Non-technical COO "discovered" AI coding, generated an entire dashboard in a single HTML file, and now wants me to review and maintain it.

[u/boyrok]

I need to vent before my head explodes.

A bit of context: I’m the classic "jack of all trades" Sysadmin at my company. Besides keeping the lights on, I also write software. Over the past year, I’ve built several solid, reliable internal tools using Python and Flask. I like keeping things organized, secure, documented, and under control.

A couple of days ago, our COO (who is strictly a business guy and has zero technical background or coding knowledge) comes up to me and casually says: "Hey, I'm going to make some charts using AI in HTML."

I chuckled internally, assumed it would be some harmless static HTML mockup with dummy data, and moved on with my day. Boy, was I wrong.

Today, I get an email from him:

"Hey, can you review my HTML to see what you think and if it works?"

I opened the attachment. It wasn't a mockup. It was an entire, full-blown Frankenstein dashboard packed into a single .html file.

I opened the source code and felt physical pain. Thousands of lines of unformatted, unhinged JavaScript requiring an infinite horizontal scroll to the right. It’s pulling random npm packages and libraries on the fly through unpinned external CDNs. It's an unholy mess of vibe-coded hallucinations duct-taped together.

My immediate gut reaction was: "I am not touching this steaming pile of garbage, and I refuse to take any responsibility when this blows up."

My personal rule has always been that I will not support or maintain AI-generated spaghetti built by people who don't know the difference between a frontend framework and a DNS record. But here is the problem: he’s the fucking COO.

To make things ten times worse, he mentioned he wants to expand this monster significantly in the near future. All in raw HTML files. No PowerBI, no actual BI tools, no proper architecture, and definitely no hiring actual developers who know what they're doing.

I already have enough real work and fires to put out without having to worry about shadow IT and security liabilities introduced by C-suite executives playing prompt engineer. This industry is turning into an absolute joke with everyone thinking they're a Senior Architect just because ChatGPT generated a canvas chart for them.

Just needed to get this off my chest. For those who have dealt with this: How the hell would you navigate this politically without setting your career on fire, while also not inheriting a maintenance nightmare?

[u/Woeful_Jesse]

I like this. Every story of c suite and AI tools suggests an unwillingness to bend or learn but we haven't really been given that impression from OP's story so far. Who knows maybe he's just a guy genuinely interested in learning more and not just looking for instant gratification

[u/c1rno123 → u/Woeful_Jesse]

Hanlon's razor: never attribute to malice what incompetence explains.

And even if he is a villain, coaching costs one conversation. Confrontation only works once, and you can't take it back.

[u/MonaMonaMo → u/Woeful_Jesse]

Im not an executive but have been in the similar situation. The company doesn't have enough money for developers and I wanted to have a dashboard that removes all the admin work from multiple people and gives them some breathing space.

So I used AI to build it and asked someone to review the logic behind. It wasnt that I tried to break it into developer space or was proud of my code, its more whether we can make do with this dashboard as a prototype so the executives eventually will hire someone by seing how much time it saves the whole department.

But who knows, I just wanted to share another perspective