Christine Lemmer-WebberMar 10

It turns out GenAI code changes are causing serious incidents and outages at Amazon with "high blast radius" https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/03/after-outages-amazon-to-make-senior-engineers-sign-off-on-ai-assisted-changes/

Junior / middle engineers no longer allowed to push GenAI code to production without senior engineer review

(HT @KimPerales )

EDIT: Better link above than before. Old one is here:
https://www.ft.com/content/7cab4ec7-4712-4137-b602-119a44f771de

After outages, Amazon to make senior engineers sign off on AI-assisted changes

AWS has suffered at least two incidents linked to the use of AI coding assistants.

Ars Technica
Show threadCharles U. FarleyMar 10
@cwebber Did they seriously think using AI meant that they could just skip code review?
Show threadT Alex Beamish

@freakazoid @cwebber This. Getting an AI to write your code is equivalent to a) an insanely over-confident intern or b) a seasoned developer has gotten heavily into the psychedelics. Both choices are questionable, both need serious code review.

And in the end, are you really ahead?

Mar 10 at 2:33pmWeb
Show threadKwaze KwazeMar 10
@talexb Just not reviewing anything (read: glancing and saying "looks good") is how any of these people are able to say with a straight face this stuff makes them faster.
Show threadPhil Burg (he/him)Mar 10

@kwazekwaze @talexb I listened to a podcast guest two weeks ago who was very pleased to say his company now does exactly that.

"We weren't doing real code reviews before, and now all our code is written by Claude our QA team can't keep up - so I let them all go" or words to that effect.

I'm sure it'll turn out well for their customers.

Show threadT Alex BeamishMar 11

@Standard_Phil @kwazekwaze

Oh .. my goodness. There are so many ways that this could end badly for this company.

And letting all of QA go? That's the last line of defense for a software company. Crazy.

Show threadPhil Burg (he/him)Mar 11
@talexb @kwazekwaze I don't often find myself yelling at the car stereo when I'm listening to a podcast, but on this occasion I had some things to say (nobody was there to benefit from my insight, sadly)
Show threadCharles U. FarleyMar 10
@talexb As someone with ADHD who frequently stalls out any time work gets tedious, yes, I'm definitely ahead. Would love to be able to work on stuff that's always so fun I don't stall out on it, but sadly I need to actually get paid so I can keep my family fed, clothed, and housed.
Show threadT Alex BeamishMar 10
@freakazoid Delighted to hear that it works for you - I'm just commenting that it's imperative to check work produced by an AI.