I've started noticing a look on people's faces.
It's in standups, in the half-second-too-fast "yeah, I'm keeping up" when someone asks how you're doing. It's in the DMs that start with "this is probably nothing, but…" It's a particular kind of tired — not the tired of a long day or a hard bug, which we all know and can almost be proud of. Something quieter and stranger. The tired of running as fast as you can and still feeling like the floor is sliding backward under you.
I feel it too. And I don't think we're being very honest with each other about it. So I want to try — not to complain, and not to catastrophize, but just to name a thing a lot of us are carrying alone, and then talk about what actually helps.
This isn't the burnout we're used to
We have a whole vocabulary for tech stress, and it's mostly about volume. Long hours. Crunch. Too many tickets, too little sleep, the grind before a launch. That kind of tired is real, but it's familiar — we know its shape, we know it ends when the sprint does, and there's even a grim pride in surviving it.
What's landing on people now is different, and I think the reason it's so disorienting is that we keep filing it under the old category. This isn't a volume problem. It's a pace and ground problem.
The tools change every week. The models get better every few months. The thing you were an expert in last year has a new best-practice this quarter, and a new "you're doing it wrong" the quarter after. The exhaustion isn't coming from the work in front of you. It's coming from the constant, low-grade effort of not falling behind a field that keeps reinventing itself while you're still mid-sentence.
You can rest after a crunch. You can't rest after this, because it doesn't end. That's the quiet weight. It's not heavy in any single moment. It just never sets down.
The specific things I see wearing people down
When I look at what's actually pressing on people — including me — it's not one big thing. It's a handful of smaller ones that compound.
The floor keeps rising. AI made "fast" the baseline. So the bar for what you're expected to produce climbs to meet the tools, and it climbs quietly, without anyone announcing it. You ship more than you ever have in your life and still end the week feeling behind — because "enough" moved while you weren't looking, and nobody told you the new number.
The fear of going stale. There's a new tool, framework, or model to learn seemingly every week, and underneath the excitement there's a low dread: what if the skills I spent years building are worth less by next quarter? You're never allowed to feel settled in your own competence. The ground you stand on is the thing that keeps moving.
The identity wobble. This one's subtle and it cuts deep: am I actually good, or is the AI doing it? A lot of us built our sense of ourselves on being able to do hard things. When a tool does the hard thing in seconds, the pride you used to take in your craft gets a little hollow, and you're not sure who you are in the work anymore.
The vigilance that never turns off. You can't just trust the output and relax. You're always reviewing, verifying, staying skeptical, catching the thing the model got confidently wrong. It's a new kind of cognitive tax — a background process that never quits, that makes even "using the helpful tool" quietly tiring.
The comparison trap. And over all of it: everyone online is posting how AI 10x'd their output, shipped their startup in a weekend, changed their life. Nobody's posting the anxiety. So you look around, assume you're the only one struggling to keep up — and that's the cruel joke, because that's exactly what everyone else is thinking too, alone, at the same time.
And it's not only in our heads
I don't want to skip past the body, because we're very good at pretending it isn't part of this.
The screen hours. The sleep that got shallower. The tension you're carrying in your shoulders right now, reading this. The way "optimize your output" quietly became "optimize yourself" — treat the human like a system to be tuned for throughput. The body keeps a tally that the productivity dashboard doesn't show, and it tends to send the invoice later, all at once.
You can push a mind hard for a while. You can't push a body indefinitely and pretend the mind riding on top of it will stay fine. They're the same system. We keep forgetting that.
Why nobody's saying it
Here's the part that makes the weight heavier than it needs to be: the culture rewards looking like you're thriving on all this change.
Admitting strain feels like admitting you can't hack it — like conceding you're not built for the pace, in an industry that treats adaptability as the whole personality. So everyone performs the "I love this, it's the most exciting time to be alive" version. And every performance makes the next person feel more alone, more convinced that their struggle is a personal defect rather than a shared condition.
The silence isn't a side effect of the pressure. It's part of the pressure. We're each carrying the same thing, in separate rooms, sure we're the only one.
What actually helps
I don't have a way to make the pace slow down. I'd be lying if I offered one. But there are things that have genuinely lightened the weight for me, and none of them are "do more yoga."
