Amazon's HR chief built 100,000 lines of code after not programming for 25 years. 1,500 non-technical employees followed. This is not an Amazon story. This is an everywhere story that's about six months behind at most companies. AI dropped the barrier to building software low enough that anyone with a real problem and a weekend can produce something that works. That's the good news. The bad news is "works" and "secure, maintainable, and architecturally sound" are very different things. Engineering teams have two options. Try to stop it. Lose. The tools are already accessible and the capability is already in the building. Build the platform that makes doing it safely easier than doing it dangerously. Win. The shadow IT sprawl is coming either way. The only variable is whether IT is involved in shaping it before the first incident or called in to clean it up after.

What's your organization actually doing about citizen development right now?

EDR + ThreatLocker/AppLocker

sounds like a job security for me

also higher "cleanup" fee

Nothing. Nobody's doing that.

why is the head of HR writing software? where does that fall in their job description?

We had one of those. The guy shared the news of what he made on one of the meetings.
I DMem him about security.
I told him that we can host it and make it work securely, but he has to get company owners permission, then give the code into mine or some programmer hands so it can be properly maintained and secured.
No protests, he contacted the owners, got approval and now it is properly maintained and secured.

If you don't want it to become shadow IT you have to make surfacing those and implementing them a process.

This is what I'm hoping for. We've seen the cycle from in-house to subcontractors to back again, I think the same will start to happen with AI, be that through expensive tokens or AI implemented 'good ideas' that now needs replacing or cleaning up. I'm hoping skilled IT humans will be in demand once again.

I can't be a pessimist 24/7, especially coming back into the job market soon 🙃

We got some former Department Manager writing fleet Management Software with chatGPT for his Team because He wanted to have a Central Management Platform for it
When I heard of that I Had to think about "who will Support that If He doesnt even know what His Software is really doing or rather how it is built" He has a Background in Sales and no ties to IT at all

It's Microsoft Access all over again but on a larger scale.

Back when I started in the early 2000s everyone was running projects to clean up applications built by secretaries and economists using Access that had become business critical.

Give it five to ten years and we'll be doing the same with vibecoded stuff.

That said, I'm not sure it's entirely a bad thing. You have people all over the place with domain specific knowledge that know of problems and can think of solutions that either IT is not aware of or they can't get a budget for. A vibecoded application can act as a pretty good requirement document as well as a POC I think, cutting the cost and time of implementation somewhat.

Or, AI improves and AI will rewrite these applications into something more sustainable and secure.

But it solves the problem of letting people who know their field or the business try stuff out and test solutions to problems without needing to launch an entire project and try to get time from IT, Infosec and developers. The benefit is it allows faster innovation and problemsolving.

Linkedin buzzword bullshit. Non technical employees are not building software

My opinion is that if you are not a doctor - you cannot perform operations. And if you are not IT, you have no place in software development or any other part of IT. People who think that they “know it all” without actually knowing anything bring far more issues, troubles and compliance problems than anything positive.

IT should become regulated profession. Not only the private information of people is at stake, but sometimes lives of people.

This sounds like a total headfuck.

How is the software transitioned to production? Who maintains it? Patches it? Supports it? Who endorsed the architecture? Who tests it? Certified test report? Does it align to enterprise standards? Requirements? Non functional requirements? Enhancements? UX? Release management? Security e.g pen testing?

This is the thing that most non IT people don’t understand. There’s so much more to software than ‘just code’. Multiple experts are involved in its design and build. Even then, someone has to support it, and the business is going to need enhancements and changes as business needs evolve

Using an agent to write code and then forcing it onto the business isn’t that different to introducing something that the boss’ 15 year wrote. It isn’t belong before the IT manager is scratching their head trying to work out why the bespoke Delphi/Foxpro/VB/Perl/PHP app isnt working.

Now, you can add the plethora of AI written apps to that list ;)

we don't develop software and none of us have the knowledge.
I have basics understandings of c++ some windows batch and almost none-existing knowledge of powershell, if i do develop something with AI it's something only i will use