There's a viral dynamic to LLM use on programming teams that has profound consequences. All it takes is one guy who is all-in on code gen to start pushing for its use, and the entire team has to react to that in one way or another. In many cases the default social reflex is to live and let live, which in practice means letting LLM use proliferate and completely transform the team, its processes, and its output for the worse.
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If you are one of these people, at innumerable thousands of companies or open source projects right now, engaging in principled resistance, doing your professional best and advocating for what you believe is right, then I want you to know that I and many other people respect what you're doing. It matters that you do this, and it's unfair that you've been placed in this position. I'm sorry that you have to work with people who are less conscientious than you.
Team members who push back on that, no matter how politely and principled they do so, get called luddites, mellow-harshers, bad teammates - they're the villains, not the guy who brought in the slop.
If the team's LLM use becomes a matter of public record, resistors speaking out would be seen as a betrayal. So they sit and suffer quietly as their teammates turn their brains to mush and make everyone's jobs worse, with likely few to no clear benefits to the work being done.