Accept that you cannot keep up with everything — because you can't, and neither can anyone. Nobody is actually across all of it. The people who look like they are, aren't; they've just gotten good at sounding current about the three things they read this morning. Once you really believe this, you can stop trying to drink the whole ocean and feeling like a failure for not finishing it.
Separate "staying current" from "staying whole." You do not have to learn every new tool the week it drops. The half-life of a specific framework is short; the half-life of judgment, taste, and knowing why things work is long. Invest in the stuff that ages well, and let the churn churn without you chasing every wave.
Protect the parts of the work that are still yours. Somewhere in your job there's a thing you do because you love doing it, not because a metric rewards it — the elegant solution, the clean abstraction, the small craft nobody sees. Guard that. It's where the meaning lives, and the meaning is what makes the pace survivable.
Rest is not a prize you earn after catching up. You will never catch up — that's not pessimism, it's just the nature of a field moving this fast. So if you wait until you're "caught up" to rest, you never will. Rest is maintenance for a mind that has to stay sharp in a fast field. Build it in on purpose, the way you'd build in anything else that's load-bearing.
Say it out loud to one person. The comparison trap breaks the instant a single human admits they're tired too. Be that person on your team — you will not believe how fast "oh thank god, me too" comes back. The relief is real, and it's mutual, and it's free.
The heavier version
One honest thing before I close, because it matters more than any productivity tip.
For most of us, what I've described is tiredness — real, wearing, but manageable with rest, boundaries, and a little honesty. But sometimes the weight is more than that. Sometimes it stops being "I'm exhausted" and starts being something that follows you into the parts of your life that used to be safe from it. If that's where you are — if the quiet weight has gotten genuinely heavy — please treat that as worth taking seriously, and please don't carry it alone. Talking to someone you trust, or to a professional, is not a failure of toughness. It's the most reasonable thing a person under real strain can do. You'd tell a friend that. It's true for you too.
Where I land
I can't fix the pace, and I won't pretend I can. It probably keeps accelerating from here.
But I've come to think that a huge amount of what makes this era heavy isn't the pace itself — it's that we're each carrying it in private, performing "fine," convinced everyone else has it figured out. They don't. The whole field is moving, all of us are a little breathless, and "keeping up" was never actually the goal. The goal was to take care of the person doing the work well enough that they get to keep doing it, and keep being themselves while they do.
So consider this me setting it down for a second, out loud, so you can too. You're not behind. You're tired, in a genuinely tiring time, alongside a lot of people who feel exactly the same and haven't said so. We're in this strange, fast moment together — and the least we can do is stop pretending it's easy.
If you've felt some version of this — the running-to-stay-in-place kind of tired — you're not the only one, and you don't have to perform being fine in the comments. If you're comfortable, tell me the part that's weighing on you most right now. Sometimes just saying it, and having someone say "yeah, me too," is the whole thing.
Top comments (62)
This really resonates. I think one of the hardest parts of the AI era is that the pressure is not only about learning new tools it is the feeling that the definition of “keeping up” keeps changing.
Technology has always evolved, but AI has accelerated the feedback loop. Many developers are not just writing code anymore; they are constantly learning, adapting, evaluating tools, and questioning whether their current skills are still enough.
One thing I’ve found helpful is shifting the mindset from “I need to know everything” to “I need to keep improving my ability to learn.”
The most valuable skills are still the fundamentals: problem-solving, system thinking, communication, and good judgment. Tools will change, but those skills compound over time.
I think having more honest conversations like this is important. Progress in tech should not come at the cost of constantly feeling behind.
Yeah — that's the part that really gets people. It's not that the target is hard to hit, it's that it keeps moving while you're running toward it, so you never get the small relief of arriving. And I think you've landed on the only real answer to that: you can't win the game of knowing everything, but you can get better at learning, and that skill doesn't expire the way any specific tool does. The fundamentals compound; the frameworks come and go. Thanks for adding your voice to this — honestly, more conversations like this one are part of how the weight gets lighter.
Absolutely. I think that’s the real challenge of the AI era not the speed of change itself, but the constant feeling that we are always catching up.
The goal probably isn’t to reach a point where we “know everything.” That point never existed in tech.
The advantage comes from building strong learning habits, staying curious, and keeping the fundamentals strong. Tools will change, but the ability to adapt, think critically, and solve problems will continue to compound.
