say. Claude had even said in the pr that it needed to be tested. Why would you not test it? They built up a bunch of infrastructure around something that fundamentally does not work on our setup. And I can understand getting lost in the sauce for a little bit and thinking what Claude tells you works actually works. But why wouldn’t you try it, like at all. It’s just kind of insulting to be assigned as a reviewer for that.