AI is automating all the easier tasks in people’s jobs, leaving them to spend 8 hours a day on the hardest problems which AIs cannot yet solve.
Software engineers are probably already familiar with the feeling of burnout from thinking too hard. The reality is very few people can work on the hardest problems they’re capable of for 8 hours a day.
Writing routine Python code for some system you know well is not that mentally taxing. Managing an agent that rapidly finishes tasks but needs careful review and big-picture planning is much more exhausting, and has higher returns on intelligence and deep careful thought.
I think this points towards the opposite conclusion of the OP. It’s not realistic to expect 8 hours of hard work out of a knowledge worker. Remote work naturally allows this transition, as employees can work a bit less but still overachieve with AI.
> It’s not realistic to expect 8 hours of hard work out of a knowledge worker.
It wasn’t really realistic to expect hard physical labor for 70 hours a week, and yet in the 1800s before unions were established to negotiate workers rights, that’s exactly what we had.
What on earth makes you think non unionized IT workers aren’t going to be pushed to their breaking point and then pushed further? If AI truly starts eating all the knowledge work, there will be an endless supply of people lining up to work themselves to death.
People were, in a very literal sense, working themselves to death. The birth of the industrial age is documented as one of the worst periods in Humanity’s record for quality of life.
To be fair, the industrial revolution also produced more books and other records, so there's a bias there in that without the changes to technology, there might not be as many books written about that period remaining.
Is this your reality? I’ve noticed that while the team is way more burned out people are also way less engaged and no longer critically think about edge cases or design reviews, etc anymore.
Yep. Someone will copy-and-paste a Jira ticket into AI and blindly accept the output without thinking about the actual intent and context behind the request. It's frustrating. I use AI sparingly, mostly on personal projects where I am prototyping and the quality is not of the greatest concern.
Yeah this is true on my team for two archetypes: the new junior engineer and the old staff engineer that was too “busy” to ever actually write code. Now he’s just busy in a different superficial way.
But only for bullshit criteria. If your work needs to be actually good to reach the goal posts, AI can have a supporting role in the background at best.
No, and half the existing managers have been fired as well and their positions closed. A 1:7 ratio of managers to direct reports? What is this, the 80s? We’re doing 1:15 now. Also you have to be building software at the same time[1]
Mine hasn’t changed but because he is in crypto so it was already zero.
It’s just entirely grift, speculation, and rug pulls. My friends who used to use it to buy drugs don’t even do that anymore as it’s completely lost any sense of being a currency like the original, somewhat defensible arguments of it suggested it could act as.
Software engineers are probably already familiar with the feeling of burnout from thinking too hard. The reality is very few people can work on the hardest problems they’re capable of for 8 hours a day.
Writing routine Python code for some system you know well is not that mentally taxing. Managing an agent that rapidly finishes tasks but needs careful review and big-picture planning is much more exhausting, and has higher returns on intelligence and deep careful thought.
I think this points towards the opposite conclusion of the OP. It’s not realistic to expect 8 hours of hard work out of a knowledge worker. Remote work naturally allows this transition, as employees can work a bit less but still overachieve with AI.
(I hate AI. Just observing the world we live in)