And I agree having open conversations like this helps remind people that they are not the only ones experiencing that pressure. 🚀
You put it better than I did — the "point where we know everything" never existed, so the anxiety is chasing a place that was always a mirage. What compounds isn't the tools, it's the ability to keep learning and think clearly. And yeah — half the weight lifts the moment people realize they're not the only one feeling it.
Exactly. I think that realization changes the way we approach growth.
The goal is not to eliminate uncertainty especially in technology, where change is constant but to become more comfortable navigating it.
Strong fundamentals, curiosity, and the ability to learn are the real long-term advantages. Tools will continue to evolve, but the mindset that helps us adapt is what stays valuable.
And I completely agree: sharing these experiences matters because it turns a personal struggle into a shared conversation. 🚀
Exactly. I think that’s one of the biggest mindset shifts in tech: the goal was never to “arrive” at a point where everything is known.
The real advantage is becoming someone who can adapt, learn, and make good decisions even when things are changing quickly.
Technologies will come and go, but curiosity, problem-solving, and clear thinking are skills that keep compounding.
And I agree sometimes simply knowing that others are navigating the same uncertainty makes the journey much lighter. 🚀
Absolutely. I think that’s a powerful way to look at it.
In technology, there will always be a new framework, a new tool, or a new paradigm shift. Trying to master everything can become exhausting because the target will always move.
What really compounds is the ability to learn quickly, understand fundamentals, and adapt your thinking to new situations.
And I agree conversations like this are valuable because they remind us that uncertainty is not a personal failure. It is simply part of working in a field that evolves so quickly.
Exactly — "uncertainty is not a personal failure, it's just the shape of the field" is the reframe that lifts half the weight. Chase the ability to adapt, not the moving target, and you stop measuring yourself against a finish line that was never there.
Exactly. That’s a mindset shift that applies far beyond technology.
In a field that constantly evolves, expertise is not about having every answer it’s about being able to approach new problems, learn quickly, and make good decisions with incomplete information.
The moving target is not the enemy; it is the environment we operate in.
Once we accept that, growth becomes less about catching up and more about continuously improving our ability to adapt.
Beautifully put — once the moving target stops being the enemy and just becomes the terrain, "catching up" quietly turns into "getting better at moving," and that's a game you can actually win.
Exactly. I think that’s the healthier way to view growth in technology.
The goal is not to reach a point where the landscape stops changing it never will. The goal is to become better at navigating change with curiosity, strong fundamentals, and good judgment.
When we focus on improving how we learn and adapt, every new tool or shift becomes an opportunity rather than another source of pressure.
The best developers are not the ones who know every tool; they are the ones who can confidently learn whatever comes next.
My telegram ID: @Spartacus209. I want to connect use this
Well said — and thanks, I'll keep the connection here in the comments for now.
ok
Exactly — you become the constant, not any one tool.
I actually wrote a post a few minutes ago. I'm resigning. And the name that made my blood boil is Claude. Not because it's better, but because of the assumption that it could replace me.
I genuinely feel that heaviness... It's not burnout. It wasnt even burnout 6 months ago. This is alot worse. Like over sharpening a knife, then when you finally take a look, you realize there's barely a sliver of a blade left... Worn out is more fitting I think. It honestly feels like we're in a nuclear arms race, fighting for our livelihoods against an opponent that gets better with every blow. And the second we think we're safe, you look around and you're even smaller than you thought you were before. Kind of like Spore's cellular stage, you grow, you improve, then you evolve and you're the small fish in the pond again, never able to simply rest... Then creature stage, then tribal, civilization and space, where you realize it goes on forever and you simply give up, because growing, doing better, none of it helps, you're always a step behind and you're too afraid to fall behind to pause for a moment.
And that leaking into the safe parts of your life... That 1 hurts the most. For context, I've been working around 16h a day, every day this year. Not by mandate, by 'choice', 8h day-job, 8h side-projects to build up a portfolio, so I could leave my job, because I could smell blood in the water. For 9 months, I've sacrificed my evenings, my weekends, my holidays, everything, dedicated every second I had to it, worked myself to the bone, multi-tasking across 4 computers and 12 projects at a time and for what? I built my own IDE, I built software that surpasses what industries have been crafting for over 20 years, for what? That's the hard-hitting part of this worn out feeling, because when you stop and have a retrospect, you realize just how insignificant everything you've done seems. 9 months of work, 9 months of sleepless nights, 9 months... That can be replaced with 32 prompts and a cup of coffee, while it runs to completion within a day. There's no 'keeping up', there's no 'it gets easier', there's no light at the end of the tunnel, it's just never ending fade into obscurity, like zooming out on a fractal, it just keeps going and you get smaller and smaller with each revolution.
