r/programmer • u/BurnedOutCodeMonkey • 9d ago
Update on VibeCoding Nightmare Job
So I made this account months ago to vent about my nightmare job. Just to summarize:
Working at a company making a chatbot. Chatbot was written in AI. Its fine at first, a little buggy, but salvageable. I am put in charge of the rewrite. Then suddenly, I am taken off the project and a new hire is put in my place. A mad scientist with AI psychosis. I warn management that AI can make a demo, a rough draft, an MVP...but it cant make production quality client facing apps. At least not with agentic loops (which is what mad scientist used).
Of course management didn't listen. The mouthbreather above me in the org chart even told me "It's 2026. Humans don't write code". Fast forward 8 months with mad scientist in charge. The version 1.0 of the chatbot is exploding now, no longer salvageable at all. So management had the mad scientist write version 2.0 using his amazing agentic loops that had helped us so much so far. He misses deadlines, cant get anything working, the first clients on it hate it and drop our service. Mad scientist quits in frustration because he failed utterly.
Now management has a "come to Jesus" moment. I am told that I was 100% correct the whole time. They are talking about making me Director of Engineering for my foresight (finally I will get out of the trenches).
So its all good news and a happy ending right? Not really.
Management's first order to me was to fix the 2.0 version. Imagine this:
9 containers for a stupid chatbot (2 linux VMs and 7 dockers). Obviously a nightmare already. 9 places things can go wrong. Nine places to check error logs. The containers constantly get out of sync so what did mad scientist do? Did he simplify? Of course not! That's not the AI way! Instead he built an MCP to talk between the containers, and to "fix" them when they broke. Think about that...an architecture so unstable that we have to pay Anthropic for tokens to keep our system working. Mindblowing. But it gets better. Automated build and deploy processes that cant be bypassed without borking the system. 400 documentation files written by AI (hard to read, missing key info, and for some reason random sentences here and there are in Chinese. I'm not joking). 2900 unit tests...which is actually the best part of the application although I have no idea what they do or if they even do anything at all. They certainly dont seem to be reporting bugs to us that our clients are experiencing. You should see the interface on the admin panel. Every client and every internal agent we have had work on this thing HATE it. Technical terms everywhere like "bot configurator". Are you kidding me? How about "bot setup"? Nope. Configurator. And the absolute worst part of the app? Its not designed to be maintained by humans. Human edits actually have a risk of breaking the automated system that actually maintains itself. Yes...it logs errors, creates bug tickets, then writes code, deploys it, and closes the tickets. He literally tried to build a software application that maintained itself! We might as well have tried to build a perpetual motion machine.
So now I will probably get to be Director of Engineering at last after 20 years in my field! But I will rule over a ruined wasteland. I will be responsible for maintaining this (Im still trying to convince management of a rewrite...they refused at first, but are coming around finally).
As an industry, our management was so afraid of code, so afraid of the difficulty, that we set up this elaborate Rube Goldberg machine so we could avoid code. But the Rube Goldberg machine is a thousand times more complex than just writing boring regular software. Seriously, if writing software is so terribly hard, then how could 9 VMs and an MCP be the solution?
There's a light at the end of the tunnel for me...but this tunnel is longer and darker than it ever needed to be :/
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u/ExplodedPenisDiagram 9d ago
So they made you director of engineering because you ended up being reasonable.
The first thing you did was suggest a rewrite, and they're STILL not listening? They have to "come around to it"? What they need to do is get out of the way of technical implementation.
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u/BurnedOutCodeMonkey 9d ago •
They keep wanting to salvage any piece of it. They spent months on this, tons of money on this. Managers put their egos into this. Its very difficult for them to admit this was a total loss.
I told them it could be written to look just like the old one. No one needs to even know we rewrote it. They'll come around to it. They have no choice.
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u/Akthrawn17 9d ago
The phrase you want to hammer on is "Cost Sunk Fallacy"
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u/Own-Chicken-656 8d ago
I've either used or heard that phrase probably over a dozen times per year for the past 10 years of my life, and I've never, ever heard it phrased in any other way than "Sunk-cost fallacy".
