<< Have you not interacted with a once star senior engineer who now operates at the level of a low-quality junior because they refuse to use AI?

I can honestly say no. I might question your premise a little. Lets hypothetically say you got Karpathy level senior; clearly a star and beam of sunshine in an otherwise dreary world. Is he now less of a star just because he won't use AI?

It is a real question, because if he is then the question becomes why.

Did he simply stop working as much? Or is he working the same amount, but it looks like he is doing less? If it merely looks like it, we may well have office situation on our hands, where rank and file may end up turning to management and asking themselves and the management one simple question:

What exactly it is you are doing here?

I know for a fact good management can enable some things, but I am starting to question the blind fervor I seem to see more of lately. If you can't motivate Karpathy or worse, you now are suddenly are unable to see his value, then maybe it is not Karpathy's fault.

<< This is a similar situation; they're not kicking out engineers for being 5% less productive, they're re-interviewing to find engineers who are 1/10th or 1/100th as productive as their peers

And this may be the big part: productivity. The problem is that productivity along the lines of silly metrics like: lines of code, agents commits per engineer are.. uhh.. not useless exactly, but, how do I phrase it a sensible way so that it reaches at least one stray manager that watches this conversation,

*really fucking dumb metric to treat as a measure stick.*

But who am I to judge.

<< but it's a necessary action

None of it is necessary. By definition it is all elective. That said, the nature of that relationship goes both ways and, I will be super subtle here, right now it is not the engineers, who can't do it all.

Quite the opposite, management could find itself in a pickle now, because it has neither skill to drive the development, practical knowledge that you only get from getting to close to the abyss, 'taste', theoretical foundation, curiosity or even basic exposure that would it let develop either of the previous facets.

Make no mistake, a lot of us choose to do deal with some of the idiocy for a stability gain. But, if there is none, why do I need you? I might as well try to strike out on my own and watch the AI coded towers fall ( being mildly dramatic for visual purposes; amusingly, I don't think I am that far off ) .

Proton's CEO Cancels AI 'Re-Interviews'