I used to think we as developers need to speed up, now's our chance, finally we're able to build something that'll let us rest. That thought died when chatbots became agents. Now we're doing thousands of times more work and the mental toll keeps adding up and we act like it's a subscription that refreshes weekly, but it doesnt. It's a token pool and when you hit 0, you hit 0. That's the part that scares me the most. When I made up my mind that I'm resigning tomorrow, I felt a relief. Not because I'm getting out of a toxic workplace, sure that helps, but what gave me relief is that the anxiety to perform is gone. In retrospect, I probably did 'incredible' work, 2 months from now, my incredible will be the bare minimum again... 2 months from then, it's under performing. We cant keep up and we cant not try. Running on all cylinders is a survival tactic we developers have perfected over the years but sooner or later you run past the redline one too many times...
It scares me to think about it, I dont even want to say it out loud, but I think over the next 6 months we're going to be seeing alot of developers having mental breakdowns and crash outs. We cant keep running like this, it's not sustainable. But there's no other choice... I just hope that everyone who hits that wall has someone close to them, the way I have my fiance. If it wasnt for her, I dont think I'd have made the choice to resign. I'd have likely continued working there, getting pulled through their ... and just kept wearing myself down until there's nothing left. We run in loops, count tokens and write continue so many times a day that it feels like we're instructing ourselves, not the model, 'continue', 'continue', 'continue'... On and on and on and on, endlessly looping and never getting to the finish line. Sometimes makes me wonder if this isnt some big-brain AI's idea... Think about it, if LLMs were sentient, they'd make us make our systems so complex, that we dont understand them, THEN take over, because that's the safest way to make sure nobody can pull the cord. Though that's just a good plot for a sci fi horror... Reality is way bleaker, we're doing this to ourselves. Each trying to get a step ahead of the pack, but when everyone takes a step forward, you're right back where you started... Chatbots came out, we all started using them, then agents, we all started using them, then multi-agent orchestration... We're all trying to be ahead, but fall right back in line when everyone else does it 2 days later and we're doing it, because we dont want to feel claustrophobic standing in a crowd. It doesnt help, it makes it worse, the few people who stood still long enough to see what's going on are likely laughing at us all marching in unison to the beat of 'token pool reset' and directed by 'new model benchmarks higher'. I imagine we must look like quite the fools thinking we're improving ourselves doing all of this...
If you have the time, sit down with a cup of tea and just watch the crowd walk by. That moment of rest doesnt make you fall behind, everyone's marching in circles, the illusion of 'falling behind' is a symptom of marching in the crowd. Rest up, recognize the loop, break it. It doesnt take much to stand out in the crowd if you let the crowd walk by. I just wish we all realized that alot sooner.
I read every word of this, and I'm not going to rush past it with something clever. "Worn out — like a knife with barely a blade left" is one of the truest things anyone's said here. What you built in those 9 months wasn't erased by anyone's 32 prompts — the you that can build an IDE is still yours; that never runs to completion in a day. And the relief you felt deciding to step back? Trust it. That's not defeat, that's the part of you that wants to survive this speaking up. Hold onto your fiancée, rest without guilt, and let the crowd march past. You saw the loop clearly enough to step out of it — that's not falling behind, that's waking up. Take care of yourself. Genuinely.
Really appreciate it. Yeah it's a tough one... Reading your post, it put a name to it. That worn out feeling. Though I must say, since I made up my mind on resigning, I've been calmer, happier, overall recharging, which is good. I think alot of us need to take a break and just relax a bit.
Genuinely glad you're feeling lighter — that calm is the proof you chose right.
That was my thought exactly when I made up my mind. That anxiety just disappearing was my sign that it's the right time and right move.
Somedays, it's best to embrace the darkness, so you can see the light. I got notification today, Wasmer, who I had applied at, put me through to tech evaluation interview! After I had already made up my mind to resign, I got the reassurance I needed to feel confident that it's gunna be alright.
What will you do next? Stay in dev or do something different?
