3/16/2026 at 3:55:03 AM
I’ve encountered an even more nightmarish version of this recently: ai generated tickets. Basically dumping the output of “write a detailed product spec for a clinical trial data collection pipeline” into a jira ticket and handing it off.Doesn’t match any of our internal product design, adds tons of extraneous features. When I brought this up with said PM they basically responded that these inaccuracies should just be brought up in the sprint review and “partnering” with the engineering team. AI etiquette is something we’ll all have to learn in the coming years.
by czhu12
3/16/2026 at 8:58:43 AM
That used to be my joke! Given that most large organization spend (much) more time with the administrative work around code changes than the actual changes themselves (planning, deciding, meetings) then before we let Claude write our code we should let it write our Jira tickets. It was a great joke because while it was obviously absurd to many people it also made them a bit uneasy.Cue a similar joke about salary negotiation, and the annual dance around goals and performance indicators. Is it really programmers who should be afraid to become redundant, when you think about it?
I should know better than making jokes about reality. It has already one-upped me too many times.
by xorcist
3/16/2026 at 10:48:03 AM
Tried that last year and the problem was, the tickets themselves were broken down well enough to make sense to the naked eye. The second problem was that it was all for a legacy codebase where practically everybody who had built it over the years had left, so it was a real don't-know-what-you-don't-know situation.The second problem was always going to be there, even with human written tickets, but the problem really is that someone who relies on AI gets into the habit of treating the LLM as a more trustworthy colleague than anybody on the team, and mistakes start slipping in.
This is equally problematic for the engineers using AI to implement the features because they are no longer learning the quirks of the codebase and they are very quickly putting a hard ceiling on their career growth by virtue of not working with the team, not communicating that well, and not learning.
by ljm
3/16/2026 at 9:52:37 AM
Had a friend in a similar situation. She got a clearly LLM-generated ticket that didn't make any sense, and was directed to question anything about that ticket.Apparently, asking "why it doesn't make any sense" wasn't !polite~
If I remember correctly, she came up with ~200 questions for a 2-paged ticket. I helped write some of them, because for parts of the word salad you had to come up with the meaning first and then question the meaning.
You know what happened after she presented it? Ticket got rewritten as a job requirement, and now they seeking some poor sod to make it make sense lol
One had to be very unqualified to even get through the interview for that job without asking questions about the job, I feel. Truly, an AI-generated job for anyone who is new to the field
by lesostep
3/16/2026 at 10:37:37 AM
The first question should have been "Was this ticket AI-generated?".by user142
3/16/2026 at 10:54:33 AM
Oh, it was! But the guy that generated it insisted that he triple-checked the prose after, and it should be treated as typed by handI'm pretty sure it would be okay to stop at 5-10 questions, because it was clear he couldn't answer any. But my friend is from a hateful branch, and so she went for humiliation angle of asking for as much clarification as the ticket itself allowed
by lesostep
3/16/2026 at 11:21:30 AM
I have a very similar situation. Except it isn't even a ticket, just an export of a very long "conversation" with ChatGPT with a vague indication that this is what needs to be implemented. When questioned about it, the person insists they completely understood it before but just forgot after a few days. Sometimes the prompts are removed. Lots of contradictory material in it, some doesn't make sense even in context. Very difficult to figure out what is wanted.by brobdingnagians
3/16/2026 at 1:14:19 PM
> person insists they completely understood it before but just forgot after a few days.I don't doubt this, to be honest.
I have the feeling of learning a lot when coding with agents. New features, patterns, entire languages... It's very satisfactory asking questions and getting answers in as much detail as you want, with examples, etc.
Except I forget it all soon after. Because I didn't put the effort. Easy come easy goes .
by dalmo3