Isabela McLenachen

lead software engineer @disney. ❤️ mechanical keyboards ⌨️. 🇧🇷 she/her

[Isabela McLenachen @isabelacmor]

Therapist: and what do we do when we feel sad?

Me: buy mechanical keyboards

Therapist: no

[Isabela McLenachen @isabelacmor]

@sherif_yousra @g2i_co @gabegreenberg Y’all rock! 💕

[Isabela McLenachen @isabelacmor]

Thanks to @g2i_co and @gabegreenberg, I’m a certified vibe killer now 😎

[Isabela McLenachen @isabelacmor]

@basicBrogrammer @gabegreenberg @g2i_co

[Isabela McLenachen @isabelacmor]

@tedmirra @g2i_co @gabegreenberg thank you! It’s been a lot of work. but she’s finally getting a tune next week!

[Isabela McLenachen @isabelacmor]

@eddiejaoude @g2i_co @gabegreenberg Yes a Street Triple! (plus a cruiser in the garage 😅)

[Isabela McLenachen @isabelacmor]

@dominos I saw the app (at least) was reverted to the old experience and I’m happy to report I was able to order my Friday night pizza last week 🎉

[Isabela McLenachen @isabelacmor]

dang @dominos really nerfed their app and mobile site. Performance is terrible (multiple minutes waiting for a menu to load to for an item to get added to the cart) and tooons of errors.

Surely they’ve seen a drop in orders??

[Isabela McLenachen @isabelacmor]

This is my issue with AI.

Is it efficient? Mostly, if you know how to use it.

Does it make my work feel meaningless and like I’m babysitting an agent just to say “Yes, and don’t ask me again for this command”? Absolutely.

Zero sense of accomplishment or pride in “my work”

[Vic 🌮 @VicVijayakumar]

I'm now able to tell my agent “we are going to work on JIRA-1234” and it goes and pulls down the task, makes me a plan, I say yeah okay that looks good, and it generates the commit.

I run an AI review from a different session, it finds 4 issues of varying priorities, I paste it to my original agent and say validate these findings and fix them if necessary, it creates a fix, I run another review, no more high priority issues found. I open up the code in an IDE to go over it before pushing it up for human review. Looks fine I guess, nothing crazy. I try to understand everything before I push it up for review because if this breaks, it's still my name on it. I say why did you make this one change, it gives me a reasonable explanation for why.

It says something codebaity like "if you want I can suggest 2 more ways you could really tighten up this work to prevent some rare but possible regressions". I'm smart enough to not fall for it.

Code pushed up, task moved to in-review. I didn't write any of it, this is not my accomplishment. Users won't care who wrote it if it works. A lot done in 20 mins but it felt soulless.

[Isabela McLenachen @isabelacmor]

The site across all devices is broken too. So I gave up and am making my own pizza. jfc @dominos what’s a bummer to my carb girl summer

[Isabela McLenachen @isabelacmor]

Seriously I can’t for the life of me place an order.

[Isabela McLenachen @isabelacmor]

@MichelleBakels SERIOUS fomo not being there this year 🫠

[Isabela McLenachen @isabelacmor]

@MichelleBakels Not sure exactly what teams, but Disney has SWE internships 😇

[Isabela McLenachen @isabelacmor]

That’s not to say that coding outside of work is bad. In fact, I do think it’s beneficial for junior folks who want to grow quickly. But engineering can also “just be a job”.

[Isabela McLenachen @isabelacmor]

Yearly reminder that you don’t have to make tech your life to be a good engineer.

I’m very transparent with my team that I don’t touch a computer outside of working hours. I purposefully choose hobbies that aren’t digital.

[Isabela McLenachen @isabelacmor]

Happy Thanksgiving! Sorry I’ve been MIA - busy rebuilding a Miata we found abandoned at a barn.

[Isabela McLenachen @isabelacmor]

@VicVijayakumar Respectfully I simply pretend my ET coworkers don’t exist after 1pm PT unless they message me first.

[Isabela McLenachen @isabelacmor]

@MichelleBakels I was wearing my @ReactMiamiConf shift on @CascadiaJS day 1!

[Isabela McLenachen @isabelacmor]

@VicVijayakumar I’ve been rucking at my gym for a couple years now. Started at 10 lbs and I’m up to 30 now. It makes regular walking feel like a breeze!

[Isabela McLenachen @isabelacmor]

I’ll be doing a lightning talk at @CascadiaJS this year on becoming a great code reviewer! Super excited to be back and even more excited to run into old and new friends 💕

hmu if you’ll be there! I’m local to Seattle, so happy to meet up early, give recs, etc ☺️

[Isabela McLenachen @isabelacmor]

@VicVijayakumar Fidelity is absolutely amazing. I’ve been with them for over a decade, no regrets. Every other platform (that I’ve been forced to use bc employers) has made me want to claw my eyes out.