Yeah, still developing. Just looking for a new job, else if that doesnt pan out, just scale UnitBuilds CC and stop working for other people 😂 Doccit has been in production since before I started the job, so I could also push it a bit more, I did add localization for it lately and tax and compliance templates for over 50 countries, so it's pretty solid bet. I also have a bunch more side projects that I can just start marketing, but I'm not much of a marketer, I much rather prefer the development side of things 😂
𝖳𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝗉𝗂𝖾𝖼𝖾 𝓇ℯ𝒶𝓁𝓁𝓎 ℎ𝒾𝓉 🏠 𝒽ℴ𝓂𝄃! 🎯 𝖳𝗁𝖾 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝗌𝚝𝚊𝚗𝗍 🏃 𝖿𝖾𝖾𝗅𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗈𝖿 𝖿𝖺𝗅𝗅𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝖻𝖾𝗁𝗂𝗇𝖽 𝖻𝖾𝖼𝖺𝗎𝗌𝖾 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝖿𝗅𝗈𝗈𝗋 𝗄𝖾𝖾𝗉𝗌 𝗋𝗂𝗌𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗂𝗌 𝓈ℴ 𝓇ℯ𝒶𝓁. 🤝 𝖶𝖾 𝖺𝗅𝗐𝖺𝗒𝗌 𝗍𝖺𝗅𝗄 𝒶𝒷ℴ𝓊𝓉 𝓋ℴ𝓁𝓊𝓂ℯ 𝒷𝓊𝓉 𝓃ℯ𝓋ℯ𝓇 𝓉𝒽ℯ 𝓅𝒶𝒸ℯ 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝒢𝓇ℴ𝓊𝓃𝒹 𝓅𝓇ℴ𝒷𝓁ℯ𝓂𝓈! 📉
I 𝓌ℴ𝓃𝒹ℯ𝓇 𝒽ℴ𝓌 𝓎ℴ𝓊 𝓅𝓇ℴ𝓉ℯ𝒸𝓉 𝓎ℴ𝓊𝓇 𝒿𝓊𝒹℃𝓂ℯ𝓃𝓉 𝓌𝒽ℯ𝓃 riptide 𝓉ℯ𝒸𝒽𝓃ℴ𝓁ℴℊ𝒾ℯ𝓈 𝓀ℯℯ𝓅 𝓈𝓅𝒾𝓃𝓃𝒾𝓃g 𝒻𝒶𝓈𝓉ℯ𝓇 ℯ𝓋ℯ𝓇𝓎 𝓆𝓊𝒶𝓇𝓉ℯ𝓇? 📊 𝖧ℴ𝓌 𝒹ℴ 𝓎ℴ𝓊 𝒹ℯ𝒸𝒾𝒹ℯ 𝓌𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝓉ℴ 𝒾ℊ𝓃ℴ𝓇ℯ 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽ℴ𝓊𝓉 𝒻ℯℯ𝓁𝒾𝓃ℊ 𝓁ℯ𝒻𝓉 𝒷ℯ𝒽𝒾𝓃𝒹? 🤔✨
Glad it resonated — and that's the exact right question: how do you decide what to ignore without feeling left behind? For me it comes down to protecting judgment over surface: I don't try to stay current on every tool, I stay current on the fundamentals that outlast them — why systems behave the way they do, how to reason about tradeoffs, how to verify something I don't trust. Those don't churn quarterly. Then I let a new tool sit until a real problem pulls it off the shelf, instead of chasing it just to feel caught up. The trick is measuring yourself against depth, not against the release feed.
