It takes more than great code
to be a great engineer.

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. Hey Dave and Jamison.

   I don’t know what to do with the amount of the AI slop I have to review and I’m getting close to burnout.

   I have a lot of context on my project, so my colleagues see me as a point of reference. Additionally, at a past job, I was a tech lead and could easily cover for TL if I wanted to (which I don’t) and I feel like the TL of my project and some of my teammates are taking advantage of this.

   Every day I receive a lot of low quality documents to review. For example, our TL creates sloppy project planning documents and tickets and sends them to me for comments. Since they contain so many errors, sometimes including obvious security or data compatibility issues, or just text that is unrelated to the project, I end up basically rewriting everything.

   The same thing happens with code reviews. Some code is obviously AI-generated slop with lots of duplication and errors, that in many cases misses acceptance criteria or has doc strings filled with buzzwords and adjectives. I usually add a lot of comments per PR and I know the author sends them directly to their LLM and then pastes back a verbose answer. As a result, I end up in endless conversation loops.

   I’ve tried talking to my colleagues one-on-one, explaining how much work they are delegating to me. I’ve asked them to review their own work first and explained how exhausted I am, hoping they would show some compassion. But nothing has changed, because everyone seems to be in survival mode in this era of layoffs and I feel like they have become comfortable with me doing their work. I’ve also tried talking about this in retrospectives and tech team meetings, but the TL and tech directors did not support me because AI usage is encouraged. Instead, they said that they really appreciate my feedback because I have so much experience and thanked me for doing such excellent code reviews.

   I also end up making most of the project’s tech decisions, I am the sole contributor to the project’s documentation and my vacation is mapped out in the roadmap as low delivery period. 😢

   I like the project and I’m terrified to switch jobs in these times. But every day, it gets harder and harder to comment on obvious slop written without care without sounding rude or sarcastic. Sometimes I find myself still angry after work.

   Is it too late to set the boundaries?

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. Hi Dave and Jamison,

   I’ve been a Java backend dev for over 10 years. After getting laid off from a job I loved, I spent 3 tough months job hunting. I eventually landed a full-stack role at a non-tech company where I am the entire front-end department.

   The team is a mess:

   • A CTO who hasn’t coded in years and calls me directly to assign tasks, all labeled “highest priority.”
   • When I asked the CTO and CEO if we had QA, they literally laughed at me.
   • Prod releases are “tested” by the CTO before telling me to push immediately.

   I’m at a crossroads:

   1. Stick it out for 6–12 months to gain AI experience, then quit?
   2. Try to move into management, and rebuild this mess into a functioning engineering organization.

   What should I do?

2. Hey, Dave and Jamison.

   I’m a non-native Japanese speaker working in Tokyo with about 6 years of experience in backend(3 years in Tokyo) and haven’t used English in work.

   I started listening to this podcast for learning English. And I soon found this podcast is very funny and I found a lot of problems actually exist around the world, like AI hype, why people hate HR, low-performing team members, useless product managers, etc.

   For some reason, I want to leave Japan and find a job using English. I think the best approach is to find an English job in Tokyo first. And then transfer to an English-speaking country.

   I want to know as a non-native English-speaking engineer, what English level I need to get a senior engineer job using English.

   What would you consider if you were the manager who is interviewing a non-native English speaker?

   Thank you guys, I love this podcast, I can learn English, get some answers to the questions I’m confused about too, and laugh every week.

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. Listener Jame ain’t no dance asks,!

   Hey Space Therapists, I am a consultant that helps big companies to fix all kind of stuff. It’s ridiculous how many different hats I wear. One day I’m the interim PM, the other day I am telling SAP devs how to use a coding agent, next day I gather stakeholder requirements for a customer self service portal. I do all of these tasks on a fairly shallow level and all of that work is happening without much coordination from my company. I think I do a good, but it’s hard gathering feedback on my work, since no colleagues are involved and I can’t simply ask the customer without revealing insecurity. Send sophisticated tips and don’t make me quit. Cheers!

2. Can I tell a coworker to stop using Claude?

   I work on a small team at a midsized company, and a coworker keeps dropping overly verbose pull requests that are full of AI jargon. These are increasingly hard to understand, and then when I ask for design intent clarification I often get sent a long document that is even harder to understand!

   And the code sucks! misleading docstrings, overly complicated functions, and weird places where the AI has convinced them that something needs to be backwards.

   And often times I end up having to fix failing tests (that my coworker probably didn’t run), or report back later that their changes have degraded something in prod or is causing a lot of logging noise.

   I worry that I’m doing the same thing and just not noticing. Code is starting to pile up in review and I don’t want to be rude and comment “ai slop” on 50% of the code! What can i do?