What is rich people collaborating called? You might claim that it is incompatible with capitalism but it’s just a fact of it. It’s easier for a small number of resourceful people (and capital gives them resources) to collaborate than for many people with not much more resources than their house/mortgage. This is what Adam Smith told us anyway.
Simply assuming that "every employer does it because theoretically it is easier for then to do so" to help your argument is rather self-serving, considering that labour unions are explicitly legal and exist.
Yes, as all of modern politics illustrates, once one has staked out a position on an issue it is far more important to stick to one's guns regardless of observations rather than update based on evidence.
You write a lot about AI. If this is in your free time why not just take a break? If you are ten times more productive, rest for at least twice as much. I don’t get it.
I assume that if you take a break you'll have missed a lot when you come back, at the pace things are evolving. Which is OK for some people like OP but maybe not for simonw
> I shipped more code last quarter than any quarter in my career. I also felt more drained than any quarter in my career. These two facts are not unrelated.
I’m gonna be generous (and try not to be pedantic) and assume that more-code means more bugfixes and features (and whatnot) and not more LOC.
Your manager has mandated X tokens a day or you feel you have to use it to keep up. Huh?
> I build AI agent infrastructure for a living. I'm one of the core maintainers of OpenFGA (CNCF Incubating), I built agentic-authz for agent authorization, I built Distill for context deduplication, I shipped MCP servers. I'm not someone who dabbles with AI on the side. I'm deep in it. I build the tools that other engineers use to make AI agents work in production.
Oh.
> If you're an engineer who uses AI daily - for design reviews, code generation, debugging, documentation, architecture decisions - and you've noticed that you're somehow more tired than before AI existed, this post is for you. You're not imagining it. You're not weak. You're experiencing something real that the industry is aggressively pretending doesn't exist. And if someone who builds agent infrastructure full-time can burn out on AI, it can happen to anyone.
This is what ChatGPT writes to me when I ask “but why is that the case”.
1. No, you are not wrong
2. You don’t have <bad character trait>
3. You are experiencing something real
> I want to talk about it honestly. Not the "AI is amazing and here's my workflow" version. The real version.
And it will be unfiltered. Raw. And we will conclude with how to go on with our Flintstone Engineering[2] but with some platitudes about self-care.
> The real skill ... It's knowing when to stop.
Stop prompting? Like, for
> Knowing when the AI output is good enough.
Ah. We do short prompting sessions instead.
> Knowing that your brain is a finite resource and that protecting it is not laziness - it's engineering.
Indeed it’s not this thing. It’s that—thing.
> AI is the most powerful tool I've ever used. It's also the most draining. Both things are true. The engineers who thrive in this era won't be the ones who use AI the most. They'll be the ones who use it the most wisely.
Of course we will keep using “the most powerful tool I’ve ever used”. But we will do it wisely.
What’s to worry about? You can use ChatGPT as your therapist now.
People can find other things to do than work for a wage. I don’t get what your original objection is about when you yourself work even though you don’t have to.
Some local volunteer organizations seem to only have people 60+ years of age.
There’s been a new category of writings the last year. The AI Inevitability Soothsaying.[1]
There’s talk of war in the state of Nationstan. There are two camps: those who think going to war is good and just, and those who think it is not practical. Clearly not everyone is pro-war. There are two camps. But the Overton Window is defined with the premise that invading another country is a right that Nationstate has and can act on. There are by definition (inside the Overton Window) no one who is anti-war on the principle that the state has no right to do it.[2]
Not all articles in this AI category are outright positive. They range from the euphoric to the slightly depressed. But they share the same premise of inevitability; even the most negative will say that, of course I use AI, I’m not some Luddite[3]! It is integral to my work now. But I don’t just let it run the whole game. I copy–paste with judicious care. blah blah blah
The point of any Overton Window is to simulate lively debate within the confines of the premises.
And it’s impressive how many aspects of “the human” (RIP?) it covers. Emotions, self-esteem, character, identity. We are not[4] marching into irrelevance without a good consoling. Consolation?
This was taken from the formerly famous (and controversial among Khmer Rouge obsessed) Chomsky, now living in infamy for obvious reasons.
[3] Many paragraphs could be written about this
[4] We. Well, maybe me and others, not necessarily you. Depending on your view of whether the elites or the Mensa+ engineers will inherit the machines.
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