Are you tired too in this AI era?

Are you tired too in this AI era?

73 pointsby mellosty141 comments

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  • When we get good at something, it results in flow state, but it also means that was mechanizable in a way and now AI is taking that away. So we are always grappling with the new and effortful. And the context switching, jeez. We need entirely new visualizations of work flow that recognizes we are now doing more, and in parallel. Wonder if this is how air traffic control people feel.
  • Enforcing boundaries and saying no have gotten more important than ever, now that violation of either is automated at superhuman speeds.

    FWIW, there might be a silver lining in this. A lot of dysfunction in the current state of tech can (IMO) be traced back to violation of boundaries. This might lead to a cultural shift. Though, that might also just be wishful thinking on my part.

    ___

    > I would love to hear your tips, but still be relevant in this AI era, so my boss does not fire me.

    If your boss fires you because you didn't multiply your performance by doing more work in the same time (without your compensation changing), that's not your fault but simply your employer trying to squeeze you harder and that not working out.

    Always keep that in mind in these discussions.

    Which isn't to say that you should not improve efficiency and all, but it needs to be organic. If something inorganic is asked, then the (moral) failure is on the asker and not the askee.

  • My entire life, I have found meaning in solving problems with code. With AI, this is no longer competitive. Now I develop more than ever and am more productive than ever, but it still doesn't feel as rewarding. I would like to go back.
  • I am surprised of how many people here are claiming they review the results of multiple agents working on different prs at the same time constantly context switching between them.

    I just focus on one, I use on purpose very short interactions because I want to check every single function directly and not a whole 300lines file or 2000lines pr just at the end. Probably I am going slower than most of you but I feel I retain the knowledge of my codebase almost as good as when I was the one writing the code directly, and my PRs get very few review comments

    What get me tired the most is when people submit to me a pr to review and I see immediately they full vibe coded it and just delegate to me the actual hard work of correcting the nonsense written in it with a single prompt without interactions. The worst is when you ask someone why they implemented something that way and they answer with "well calude made it, I really didn't think about it, now that I read it it makes no sense indeed"

  • I am vey tired. I maintain Pinggy - my first bootstrapped startup and building Lumirank , my next one. But every day is a struggle of coping up with what is new and what 20 more competitors that corpped up yesterday are up to. Millions of lines of codes being written every day, I can not merge without knowing the overall architecture and flow. But I can't rest. Everyone is running.

    Sometimes I feel please someone give me a job where I can work 12 hours a day - but the rest of the 12 hours I don't need to think about what will happen tomorrow.. It will still be less stressful.

  • I tell it I am a chimp with a 3 inch brain so complexity beyond chimp scale is forbidden unless requested. And to apply theory of bounded rationality during all chimp interactions. Takes care of me like a spl circus animal.

    I ask it for a quick complexity thermometer reading when ever the rabbit hole is looking like it might explode.

    Also walking away from it every few hours and doing random simple mindless stuff has helped. Like I will go inspect my fish and plants. Try to have a chat with the cat, get others around to do a little dance etc etc.

    I have a priest in the family who has to deal with lot of heavy duty stuff/people's problems. They train them not to get totally sucked in and loose themselves. He calls it grounding. Just simple mundane things to focus shift out of anything heavy.

  • It's weird times.

    I feel incredibly productive. I'm building in an afternoon what would've taken weeks. I spend all my time in either MR's reviewing code, or a terminal prompting.

    I've moved from being a coder, to being a product-engineer-architect. I love coding -- LOVE it. But the role has morphed. And, I actually really like the new role. I love being product centric, and caring about architecture -- it suits me wel..

    The code Claude produces is often clean, but terribly archictected. So I'm spending a lot of time reviewing in detail.

    But the anxienty - OMG the anxiety.

    I work on multple features (generally 4-5 work streams) concurrently, so am constantly context switching. I worry about how much time I'm spending on each task. Am I doing enough code review? Too much? Too little?

    What about click-through testing? Our test coverage has never been higher - should I be able to just merge these features? Wasn't that always the promise of TDD - merging with confidence? But, it feels like a risk.

    And, I'm moving really really fast - but I assume my competitors are too. So that drives me to move faster. Automate more. Use claude in more places. Which brings more anxiety - am I cutting too many corners? Is this all gonna crumble on me?

    Also, is everything I'm working on going to become irrelevant? Will customers buy this product, or vibe code it? Do we even have a moat? Anxiety. More anxiety.

    My investors are reading stuff constantly too. They're pinging me with market updates, emerging players, shifting landscapes. More anxiety. Also - productivity tools - look - internet influencer X is now producing a gajillion lines of code a second -- are we doing that? Are we token maxing? Are we feature maxing?

    Are we building the right number of internal tools? Are we automating enough? Should I evaluate the market for this new tool, or just smash something out with claude? More features. Burn more tokens. Ship ship ship.

    Having to explain to investors why we're not going as fast as those guys, and building enterprise products requires care and dedication -- that takes time. Time I should be shipping, coding, featuring, tokenizing. More anxiety.

    I'm exhausted.

    Anyway, gotta go - herdr has pinged me four times during writing this reply. Gotta ship.

  • Yes, I am tired; but worse, I am unhappy.

    I understand that a lot of people really enjoy managing teams of agents and are far more productive now. I am happy for them, I really am. Apparently they never actually enjoyed coding, they will show up in droves in these comments to tell you that what they really enjoyed was the end result.

    I am more productive too, but I'm going to be honest - I wasn't really looking for more productivity. I am at a point in my life where boosting my productivity is absolutely not one of my personal objectives.

    Using Claude Code all day is like being a STEM kid that was gifted a Lego-building-robot. What a miracle! Now you don't have to deal with all the hassle of assembling Legos - you just tell it you want a castle and boom! What a time to be alive!

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