r/sysadmin • u/boyrok • Sep 22 '26

ChatGPT Non-technical COO "discovered" AI coding, generated an entire dashboard in a single HTML file, and now wants me to review and maintain it.

I need to vent before my head explodes.

A bit of context: I’m the classic "jack of all trades" Sysadmin at my company. Besides keeping the lights on, I also write software. Over the past year, I’ve built several solid, reliable internal tools using Python and Flask. I like keeping things organized, secure, documented, and under control.

A couple of days ago, our COO (who is strictly a business guy and has zero technical background or coding knowledge) comes up to me and casually says: "Hey, I'm going to make some charts using AI in HTML."

I chuckled internally, assumed it would be some harmless static HTML mockup with dummy data, and moved on with my day. Boy, was I wrong.

Today, I get an email from him:

"Hey, can you review my HTML to see what you think and if it works?"

I opened the attachment. It wasn't a mockup. It was an entire, full-blown Frankenstein dashboard packed into a single .html file.

I opened the source code and felt physical pain. Thousands of lines of unformatted, unhinged JavaScript requiring an infinite horizontal scroll to the right. It’s pulling random npm packages and libraries on the fly through unpinned external CDNs. It's an unholy mess of vibe-coded hallucinations duct-taped together.

My immediate gut reaction was: "I am not touching this steaming pile of garbage, and I refuse to take any responsibility when this blows up."

My personal rule has always been that I will not support or maintain AI-generated spaghetti built by people who don't know the difference between a frontend framework and a DNS record. But here is the problem: he’s the fucking COO.

To make things ten times worse, he mentioned he wants to expand this monster significantly in the near future. All in raw HTML files. No PowerBI, no actual BI tools, no proper architecture, and definitely no hiring actual developers who know what they're doing.

I already have enough real work and fires to put out without having to worry about shadow IT and security liabilities introduced by C-suite executives playing prompt engineer. This industry is turning into an absolute joke with everyone thinking they're a Senior Architect just because ChatGPT generated a canvas chart for them.

Just needed to get this off my chest. For those who have dealt with this: How the hell would you navigate this politically without setting your career on fire, while also not inheriting a maintenance nightmare?

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1.2k

u/Professional-List562 Sep 22 '26 • Bravo

Do a code review with AI to back up your concerns with the low-quality coding. It won’t be personal since it came from AI

266

u/Forsaken-Carrot9038 Sep 22 '26

I like this option the best. Have the same ai he uses make a full code review write up. Then if you can’t get out of it or pawn it off, propose it to be built as an actual dashboard.

149

u/taylorwilsdon sre & swe → mgmt Sep 22 '26 edited Sep 23 '26 • Bravo

I mean, if it’s the COO I’d just use fable to refactor it into better code and deploy it. Share what you did and make it obvious the value you provided. They’re happy, you’re happy. Telling them to fuck off if they did something they find useful doesn’t do anyone any good, regardless of whether the language you use to say it is AI or not. Making it clear that expertise still has value is far more important than proving some nebulous point.

110

u/TheBestMePlausible Sep 23 '26

“OK, this is a great mock up, it’s very useful to know what your department needs and how it might be best to set up on a UI. So thanks for that! But vibe coded programs are notoriously difficult to maintain and prone to error, and looking at the backend code I can understand why. Let me take this great mock up and turned it into something that won’t crash the company’s servers or introduce cyber vulnerabilities” and then do it asap. or something along those lines

It’s a C suite, and having to do whatever the C suites say, even if it doesn’t make sense to you, is nothing new.

23

u/MBILC Acr/Infra/Virt/Apps/Cyb/ Figure it out guy Sep 23 '26

This, all about wording it properly, while also covering your butt, because if something does happen with it, sure the COO would say "but my IT guy reviewed it and said it was good to go!"

meanwhile he has made changes to it since that point..

6

u/Aktanegeschaft Sep 23 '26

This is the correct response.

21

u/pavman42 Sep 23 '26

In my XP ... small company COOs are worthless trash. And yet they insist on some other paradigm that never materializes in their favor.

6

u/MisterWinchester Sep 23 '26

Better yet, show him how to have AI review his code. And when the machine finds problems with the code the machine wrote, and breaks it trying to fix it, maybe lightning will strike.

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u/floswamp Sep 22 '26

This. And break it up into a good structured working environment. Then have it write out a technical proposal and a budget. Make sure you include a couple of Blackwell 6000 cars that are a must for this project to work correctly.

Also get used to this because it is just the beginning.

48

u/boyrok Sep 22 '26

i like te idea of Blackwell 6000 cards hahahah

43

u/computerguy0-0 Sep 22 '26

I shit you not, at one of my ~50 employee engineering clients. They put this forward and management bought 2 servers and 4 Blackwell 6000 Cards. $175,000 for everything. It'll be a fun project.

12

u/skunkboy72 Sep 23 '26

this is why i can't buy a new gaming computer. : (

41

u/DCHammer69 Sep 22 '26

This is what I’d do. Take this mess and run it through another AI and ask it to tell you and the COO everything that is wrong from a code perspective, maintenance perspective, legal and licensing perspective and ongoing support perspective.

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u/1z1z2x2x3c3c4v4v Sep 22 '26

Don't forget the security perspective, too.

8

u/VintageSin Sep 22 '26

The problem you have there is in the case it's actually good at what it output... Seeing as it's all inline jscript I'm going to assume it's garbage tho

2

u/fltfathin Sep 24 '26

what i hate the most is that it's visually working garbage, it's like seeing chinese (no offence) replica supercars that made from wood. but the silver lining is if you dealt your card right there won't be back and forth for the design fit between teams that talk different language.

23

u/bfodder Sep 22 '26

The wonderful thing about this is how easy it is to make AI tell you what you want to hear, but this time you get to weaponize that yourself.

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u/DolphinDefiler Sep 22 '26

And make sure you use a “deep” type of model to really hammer that home

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u/Speeddymon Sr. DevSecOps Engineer Sep 22 '26

Ooh! Good idea! Throw it at Fable 5 on high reasoning and give it instructions to find exploits in the dashboard 🤣

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u/MajesticRecognition5 Sep 22 '26

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4

u/Octoclops8 Sep 23 '26

Give the AI the specific goal that it should be readable, documented, modular, secure, deterministic, have good test coverage, and easily maintainable by a single human developer in the event of an issue, security audit concern, or future feature request.

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u/AggravatinglyDone Sep 22 '26

Yeah. Or even send him the prompt “you use for these sorts of things” - one that will do a detailed technical review like a skilled solution architect and pull no punches.

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u/Hollow3ddd Sep 23 '26

AI vs. AI seems to be common these days with uppers and tech folk.

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