There’s a term (and practice) that’s been floating around the tech/software development world this year that has given me pause: vibe coding.
Coined by computer scientist Andrej Karpathy in February 2025, it describes a workflow where developers stop writing code line-by-line and instead guide AI to generate, refine, and build applications through conversational prompts. (This is not even AI-assisted; this is the LLM solely doing all the work). The developer focuses on the big picture – the what – while AI handles the how. As Karpathy put it: they “fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists.”
Bottom line – it’s all about prioritizing experimentation first…well before refining structure or thinking about performance. Advocates of vibe coding say that it allows even amateur programmers to produce software without the extensive training and skills required for software engineering. Critics point out a lack of accountability, maintainability, and the increased risk of introducing security vulnerabilities in the resulting software.
Wild, right?
And yet… weirdly familiar.
Got That Sunshine in my Pocket
If we’re being honest, a lot of HR has long been practiced this way. Not with AI assistants (which in some cases might be better) but with something far less sophisticated: gut instinct, borrowed templates, and a whole lot of winging it.
It’s Vibe HR – where decisions are based on “what feels right,” and no one’s entirely sure what’s holding the infrastructure together. (note: it’s often duct tape and hope).
In the coding world, vibe coding works like this: you tell a large language model (LLM) what you want (“create a login page”), it generates the code, you test it, tweak it, and roll it out – sometimes without fully understanding what’s under the hood. It’s fast. It’s experimental. And when it works it’s probably pretty magical.
Vibe HR operates on a similar principle, except instead of CoPilot or ChatGPT or Claude doing the heavy lifting, it’s:
- Distributing the employee handbook you copied from another company and lightly customized
- Using the performance review template you found on a SHRM forum
- Your “Let’s just see how this plays out” approach to conflict resolution
- Gut-level decision-making dressed up as “judgment calls”
This comes to life when you describe a problem in broad strokes (“we need better culture!!”), someone generates a solution (pizza Fridays!), and you roll it out without really stress-testing whether it works or if anyone even wants it.
The code (or in this case, the HR infrastructure) grows beyond usual comprehension until it either breaks, everyone starts to work around it, or you just keep trying random changes until the problem goes away or you’re tired of it and leave it as is.
Sound familiar?
The Seductive Appeal of Vibe HR
The thing about vibe HR is that it’s fun at first. It gives you permission to experiment and move fast, and you can try things without treating every decision like it’s destined for an employment lawsuit. In a world where HR is buried in compliance, checklists, and the weight of “how we’ve always done it,” vibe HR whispers: Just play.
It can feel liberating to be scrappy and creative, and for small teams or startups operating at warp speed, it can genuinely work – for a while. But just like vibe coding, the honeymoon doesn’t last forever.
The problem with vibe HR isn’t the experimentation. It’s what happens when those experiments become permanent infrastructure – and no one documented how they work or why they were built that way in the first place.
Suddenly, you’re six months in and:
- The performance review process you “vibed” together has inconsistent criteria across departments
- The flexible work policy sounds great in theory but is being applied completely differently by three different managers
- That culture initiative? No one remembers who owns it or what success looks like
- The compensation structure was built on vibes and a prayer, and now you’ve got equity issues you can’t explain
The chaos that made it feel innovative starts turning into a debt and you’re at real risk of losing understating of your own systems.
The Risk with No Reward
One of the biggest criticisms of vibe coding is that developers can end up shipping code they don’t fully comprehend. They trust the AI. They test that it works. But if something breaks – or worse, if there’s a security vulnerability buried in there – they’re stuck. Vibe HR carries the same risk.
When you copy-paste a harassment policy from another company without adapting it to your culture, you’re shipping untrusted code. When you roll out a “flexible work arrangement” without defining what flexibility means, you’re building on vibes instead of structure. When you make exceptions “just this once” without documenting why or setting precedent, you’re creating logic no one can follow later.
And just like in coding, the danger isn’t just that things break. It’s that when they do, no one knows how to fix them – because no one understood how they worked in the first place.
