Techie 'Promptly Fired' After AI-Generated Code Causes Production Issue

Using artificial intelligence (AI) tools to speed up the code-writing process has become the norm across the tech sector. An Indian techie with little experience in AI attempted to do the same, but a major blunder caused by the code resulted in him being fired by the company. The story gained traction via a viral Reddit post titled "Cautionary - Using AI in your job instead of understanding code got my colleague fired," which details how the developer's lack of oversight resulted in a critical system failure.

"He didn't have internship experience, so my manager set timelines for him. Initially, they were generous, and he was writing code by hand. Eventually, they got tighter and tighter, and at one point, he had to start using AI to meet deadlines," the user wrote.

While manually writing code allows developers to instantly find errors as they know the structure by heart, this is not the case when AI writes code, which can often be quite lengthy, as the user highlighted.

"AI does not care if the file is fifteen thousand lines wrong. But after a point, it becomes a headache even looking at those files. So, this promotes fixing further bugs via AI."

The trouble arrived for the user's colleague via a Slack call, late at night, when the production line was stalled due to a problem in the code.

"It was all well and good until, one day, we get a slack call at 11PM, saying something broke in production. We then had to spend the entire next day trying to find and fix the problem. We found out that the problem was in his code," the user said.

"Digging through all that was no easy task. But apparently, he had generated some changes via cursor before, and the manager merged it by reviewing it with AI."

After the discovery, the techie was 'promptly fired', as it was his second bug in production.

Check The Viral Post Here:

Cautionary - Using AI in your job instead of understanding code got my colleague fired
by u/Karmaisabeachhh in developersIndia

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'That's A Toxic Company'

As the post went viral, social media users pointed out that the techie was scapegoated by the upper management and that the company was 'toxic' for initiating the termination process over a bug.

"A lesson in how not to act as a leader, firing a junior as a scapegoat. The manager who merged it and set deadlines should have been promptly fired," said one user, while another added: "That's a toxic company if they fired someone for their bug. Looks like you are vibe coding. If you are using AI, you must use specs and also start with test cases."

A third commented: "Bug in production is QA's responsibility and honestly also the manager's who merged the code. Firing over a production bug is red flag. Bro was just a scapegoat."