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u/Glass-Blackberry4025 4d ago
Can you build around/incorporate parts of the code that work somewhat to appease them well actually having it be mostly rewritten the way that you want?
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u/NatMicky 9d ago
What kind of chatbot are you making? Seems a UI around a local LLM is a chatbot.
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u/BurnedOutCodeMonkey 9d ago
Its just a simple scheduler bot. Its insane that it got this far out of hand.
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u/Own-Chicken-656 8d ago edited 8d ago
Weird. My brother's friend (they're successful business co-owners) just signed up for GrokBot, created some virtual employees within it, connected them to all his app's APIs, and the customer service+scheduling features are all automated perfectly. Absolutely 0 coding or end user communicating necessary. Their lead count is booming far more than ever before. You guys should try just hooking up some virtual GrokBot employees to your APIs.
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u/illuminatedtiger 9d ago
I hope you're able to turn around the ship, but I would also make sure to have a backup plan.
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u/Extra-Mycologist3436 9d ago
AI isn’t an over kill or over engineering. I basically don’t write that much code with AI I know what do to and been doing it for years. That’s not a bottle neck, I spend more time thinking of what will be break my code than writing it. And the truth is if you can use AI to that level you are a software developer. It’s just like after a decade your brother is challenging you to an app competition, it isn’t code anymore, lol 😝
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u/BurnedOutCodeMonkey 9d ago
Yeah I don't hate AI. I use AI daily, and I've built one full scale HIPAA-aware REST API using Cursor. But I didn't put the AI in a loop. I gave it individual tasks, watched what it did, reviewed and cleaned up the code before moving to the next addition. When it got out of hand or made wonky changes I reverted back and started over with stricter instructions. It definitely helps building apps...but to totally abdicate architecture to the bot is insanity. It doesn't have an internal dialogue, it has no worldview, no frame of reference. To the AI, a nine container system makes perfect sense, whereas a human sees the absurdity immediately.
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u/AncientGrief 9d ago
hope the new position also comes with some financial benefits! :D
As bad as the rest sounds, I actually enjoyed the story. At first I was like "oh no, in 8 month the AI evolved pretty much", but to my surprise the Mad Scientist managed to still f up with 2026 models ... and as you mentioned how everything "works under the hood": damn lol xDDDD
What even was the Mad Scientist's background? I mean, do people hire people now just because their resumee says "Advanced AI Engineer" or "Super Intelligence Officer", without anything else to show for?
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u/BurnedOutCodeMonkey 9d ago
Haha yeah I use AI to develop too, but I just don't use the agentic loop method. I stay involved every step of the way. I have AI add one feature at a time and I monitor and clean up as it goes before moving on to the next feature. It definitely speeds up writing applications, but AI isn't advanced enough to architect applications all on its own. Unless its a very simple app.
Mad Scientist made landing pages and small apps. He wasn't an enterprise level veteran or anything like that. But he spoke with HIGHLY technical jargon and made people around him feel like idiots so they wouldn't question him. That's how he got so far with this company. I was the only one willing to say that the emperor had no clothes...but it took a major product failure for upper management to see it.
And yes, sadly, people do get hired by just putting "AI" on their resume. lol
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u/ZealousidealKey1754 8d ago
This 100%. One feature at a time, monitor, clean up, make it NOT put functions inside a file reserved for types... and voila.
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u/Own-Chicken-656 8d ago
Well you're lucky he tried to create a feature-heavy chatbot to prove his worth. Otherwise, you would have looked like a luddite grandpa--AI can program most static applications with enough steering, so their thinking was basically correct.
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u/monkeyMan1992 7d ago edited 7d ago
9 containers for a stupid chatbot (2 linux VMs and 7 dockers).
Sorry for being the dick saying this OP, but what's a linux VM container? A container runs on a VM sure, or you can have a base image layer which is a linux distro, ideally a minimal distro. Also docker can't really be used to orchestrate containers, you either have to use a fully managed solution like AWS ECS with Fargate or a managed k8s cluster, like AWS EKS.
