Billion-dollar company walked back all-in AI coding after 6 months, admits no real productivity gains
jmclondon97 · reddit · 2026-09-13
An engineer describes their multi-billion-dollar company's all-in AI coding experiment:
- Six months ago they went all in: unlimited Claude access, engineers praised for 40k+ line merge requests, managers rating anyone not doing 100% agentic coding low, and some pushing to skip code review entirely (a "Gas Town" end-to-end agent setup).
- In the last few weeks, leadership admitted in a company-wide meeting there were no real productivity gains, engineers are still needed, and they no longer want 40k+ line merges or skipped reviews.
- Zero layoffs in over a year; they're actively hiring juniors but struggle because most new grads can't code.
Author's takeaway: software engineering isn't dead — most people claiming so have never been engineers.
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