Code review is burning out your best engineers

AI-assisted coding is increasing pull-request volume and shifting engineers’ work from writing code to reviewing machine-generated changes, creating particular strain on experienced engineers responsible for maintaining quality. The author argues that AI-generated code is difficult to review because it can appear plausible while containing subtle errors, unnecessary abstractions, repository-incompatible conventions, hallucinated APIs, or copied patterns unsuited to the problem. Rather than asking reviewers to work harder or relying on additional AI reviewers, the proposed approach is to codify recurring feedback as automated rules and tests, retain prompts and agent interactions as structured acceptance criteria that explain intent and constraints, and recognize verification and guardrail-building as valuable engineering work. The piece warns that metrics centered on throughput, generated lines, and merged PRs can obscure the growing review burden and contribute to burnout and attrition among senior engineers, potentially leaving teams faster at shipping but less reliable.

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