This past week at work we had a server that kept getting overloaded because the customer started heavily using a feature that directly runs multiple files from the command line for each interaction. The feature was built long before I was there, and not thought out very well. Each files loads the same dependencies every time it’s run which takes ~5 seconds under heavily load x 50 scripts trying to run at the same time.

I pointed this out for the 3rd time that day while my coworker who has seniority was trying to figure out thy the server was stalling and kept just deploying updates that chatgpt suggested. Suggested to turn those scripts into reusable modules so we load the dependencies once and fork them to run in the background, but the coworkers robot said forking would actually be more resource intensive than running the scripts, which isn’t true if you think about it for half a second.

In the end, he said “Astra says we should upgrade the instance to <some aws one with crazy resources> and avoid updated the legacy script since they’re working as is”. My boss finally chimed in when he realized the coworker upgraded the instance from one that cost ~$200/m to one that would have cost ~$2,000 with like 60 cores and a gpu for some reason. His excuse was the robot suggested it and he stood by that decision.

Thanks for listening to me rant.

That man should be kept far away from anything involving little sisters.