We should brace ourselves to find less and less satisfaction from the process as we become more comfortable embracing AI. At least, that's what the first chapter in the evolution of the AI-assisted software developer role has taught me.
Author sounds like they are missing meaning in what they do. If they had a life mission, AI is just an aid in accomplishing that mission, and they wouldn't get sidetracked by all the unfulfilling projects (modulus the ADHD, that has its own bearing on the experience using AI, and is the most interesting part of this post to me).
Perhaps at a population scale AI inhibits people from finding fulfillment.
But on an anecdotal basis, "just go find something meaningful". For some of us that "hate the AI timeline", we are still finding purpose and fulfillment by applying AI toward our personal missions.
I agree with this. AI is a tool and amplifier. If one is already disciplined and strong-minded and has clear meaning and purpose in their life, AI is a very powerful aid in accomplishing missions. But I'm afraid most people in the world are not like that, too.
You're describing frontline management, not middle management. My 2 cents is that frontline management is the worst job in engineering, for the reasons you describe and more.
The average dev probably doesn't have any significant amount of equity in their company. The stock price at my company going up just means my quarterly checks are going to be $4 instead of $3.
When work was chill I went to decaf for the morning espresso on weekdays, and enjoyed real coffee on weekends. I took glee in withholding energy from work that I redirected to my personal time.
Then when work picked up, I went back to regular coffee everyday.
I don’t think there’s a hole in my soul though. And caffeine degrades my personality a little bit (to my own judgment).
IA makes the most sense in the spirit of preservation.
Etree (https://www.etree.org/ ) is the longest running torrent site for tapes. It looks like only about 5% of the hundred thousand torrents have any seeders at all. Not sure how reliable requesting a seed is. I’d expect long tail stuff to get “effectively lost”. Versus IA whose purpose and funding is preservation, in addition to sharing.
This is a fun area, as the DMCA, for its flaws included a loophole for non-commercial distribution of live concert recordings. The only requirement is that it isn't an exact copy of a commercial release. I am not sure about the exact standards, as live albums often aren't the entire concert. Here are some other sites where people share these tapes.
Sugarmegs is up and running for 30+ years now. I knew the guy who started it back then and he was a Sony employee who "inherited" a T-1 connection that Sony forgot they were paying for... At least for the first few years, when content streams were now profoundly ancient real audio files.
Etree is missing self-seed then. What if IA hosted torrents like Etree does but also self-seeded the content?
Thus they are encouraging amateur third parties to pick up some of the archival slack, that style of torrent could outlive IA in case anything happened to them, and it reduces some of their bandwidth costs
Indeed. I directly ask my reports to discover and surface conflicts, especially disagreements with me, and when they do I try to strongly reinforce the behavior by commending and rewarding them. Could anyone recommend additional resources on this topic?
> The real reason not to become an EM in 2026 is because AI makes our jobs 10x harder.
This is true, but our job was getting kind of boring anyway. Time to lead, not manage. We should be having just as much fun as the ICs, and the best I know are having the time of their lives.
reply