AI coding is becoming a workplace expectation, not a perk

From novelty to obligation

Vibe coding used to be something people showed off. Now it is increasingly treated as a necessary evil—or a reason to be suspicious. Developers are being asked to produce more work with AI tools to keep up with expectations and meet management targets.

Whether that makes work more efficient is disputed. Someone still has to review all that AI-generated code, and developers’ lives have not necessarily become easier. Meanwhile, a Claude subscription and an unfinished app can be enough for some people to consider themselves real programmers.

When management sets the pace

The results of AI-assisted coding can be impressive. But optimism about the tools is hard to separate from managers pushing employees to use them heavily.

Reports say Epic Games, the developer of Fortnite, went further and effectively required employees to code on “vibes.” Employees were told “no more handwritten code,” and that the game they were working on had to be “built with fully AI workflows.”

Epic was later mocked for boasting that it had “vibe-coded” its game launcher to make it faster than rival Steam.

I think the more revealing part of this story is not the joke’s insult. It is the gap between writing code quickly and taking responsibility for what ships. AI can reduce the time spent producing a first draft; the announcement says little about how much review that draft requires, or who bears the cost.

The joke that vibe coding should be renamed “cuck coding” is blunt, but its image is hard to miss: someone sits and watches while the model works. They also burn through tokens. If the tools become a workplace requirement, the question is whether they give developers more agency—or simply make them accountable for supervising more output.