For some time, the HR department at otiose corp. has kept a close watch on the rising trend in pull request volume across the engineering team. Industry heavyweights and Big Tech have loudly proclaimed that productivity has multiplied many times over since AI-assisted coding became mainstream. Because improvements in engineering productivity tend to show up first as an increase in PR volume and in the number of PRs deployed to production, PR count itself is the metric that deserves attention before anything else.

However, an increase in PR volume carries burnout risk for engineers and is a major source of friction between them. For this reason, HR has long treated engineering PR volume as an internal KPI of critical importance, with standing procedures to alert the organization whenever PR volume rises unnecessarily.

The concern was unfounded.PR volume declined slightly (94% of the prior fiscal year), while production PRs fell sharply (67%).

At this stage, the department has successfully reduced productivity to two-thirds of previous levels — an outcome worthy of recognition. Curious about the reason, we spoke with the manager of the department in question, Mr. Kwai Swan.

“Our department has treated AI-driven mental encroachment as a major point of contention. AI-assisted coding tends, without careful attention, to raise productivity. We have therefore taken measures including encouraging delayed PRs and a nap bonus. But what produced greater results than any of these was mandatory read-aloud before PR submission.

We required engineers to read each line written by AI aloud, one line at a time, and to think through its meaning in their heads. As a result, they not only began to notice AI misdirection and hallucination — many arrived at the conclusion that they should not use AI at all. This allowed us to reduce the weekly code output target per engineer to ten lines. Hardworking engineers in the company still read aloud diligently and continue to submit many PRs, so we intentionally delay our comments and decline to merge into production, thereby encouraging a decline in enthusiasm for work. He, too, has grown into a fine engineer.”

A junior engineer agreed.Junior engineer Ben McRae offered the following: “Using AI to code in my university CS program was boring as hell — not that I did anything myself — but the coding experience at otiose is the best. We ought to return to Jeff Atwood: ‘The best code is no code at all.’”

Sushi, ten days

The CEO has approved a special internal bonus for Mr. Kwai Swan and the engineers of his department, together with ten days’ worth of sushi.

Internal HR, otiose corp.