{"id":289892,"date":"2026-02-18T11:57:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T11:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/289892\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T11:57:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T11:57:10","slug":"im-an-amazon-tech-lead-who-vibe-codes-daily-its-hard-to-resist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/289892\/","title":{"rendered":"I&#8217;m an Amazon Tech Lead Who Vibe Codes Daily. It&#8217;s Hard to Resist."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Anni Chen, who has worked at Amazon for about three-and-a-half years. It has been edited for length and clarity. Business Insider has verified her employment history.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m a tech lead at Amazon responsible for deploying large-scale generative AI and LLM-driven systems. I focus on what we call memory, which powers personalization in generative AI experiences across Amazon.<\/p>\n<p>I <a target=\"_self\" class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/clawdbot-creator-vibe-coding-rabbit-hole-obsessed-openclaw-peter-steinberger-2026-2\" data-track-click=\"{&quot;element_name&quot;:&quot;body_link&quot;,&quot;event&quot;:&quot;tout_click&quot;,&quot;index&quot;:&quot;bi_value_unassigned&quot;,&quot;product_field&quot;:&quot;bi_value_unassigned&quot;}\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">vibe code every day<\/a>. It&#8217;s definitely a productivity boost.<\/p>\n<p>For debugging or small tasks, I sometimes treat it like a lottery. Maybe it will produce something amazing. Sometimes, it does.<\/p>\n<p>Vibe coding helps me brainstorm what the solution could look like, even if I don&#8217;t adopt the final solution it proposes. Vibe coding also speeds up the time spent rewriting code when you realize a requirement wasn&#8217;t covered.<\/p>\n<p>                          <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"lazy-image author-image\" viewbox=\"0 0 1 1\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/67bfbe5469253ccddf97b897.jpeg\" alt=\"Chong Ming Lee, Junior News Reporter at Business Insider's Singapore bureau.\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"body-sm-subtle body\">\n                          Every time Lee Chong Ming publishes a story, you\u2019ll get an alert straight to your inbox!\n                        <\/p>\n<p class=\"body-sm-subtle body-sm\">\n                          Stay connected to Lee Chong Ming and get more of their work as it publishes.\n                        <\/p>\n<p>            Vibe coding is faster, even with double-checking<\/p>\n<p>When I vibe code, it&#8217;s always iterative. I give it the basic information it needs, it produces a version, then I check it \u2014 similar to a code review with coworkers. I might say, &#8220;You missed this part&#8221; or &#8220;You missed that part.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The AI sometimes <a target=\"_self\" class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/meta-product-manager-vibe-coding-superpowers-non-technical-builder-2026-1\" data-track-click=\"{&quot;element_name&quot;:&quot;body_link&quot;,&quot;event&quot;:&quot;tout_click&quot;,&quot;index&quot;:&quot;bi_value_unassigned&quot;,&quot;product_field&quot;:&quot;bi_value_unassigned&quot;}\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">fixes issues<\/a> but introduces something new. You have to keep an eye on it.<\/p>\n<p>For complex tasks, you need more double-checking. But even with the extra checking, it&#8217;s still faster.<\/p>\n<p>I was working with a partner team and ran into complex locking issues. Without an LLM, I might have taken a day to research possible solutions, especially since it was relatively new to me.<\/p>\n<p>Within 15 minutes, I brainstormed with the LLM about possible solutions. I pointed out weaknesses in its suggestions and asked it to improve them. In 15 minutes, I had a proposal to send to the team.<\/p>\n<p>Technical knowledge helps \u2014 you know what&#8217;s a good solution and what&#8217;s not. You know what tastes good, but you don&#8217;t know what dishes are available. The LLM brings up all the dishes, and you choose.<\/p>\n<p>Vibe coding for scale might not work, and technical knowledge still matters<\/p>\n<p>Still, I&#8217;m hesitant to use vibe coding directly in production.