Employment investigations become archaeological digs. (“Why did we approve that leave request differently?”) Compliance audits turn into scrambles. (“Wait, are we tracking that?”) And employees? They lose trust – because inconsistency feels like favoritism, and favoritism feels like injustice.
The Vibe HR Hangover
What started as empowerment and agility now feels like chaos. Managers are confused and employees are frustrated, and you – the HR pro trying to hold it all together – are exhausted from patching holes and fielding questions you can’t confidently answer. This is what developers are calling the “vibe coding hangover.” And HR is no stranger to it.
You wanted to move fast and innovate but instead you’re drowning in the technical debt of decisions made without foundations. The playful “let’s try this!” energy has morphed into “oh God, what did we do?” The lesson isn’t that vibe HR is inherently bad. – it’s that vibes alone aren’t sustainable.
What Vibe HR Gets Right (and How to Keep It)
There are things vibe HR gets right:
- Speed. Sometimes you need to move quickly – especially in small or growing organizations where waiting for perfect processes means missing the moment entirely.
- Creativity. Rigid, bureaucratic HR kills innovation. Vibe HR reminds us that there’s value in experimentation, in trying things that feel human instead of sterile.
- Accessibility. Just like vibe coding democratizes software development, vibe HR can democratize decision-making – involving employees, adapting in real time, and building systems that feel responsive instead of top-down.
- The key is knowing when you’re prototyping versus when you’re building something that needs to last.
The Path Forward
The antidote to vibe HR isn’t rigid bureaucracy. It’s intentional structure.
Think of it this way: vibe coding works best when it’s used for rapid prototyping – “throwaway weekend projects,” as Karpathy called them. But when it’s time to ship something into production, professional developers review, test, and document the code. They make sure they understand it.
The same applies to HR.
Use Vibe HR for exploration:
- Pilot programs with small teams
- Experimental culture initiatives
- Testing new communication approaches
- Rapid response to emerging needs
But apply rigor before you scale:
- Document the logic behind decisions
- Ensure consistency in how policies are applied
- Test for unintended consequences (especially around equity and fairness)
- Build feedback loops so you can iterate based on real impact, not assumptions
You need foundations, clarity and systems that people can understand, trust, and rely on when things get hard. But you also don’t need to treat every line of your handbook like it’s destined for a Supreme Court review. Sometimes, good enough is good enough – as long as you’re clear about what you’re building and why.
The future of HR isn’t about choosing between innovation and stability. It’s about learning when to lean into the vibes and when to pause and build something solid.
Some decisions need rigor:
- Compensation structures
- Performance evaluation frameworks
- Leave and accommodation policies
- Anything involving legal compliance or equity
Other decisions can stay loose:
- Communication tone and style
- Recognition approaches
- Team rituals and culture experiments
- Pilot programs with built-in off-ramps
The magic happens when you can toggle between the two – when you have the discernment to know what needs a blueprint and what just needs a green light. And honestly? That discernment is what separates Great HR from Vibe HR.
The Real Lesson
Vibe coding turned heads because it was liberating. It gave developers permission to play again and to create without overthinking every line. Nine months later, the hype has cooled – not because the concept was wrong, but because people learned that vibes need guardrails too.
We spent decades building rigid, soulless systems that treated people like widgets. Vibe HR feels like what is needed doesn’t it? A swing back toward humanity, creativity, and speed? It’s a fantastic impulse; we just need to be thoughtful about how we channel this impulse because the best HR isn’t purely vibes or purely structure. It’s both.
It’s knowing when to experiment and when to document. When to move fast and when to slow down. When to trust your gut and when to stress-test your assumptions. It’s being agile without being reckless, human without being chaotic, and creative without losing accountability.
An you know what? That’s real HR – built with intention, guided by values, and grounded in the understanding that people deserve systems they can trust.
So by all means: embrace the vibes. Experiment. Play. Build something scrappy and see if it works. Just don’t forget that the code exists. Because when it breaks – and it will – you’re going to need to know how to fix it.