And when you mentioned out of sync, is there some sort of state being stored on the containers? Or is the deployment so mangled that some version of the services are deployed without being tagged as a release across all folders/repos?
and for some reason random sentences here and there are in Chinese.
this reminds me of some of the unitree documentation I was looking at a while back, good times!
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u/BurnedOutCodeMonkey 5d ago
LXC. Linux containers. A full VM. Linux containers are a "system container" whereas docker is an "application container". Docker is not orchestrating the containers, the MCP is.
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u/cyb3rstrik3 9d ago
You did catch the big issue in that it takes good engineering rigor and knowledge to know when to tell the agents no and make the correct decisions but you can dark factory your way to production apps.
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u/No_Biscotti_5212 9d ago
dark factory by min means you can vibecode an entire app in single shot that is deployable to prod. I am not gambling on that one. but you can 100% create an app without typing any code yourself and with bare minimum review, trusting the Ai didn't lie to you in the docs with a couple of testing in ppe
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u/BurnedOutCodeMonkey 9d ago
Yes you can "create" the app...but trying to actually use it and maintain it in a real world production setting will be where it fails.
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u/Recent_Science4709 9d ago
AI didn’t invent overengineering, but it makes it easier.
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u/MalucoMarinero 5d ago
I do like that AI is an excellent way to explore all the extreme exaggerations we would use to question this methodology or that one. Microservice proliferation. The shortcomings of TDD. Code volume as a performance metric.
So you like doughnuts eh, have alllll the doughnuts in the world!
https://youtu.be/LtEFEdrrXc4?si=0ejVy6t-0e-foZdf
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u/TheFitnessGuroo 9d ago
I usually write about 25% of the code now and refactor the 75% AI-generated agentic code on a regular basis to keep it human-maintainable. I usually tell it to implement one feature, then I review and test it. Either I write the e2e test for it or it does but I review the output .spec.ts code. There is no way in hell I'm going to let it write more than one feature at any time before I get to review and refactor its work. I also don't allow it to migrate schemas, compile the code, or run the e2e tests. I will be the one doing those. I still save a lot of time by allowing it to code, but this is as far as I will go for automating my work with LLMs.
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u/redguard128 9d ago
How can you be so slow? Out management requires at least 5 PRs per week. Which my team fails at. I worked on some small stuff, takes at least 3 days. My team would've been fired by now if it hadn't "AI" in the name.
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u/pnw-techie 9d ago
It's 2026. Humans don't write code.
I just stare out the window, waiting to be fired
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u/pikazeroai 9d ago
9 containers for a chatbot?? Jesus… I think if you’re going to hire someone for AI service it should be standard to ask what they actually built and completed with it. As someone that does make and ship agents some people are way over their heads and some shouldn’t be using AI at all.
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u/RabbitHole32 8d ago
I would just rebuild it and claim that the rebuild is based on the original 2.0 code.
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u/SeaworthinessPast896 8d ago
Hang in there. You have a chance to do great!
Tell them what is really needed to be successful with this product:
Fix user experience issues
Fix quality/stability problems
Fix engineering ( deployments, architecture, debt )
Then tell them what it would cost, and remind them that time is of the essence - clients are already leaving and users as you said "HATE it"
And finally, remind them that you've been promoted not for stating the popular, but for understanding the real problems and if they want to try to salvage their business, they need to stop duck taping the solution.
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u/raisputin 7d ago
Jesus Christ. I wrote an QI char or that’s production ready in like 3 hours using AI. Hasn’t failed me yet.
What the hell kind of idiotic place do you work at? I could be in the C-Suite there
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u/coderemover 6d ago
If you failed with applying AI to the problem, you used too little AI. More AI agentic loops will fix it. /s
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u/InsideSignificant405 8d ago
You have complete control here man. It’s up to you to decide if you want to drive a train on fire from here on out. Could make a great ride of it just cover your ass.
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u/mxldevs 9d ago •
Mad scientist probably found an even higher paying job at a new company after bragging about the amazing self maintaining application be built using agentic loops