Felt this in my bones. It’s painful how accurately this describes my current work situation. The pressure comes from the top - leaders that have no idea what they want but they want _something_ to happen NOW. This has only gotten worse with the recent AI thoughtleadering because now the expectation has been seeded that every random brainwave should take at most one hour to implement (given enough tokens).
What can an IC do in an environment like this? If you slow down and attempt to find any clarity, you’re labeled as slow and ineffective. If you cave to the pressure and start slinging slop with the rest of them, you’re just perpetuating the spiral. Genuinely asking - how do others thread this needle?
I’m in a similar boat. The one thing that seems to help is recognizing when the ask from leadership is genuine, and also sensible from a product point of view. Seize that moment to go fast, and give that your full attention.
The other project will either peter out, because they made no sense from a product point of view or because leadership lost interest. If they’re simple, can likely be done quickly with the help of AI.
It’s not a pretty answer, but AI has helped me cope with this kind of situation much better than in the past.
I also feel this, and it also troubles me. Unfortunately, we may be in the minority on this site.
What the other replies seem to overlook is that it fundamentally changes the nature of the work - it’s not the next step in the evolution after an IDE, it is closer to an automated tractor, and yes that does make the farmer’s work trivial. Pressing a button and having the field get plowed is a very different experience than manually plowing a field yourself. I can no longer in good conscience say “I plowed that field”, because all I did was press a button. The tractor plowed that field.
Most people on this site seem to feel comfortable claiming “I plowed that field” after they pressed the button that started the automated tractor. Okay, you had the idea to press the button - but you didn’t actually do the work, you delegated it. Same end result, but a different lived experience. Now would I rather actually plow a field by hand or simply press a button? You can probably guess - but the two actions do differ greatly in the experience they bring me, and the feelings of satisfaction.
I am on the side that says the farmer didn't plow the field. I guess you could say he took responsibility for it, which isn't the same thing. I guess a counter argument that some would make is that the farmer didn't plow the field if they didn't pull the plow themselves (or to a silly level: if they didn't plow the field with their bare hands). They just pressed the right pedals while sitting in the tractor. I am not sure I have a good argument either way, but a farmer plowing a field with a tractor is physically involved during the whole process, and it feels more fair for them to say that they plowed the field, for the simple fact they weren't doing anything else during the process other than constantly controlling the plowing machinery.
What if the farmer built/tested/refined the pathing/automation around the tractor? I mean it probably doesn't ship knowing the most optimal way to plow the layout of his fields. There's still some knowledge/skill required in optimizing that portion.
The argument does eventually degrade over time, though. For example, in the future the farmer uses satellite imagery fed into an advanced AI to build the most optimal route. So yeah, eventually the farmer loses all utility I suppose beyond being a land owner (until AI owns land lol).
Please note that air quality in an area varies dramatically over time. You are looking at a current snapshot with maps like that. The map linked below has his more historical data and I can see several _weeks_ this past year in my area (which currently has very good air quality) where the PM 2.5 weekly average exceeded 25ug/m^3.
Localized phenomena like a neighbor starting a fire, up to the activity of nearby factories and power plants, up to national and global phenomena like wildfires and weather patterns, all have dramatic effects. Looking at an air quality map once and determining that you don’t have to think about air quality because you’re in the US is a mistake.
Exercise outdoors is a wonderful thing, obviously, but there are some days, even in the US, where you might think twice or even consider shifting your exercise to a different (less-polluted) time of the day.
> Localized phenomena like a neighbor starting a fire,
Summer evenings at home in my small Ohio village are often a health hazard, a polluted nightmare driven by the perverse compulsive ignition of so-called 'recreational' yard fires by pyromaniac neighbors.
If it is an Ozone Action day and/or a Heat Advisory day, it is near certain that one or more of the Don't Tread On Me jamokes who live nearby will come out of their houses at sunset, pile a bunch of garbage into a 55-gallon drum or a circle of rocks, sprinkle with accelerant, toss a match and back away. Eyes glazed, they'll watch for a minute, then go back inside, sometimes coming back out every ten minutes or so to refuel the fire, other times letting it blaze until the original pile is down to embers. In any case, there is a new plume of local smoke to add to the day's irritants.
It is a startling phenom to observe, let alone endure. The behavior is made all the more crazy, imho, by the presence of children. These are parents, asserting their rights to burn, and teaching their children to Live Free Or Die. It seems to me to be driven by a rebelliousness, part of the anti-woke wave, country-fried counter-culture, as in "I got your global warming right here, pard".
It's like, listening to country music stations and realizing how many (most!) contemporary and historical Country songs are themed around alcohol-worship.
But I digress.
I apologise. I was triggered by the mention of 'localized phenomena' and the horrified realization that so many of my fellow citizens are self-destructive cray-cray.
I’m not familiar with Ohio village, but I grew up in unincorporated county land in the Texas boonies. My dad had a burn barrel, and would dump oil into the ground “putting it back from where it came”. Even as a kid, nothing about it felt right. Just that experience alone gives no doubt to service members working the burn pits qualifying for disability
To be fair at one point in time people were actually told to dispose of used oil by dumping it into some stony ground. I live in a rural area in the north and most people have burn barrels but 99.9% of people exclusively burn cardboard and paper.
Same. I was very skeptical when Macrofactor introduced this feature, but have since been incredibly impressed. The ability to give it text alongside a photo and then adjust the results (broken out by ingredients) are critical. I’ve also been taking pictures of food sitting on scales and it will take the measurement into account.
Seems like the Macrofactor team took their time developing this feature, as it felt like they were one of the last to roll it out, but the extra polish definitely shows and was worth the wait.
I love this essay, and it very closely mirrors my own feelings about the topic. Thanks for writing/sharing it.
I’m perpetually bamboozled by my fellow software engineering colleagues who insist on proudly shouting from the rooftops “Look at me, ma! I’m vibe coding!” as if it’s some badge of honor to see who can churn out the greatest quantities of shitcode the fastest and completely surrender any last scraps of their cognitive abilities to the best LLM provider of the current moment.
Funny you mention that, I just wrote a bunch of arithmetic functions in js because floats cant be trusted. It was a tad more work than I expected but thats fine. Even I thought it was a tad silly but when I had to check if the results were correct and compared them in some big number calculators from the top of google it turned out not to match.
What do you think? 2/3 with 10 digits behind the dot in accuracy. Should that be 0.6666666666 or 0.6666666667 ? If I later add 1/3 to it my result is 1 which seems more correct?
What can an IC do in an environment like this? If you slow down and attempt to find any clarity, you’re labeled as slow and ineffective. If you cave to the pressure and start slinging slop with the rest of them, you’re just perpetuating the spiral. Genuinely asking - how do others thread this needle?