Exactly what I posted as well!

100% agree. The key difference now though is that it's no longer 'swim or sink immediately' situation - which used to be a forcing function against intellectual laziness where it was a choice.

Many people by now have probably seen a teammate who used to be a good SWE, now spamming slop code that puts all the real work on the reviewer. That's the "second group."

Tell them no. Thats what I do. I have rejected multiple PRs that were too large and lacked proper design or alignment upfront. With code being so cheap, rejecting it should be just as cheaper. Set cultural standards that devs need to review their code before asking for reviews. Etc etc

I don't think it has the effect you think it has. No-one takes a rejection personally anymore since it's so easy to just tell an AI to fix the comments. So a rejection does not make them rethink like it would have back in the day.

Even back in the day, code review was often more of a helping exercise than gatekeeping. You can only gatekeep so much before they find someone who doesn't. Which is actually a good thing because a lot of people are pedantic about code in ways that also contradict other reviewers, but in my case I just want it to not do clearly wrong things.

I don’t just reject it. I talk to them like a human and peer and tell them what to do better.

Of course this has to be done by people with seniority who are respected. If you don’t have that you’re in a loosing battle.

> Same people, new tool.

the tool works better than stackoverflow, and i expect it eventually will improve enough that such people become as "productive" as the intelligent and conscientious engineer today.

Do you use AI? For what?