<\/p>\n<p>LLMs are very good at solving problems, but sometimes they make implicit assumptions you don&#8217;t realize they&#8217;re making. If you don&#8217;t tell it explicitly, for example, that something needs to work for multi-threading, it might just produce the minimum version that works, but when it&#8217;s large-scale or productionized, it could crash.<\/p>\n<p>Non-technical builders could tell an LLM to build something that handles millions of users. But if you have zero technical knowledge, it&#8217;s hard to anticipate constraints upfront. If you don&#8217;t tell the model the implicit assumptions, it won&#8217;t respect those constraints. Later, you&#8217;ll <a target=\"_self\" class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/claude-code-creator-vibe-coding-limits-boris-cherny-anthropic-2025-12\" data-track-click=\"{&quot;element_name&quot;:&quot;body_link&quot;,&quot;event&quot;:&quot;tout_click&quot;,&quot;index&quot;:&quot;bi_value_unassigned&quot;,&quot;product_field&quot;:&quot;bi_value_unassigned&quot;}\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">run into problems<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_self\" class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/non-technical-people-vibecoding-lessons-ai-apps-2025-9\" data-track-click=\"{&quot;element_name&quot;:&quot;body_link&quot;,&quot;event&quot;:&quot;tout_click&quot;,&quot;index&quot;:&quot;bi_value_unassigned&quot;,&quot;product_field&quot;:&quot;bi_value_unassigned&quot;}\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Non-technical people<\/a> might use the LLM to fix issues reactively. But technical people can anticipate constraints proactively and prevent problems in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>Technical people also understand vibe-coded content better, and they&#8217;re in a better position to understand what LLMs are good at and not good at. For example, knowing how they&#8217;re trained and why they&#8217;re weaker at certain tasks like math. That understanding helps you master them as tools.<\/p>\n<p>When you scale to one million or 100 million customers, systems need to be coded differently to handle that scale.<\/p>\n<p>Vibe coding is hard to resist<\/p>\n<p>Initially, leadership pushed vibe coding. Our team is a GenAI team, so we were naturally more receptive. In non-GenAI teams, engineers initially reacted like, &#8220;No, I won&#8217;t let AI do my job. I don&#8217;t trust AI-generated code.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>After people tried it, <a target=\"_self\" class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/microsoft-ai-ceo-vibe-coding-software-replace-apps-mustafa-suleyman-2026-2\" data-track-click=\"{&quot;element_name&quot;:&quot;body_link&quot;,&quot;event&quot;:&quot;tout_click&quot;,&quot;index&quot;:&quot;bi_value_unassigned&quot;,&quot;product_field&quot;:&quot;bi_value_unassigned&quot;}\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">attitudes shifted<\/a>. People realized it&#8217;s pretty good sometimes. Now it&#8217;s more widely adopted.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s very hard to <a target=\"_self\" class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/google-ai-teach-teenagers-vibe-coding-kids-family-tech-2026-2\" data-track-click=\"{&quot;element_name&quot;:&quot;body_link&quot;,&quot;event&quot;:&quot;tout_click&quot;,&quot;index&quot;:&quot;bi_value_unassigned&quot;,&quot;product_field&quot;:&quot;bi_value_unassigned&quot;}\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">resist vibe coding <\/a>nowadays. If you&#8217;re an employee, leadership sees the productivity boost and will encourage you to use it.<\/p>\n<p>When your peers are using it and coding faster, it&#8217;s hard to resist. If you can&#8217;t keep up with the speed, it becomes difficult to collaborate.<\/p>\n<p>Even if you resist, you still consume AI passively. AI comments are embedded in code reviews. So even if you don&#8217;t vibe code directly, you&#8217;re still interacting with AI outputs.<\/p>\n<p>Do you have a story to share about vibe coding? Contact this reporter at <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/mailto:cmlee@businessinsider.com\" data-track-click=\"{&quot;click_type&quot;:&quot;other&quot;,&quot;element_name&quot;:&quot;body_link&quot;,&quot;event&quot;:&quot;outbound_click&quot;}\" rel=\" nofollow noopener\">cmlee@businessinsider.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Anni Chen, who has worked at Amazon for about&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289893,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,111,139,69,145],"class_list":{"0":"post-289892","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}