Over the past three years, the pace of advancement in LLM-based coding assistant tools has been staggering.
Watching this evolution, clients build up high expectations: "Now that we have AI, developers will no longer write sloppy code," or "Anyone will be able to build high-quality software."
In other words, many believe that product quality will rise in direct proportion to AI advancement, but reality paints a different picture. No matter how advanced AI becomes, developers who cut corners simply find more efficient ways to cut corners.
There are several theories attempting to explain this, but here I will analyze the root cause from my own perspective.
It begins with the premise that no matter how advanced AI becomes, it cannot alter human nature.
And what is that human nature? It is the entirely natural instinct to minimize effort while maximizing earnings.
If client satisfaction remains the same whether one works one hour, two hours, or three hours, most people will naturally choose to work just one hour. They do only the bare minimum required.
This is possible because the correlation between subjective client satisfaction and actual product quality is far weaker than one might think.
Let me share a real-world example. In 2025, I received a client request. They had built a course reservation platform as a website, and because most of the development was reportedly finished, they asked me to handle the final wrap-up. However, when I conducted actual testing, even critically essential features like payment processing were improperly implemented. Payments were not wrapped in database transactions, meaning that if an error occurred mid-payment, data in the database could be left in an incomplete, corrupted state. Furthermore, race conditions that occur when multiple users attempt to book the single remaining seat simultaneously were unhandled, risking overbooking beyond capacity. A refund feature was not implemented at all.
The organization had no dedicated QA team; instead, non-technical staff tested the code produced by the outsourced developer. The level of testing was so inadequate that they couldn't even determine whether basic features were functioning properly. In their perception, the project was about 95% complete, but when I tested it, less than 70% was actually implemented.
There are primarily two reasons why developers cut corners like this. The first is a lack of foundational engineering knowledge, where the developer is simply unaware that such granular details need to be accounted for. In this case, there is no malicious intent. The second reason is the critical one: when the developer knows full well that these fine details must be addressed, yet deliberately chooses not to build them.
In other words, when lowering delivery completeness poses no risk to reputation and causes no loss in income, most developers make the highly rational calculation that cutting corners is advantageous. This is only natural.
Some might naively think, "Isn't that just a simple matter of typing a few prompts into AI? Why wouldn't someone do even that?" But even typing prompts consumes time and energy, and figuring out what inputs to feed into a prompt can be a stressful task that imposes considerable cognitive load. This is especially true for those who are not accustomed to logical, long-form typing in their daily routine.
Moreover, the degree to which a developer cuts corners depends heavily on the client's caliber. If the client is a tech novice with no development background or appears to test carelessly, nine times out of ten the developer will cut corners accordingly. They build just enough for the surface to appear functional, right at the threshold where the client won't notice. Conversely, if the client is deemed technically knowledgeable or meticulous with testing, the developer keeps development tight. Quality fluctuates wildly depending on who the developer is dealing with.
Someone might counter: "Isn't that just your own conjecture and hypothesis? How do you know that for sure?" Well, at least every single one of my clients went through this. Without exception, this was the case for clients who initially hired other developers before coming to me. And frankly, even I occasionally feel that temptation, so how could other developers be any different?
This applies not only to outsourced development but also to full-time employees at a company. Consider this scenario: a developer implements code and belatedly realizes that building it this way might cause problems down the road. However, the issue won't manifest immediately; it will take at least a year to surface. While resolving it now is the best choice, spending the time and mental energy to fix it is tedious, and above all, the developer doesn't expect to still be at the company a year from now. In such situations, most developers choose to let it slide. It's not because the developer is an inherently bad person; most people naturally make this choice because they calculate that investing time and energy right now yields no immediate gain and entails no immediate loss.
If this is true for full-time employees, it is far more prevalent among freelancers. In most cases, once the project is done, they will never see each other again. And if it is a long-term client, it's even better for them, because when problems crop up long after the fact, they can charge additional fees under the guise of maintenance.
This is a facet of human nature that will never change whether GPT-5.6 or GPT-56 arrives, or until the end of the world: the instinct to choose less work when the earnings remain identical.
Therefore, clients must understand that even if a developer has high review ratings, those ratings do not necessarily correlate with product quality. While a higher rating is certainly preferable to a lower one, high ratings alone offer no guarantee of peace of mind.
What aspects of a developer should you look for then? I believe there are two key aspects. First is disposition. Some people are inherently meticulous by nature. For them, letting something pass without thorough verification goes against their very grain. Regardless of whether it benefits or harms them, their personality simply doesn't allow them to cut corners. Entrusting work to such individuals is ideal. The only way to identify this disposition is through direct, in-depth conversation.
The second is what can be called "developer pride"—those who have a stubborn commitment to the craft and demand high quality in the software they build. When people take genuine pride in being a developer, producing shoddy software causes severe cognitive dissonance, making them far less likely to resort to development shortcuts. Gauging whether someone has this mindset also requires speaking with them directly.
In conclusion, I believe a developer's disposition and character traits are what ultimately determine whether they will see a project through with meticulous care. Whether they have 10 or 20 years of experience provides no clue as to whether they will truly finish the job properly.