A few weeks ago, one of the software engineers I manage sent me a message about how they have been struggling to find satisfaction in their work ever since AI has eroded much of the creativity and problem solving required in programming.
Their message had considerable vulnerability, and I was grateful that they gave me the opportunity to respond as both a manager and a friend who has been experiencing the same revolution as them.
I spent some time contemplating whether or not I should even publish this blog post, as some friends of mine rightly pointed out that there is currently greater chaos in the world than just how satisfied one is with their career in the age of AI. I decided to publish regardless as I know there are a lot of engineers that are still really feeling this and the chaos in the world doesn't change that.
Their message, and my response, can be found below:
Hey shubs. I know you're off sick today so no need to respond to this today.I've been finding it hard to get used to the new development workflow using AI. I think the issue is less from a technical perspective and more from a job satisfaction(?) perspective I suppose.
Beforehand;
- When I pushed out code I fully understood the code. I'd always have read it and imagined what comments a reviewer might post to save their time. I felt like I could take a level of responsibility for what I ship and its quality.
- I enjoyed the process of building things and felt like what I built was my own creation/ the work of the team.
- I feel like I had a general understanding of the codebase, what other people were working on, and the direction the team was going. Over time I felt like my understanding of the codebase got better.It also frustrates me working with AI. On the surface level I find their AI phrases to be a bit grating (but I'm sure some prompting/ some plugin could mostly fix that), but other things are frustrating in a different way. Whenever I've setup a memory to fix something it usually ignores the memory later on and does it anyway. Obviously people make mistakes too, but it's frustrating to work with a system that can't learn and grow. And it never feels worth investing deeply in tweaking the tooling or a model because it all tends to change every 6 months.
Not really sure how to work though this stuff? Like it's not the end of the world, but I find myself getting off topic or procrastinating the things that need to get done more.
Obviously I recognise that a developer using these tools can normally produce more/better output in less time overall, and they do a lot of stuff that's really cool and useful, but it's also kind of turning the job into role which I don't enjoy as much.
I've used AI a bit for my [redacted] side project to refactor the whole thing significantly, and that felt fine/good. So I don't think I have an issue with not writing code by hand. I think what bothers me is more the losing touch with the project and feeling like I don't get what's going on overall? I suppose taking a break and missing the in person meeting doesn't help with all that.
A part of me feels like as the time for development goes down the proportion of the time/effort spent on team co-ordination and planning work has to go up, and so it's natural for people to feel like they're less in touch with what's going on across the team?
Anyway I thought I should let you know how I was feeling about it. I'm not expecting you to swoop in and change anything because 'making me feel good about developing with AI isn't a managers job, and I'm not even sure what could be done anyway. I also think some of this is just because I got back from a really awesome trip to Europe, and it's hard to adjust back to normal work.
I spent a few days thinking about their message, and responded with the following:
Hey, I'm still off sick but wanted to respond to you because I know you're reaching out with some vulnerability here that I relate to quite a bit.AI has taken a lot of satisfaction away from our roles as engineers, and hackers as well. In many ways, it's forced us to go from critical thinking skills more towards management skills. Basically, it's forced all of us to become middle managers – which honestly is not what a lot of people want to do or enjoy.
In terms of what the world was like pre-AI, I cannot argue with you there. I also had a much deeper understanding of the research or engineering I was doing, and post-AI, I feel like a lot of this has been taken away from me too. It's been pretty hard adjusting to the fact that AI is better than me at research or engineering for the most part, when both of us spent the last fifteen years perfecting our skills in those areas.
It's been hard to stay on top of all the changes in AI, I am also often left feeling overwhelmed with the pace of change. It's not perfect in its current state, but it is rapidly improving as time goes on. I think this frustration about it not learning and growing is valid, but you might have more luck shoving things into CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.md as that's forced into each subsequent prompt. Memories have been pretty weak for me too.
I think the reason you're not enjoying the job as much is because we are getting the outcomes quickly, but you're not actually doing that much critical thinking in terms of learning / executing how you used to as an engineer.
The only way I have been able to convince myself that this is still a worthwhile endeavour is focusing my learning and skill development on how to be the best with AI, and better than other people with AI – instead of the code itself. We're all forced to be middle managers now whether we agree with it or not, if we want outcomes as fast as possible.
I'm not saying it's grim, there are pros and cons here, but with all technology there are going to be massive shifts in how we work, and I believe we are going through a revolution right now that we've never seen before. It's not easy to keep up or even adjust to.
Do you have any ideas on how we could make this role more enjoyable for you in the AI age? Is there something that we could be doing to support you more to make this role still worthwhile for you, while we achieve the outcomes we want for the business? Is there anything I can do to help with it as well?
Part of what you're feeling is probably on us. We are at this crossroads with Assetnote where we are going all in for [redacted] and [redacted], and a lot of focus and momentum in our planning has been lost to this. I don't think it's a bad thing entirely as such a huge strategy shift has required a bit more fluidness in how we operate, but it's not as organised or well executed as I would like it to be.
We can try and make the team present their work as the development pace goes faster to try and revive that pride in their work, and showing people how they did their best towards something (AI or not), and I do really want to build this sort of culture.
I am grateful you feel comfortable enough to come to me about this. These last few months, I have felt depressed about how good AI has become at source code auditing, a skill I spent over 15 years on. I have started baking recently, to find joy in things that I don't think AI will beat me at for a while. I have been rapidly improving and practicing that instead, while I still face reality where I use AI to achieve things I could never before.
The big takeaway I had from this AI age is that we should be using it to solve problems that are _even more difficult_ than ever before. Increasing the ambition that we have for what we are building or in my case researching, has been the most rewarding thing to do. AI is solving previously unsolved maths conjectures, and finding zero-days in software that are hard for humans to even comprehend. I did write about this in detail here: https://shubs.io/frontier-class-vulnerabilities-it-gets-worse-before-it-maybe-gets-better/
You might get some inspiration from it, even if you apply it in the context of software engineering.
Coming back from such a good holiday is always hard. For me, it always starts with optimism, and then reality hits about how terrible everything really is, and a slow depression tends to kick in for the remainder of my work time. What you're describing is something that is felt by everyone after a break and it is very relatable. I have been incredibly easy and flexible with our engineers, but it is with a lot of intention, empathy and understanding, it can be mistaken for laziness as a manager, but it's not really that.
I deeply care about the work that everyone is doing, but everyone is an adult and is dealing with many different things (neurodivergence, adjusting to AI, holidays, emotional changes, mental health challenges) - FWIW, our team is made up of misfits, but they are the best misfits in the world, and absolutely perfect for Assetnote, because the management team themselves are misfits too and know how to operate with diverse people and skills to get the outcomes we need for the business. This extends out to the research team too.
I am not going to push you while you're still adjusting. Just take the time you need. My co-founder Michael will not push either. It's just not our style. We trust you, and always have operated with this level of high trust in this job, that's super rare in most other roles. We know that we will get to the outcomes we need, and the right way to do that is not by pushing our engineers but rather treating them as humans who are going through their own set of problems in life. We will be patient. Just reach out to me if you need me to get involved in anything and I will be there.
BTW, not to be overly optimistic, but there is a real superpower being someone that has done deep engineering work pre-AI, or as I like to call it, artisanal programming. A lot of people now will completely miss this part of their lives, and will be very much so worse off as engineers. Our deep understanding will continue being a superpower for a long time, and others will struggle to get to the same level of comprehension.
Reflecting on this conversation, I concluded that there is an elevated need for people's pride in their work, human connection, and communication with our engineers, as the ways in which they are working have changed so much. These are all cultural elements that I look forward to building in our team.