AI is burning us all out

I'm on the edge of burnout, again. Circling the drain; skating the edge; pick your metaphor. I've burnt out a couple times before, and I'm at least aware of the signs: depression, dis-regulation, and splitting headaches when I look at a screen. Yet I shouldn't be - like most of my software developer colleagues, we've given most of our work to AIs. This shit should be gravy now, right? Right?

The fact that I'm no longer typing - I've barely written a line of code in six months - doesn't mean that I'm not software developing. Clearly I am, since I'm shipping product at an alarming rate. Since I can do this without doing the clickety-clacking, it really does beg the question: what is software development?

I imagine it as building a skyscraper in my head. (Or in my case, a weird, Ghibli-inspired rickety construction.) There's tons of bits and pieces that need to interconnect, slot together, and slowly build up, higher and higher.

This takes time, concentration, and capacity. When you're in this state, you're in programming flow. Interrupt the process, and the whole edifice comes crashing down. If you've ever been shouted at by a computer programmer who appeared to be doing nothing but staring into space, and you dared ask them the time, this is why.

AI workflow is different: We build the edifice, we prompt, and then, crucially, we wait. If it's a few seconds, up to a minute, fine. If it's five minutes, staying in flow becomes tricky. We get bored. And then we, or at least I, make a fatal mistake.

I move on to another project, to do just a quick prompt, to quickly implement that thing I've been meaning to do. I've got five minutes, why not?

Suddenly I'm trying to build two constructions in my head, and hold them both. The mental load dramatically increases. I don't notice at the time, but that little switch has sapped me. Doing it multiple times a day is deadly.

I'm hearing of a burnout wildfire tearing through the software development community, and I think this is why. Context switching has a massive cost. Working fast and shipping constantly has a massive cost. And keeping too many ideas in our heads at once has a massive cost. Now the bill is due.

I'm still figuring out how to deal with this problem, but my first step is to slow the fuck down. I don't need to be shipping a side-product a week. I don't need to be doing the work of 50 developers. I definitely don't need to work on more than one thing at a time - my clients can calm the fuck down and wait.

I don't have the answer of how to keep in flow during those pauses. Instead, I step away from my computer, go make a coffee or remember to eat. Crucially, I'm trying to not hold multiple structures in my head at once. I don't know if it's working, but I do know that all of us software developers are going to have to figure this out, or we will be the slop that the AI generates.

(I don't know if the last line makes sense to anyone else but me, but fuggit, I don't use AI to write-write.)