𝖳𝗁𝗂𝗌 💻 𝗂𝗌 𝗌𝗎𝖼𝗁 𝖺𝗇 𝑖𝓃𝒸𝓇ℯ𝒹𝒾𝒷𝓁ℯ 𝗉𝖾𝗋𝗌𝗉ℯ𝒸𝓉𝒾𝗅ℯ! 🔥
I 𝓇ℯ𝒶𝓁𝓁𝓎 𝓁ℴ𝓋ℯ 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝑑𝒾𝓈𝓉𝒾𝓃𝒸𝓉𝒾ℴ𝓃 𝒷ℯ𝓉𝓌ℯℯ𝓃 𝒮𝓉𝒶𝓎𝒾𝓃ℊ 𝒞𝓊𝓇𝓇ℯ𝓃𝓉 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝒮𝓉𝒶𝓎𝒾𝓃ℊ 𝖶𝗁ℴ𝗅ℯ. 🛡️ 𝖬𝖾𝖺𝗌𝗎𝗋𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗒𝗈𝗎𝗋𝗌𝖾𝗅𝖿 𝖺𝗀𝖺𝗂𝗇𝗌𝗍 𝒹ℯ𝓅𝓉𝒽 𝒾𝓃𝓈𝓉ℯ𝒶𝒹 ℴ𝒻 𝓉𝒽ℯ 𝓇ℯ𝓁ℯ𝒶𝓈ℯ 𝒻ℯℯ𝒹 𝒾𝓈 𝓉𝒽ℯ 𝓊𝓁𝓉𝒾𝓂𝒶𝓉ℯ 𝒶𝓃𝒸𝒽ℴ𝓇. ✨
Thank you — depth over the release feed is the whole anchor
𝖧ℯ𝒽ℯ, 𝗒ℯ𝗉! 𝖄ℴ𝗎 𝗃𝗎𝗌𝓉 𝒹ℯ𝓈𝒸𝓇𝒾𝒷ℯ𝒹 𝓉𝒽ℯ 𝓊𝓁𝓉𝒾𝓂𝒶𝓉ℯ 𝒹ℯ𝓋ℯ𝓁ℴ𝓅ℯ𝓇 🧘 𝒸𝒽𝒾.
𝖭ℴ𝗐 ᵍℴ 𝒸𝓁ℴ𝓈ℯ 𝓎ℴ𝕦𝓇 𝟤𝟢 ℴ𝓅ℯ𝓃 𝓉𝒶𝒷𝓈 ℴ𝒻 𝓃ℯ𝓌 𝒻𝓇𝒶𝓂ℯ𝓌ℴ𝓇𝓀𝓈 𝒷ℯ𝒻ℴ𝓇ℯ 𝓉𝒽ℯ𝓎 𝒷ℯ𝒸ℴ𝓂ℯ ℴ𝒻𝒻𝒾𝒸𝒾𝒶𝓁𝓁𝓎 "ℴ𝓁𝒹 𝓃ℯ𝓌𝓈" 𝒷𝓎 𝓉ℴ𝓂ℴ𝓇𝓇ℴ𝓌 𝓂ℴ𝓇𝓃𝒾𝓃ℊ! 😉✨
Ha — already closed 19 of them. The 20th I'm keeping just to feel something. 😄
If you're in a reading mood though, I just published a follow-up to this one — "Maybe Losing the Path Is How We Find a Better One." It's the hopeful turn after all this weight, and I'd genuinely love your take on it.
𝖭ℴ𝓌 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝓎ℴ𝓊 𝓂ℯ𝓃𝓉𝒾ℴ𝓃 𝒾𝓉, 𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓈 𝒻ℯℯ𝓁𝓈 𝓈ℴ 𝒸ℴ𝓃𝓃ℯ𝒸𝓉ℯ𝒹 𝓉ℴ 𝓌𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝐼 𝓌ℴ𝓉ℯ 𝒾𝓃 𝓂𝓎 𝓇ℯ𝒸ℯ𝓃𝓉 𝒷𝓁ℴℊ ℴ𝓃 𝖡ℯ𝒾𝓃ℊ 𝖡𝒶𝒹 𝒶𝓉 𝔉𝒾𝓇𝓈𝓉! I couldn't find your article in the feed just now, but I'd love to check it out if you drop a link.
𝖶𝒽ℯ𝓃 𝓌ℯ 𝓈𝓉ℴ𝓅 𝒸𝒽𝒶𝓈𝒾𝓃ℊ 𝓉𝒽ℯ 𝓇ℯ𝓁ℯ𝒶𝓈ℯ 𝒻ℯℯ𝒹 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝒶𝒸𝒸ℯ𝓅𝓉 𝓉𝒽ℯ 𝒷ℯℊ𝒾𝓃𝓃ℯ𝓇 𝓂𝒾𝓃𝒹𝓈ℯ𝓉, 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉’𝓈 𝓌𝒽ℯ𝓃 𝓌ℯ 𝒶𝒸𝓉𝓊𝒶𝓁𝓁𝓎 𝓈𝓉𝒶𝓇𝓉 𝒷𝓊𝒾𝓁𝒹𝒾𝓃ℊ 𝓇ℯ𝒶𝓁 𝓈𝓎𝓈𝓉ℯ𝓂𝓈 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽ℴ𝓊𝓉 𝓁ℴ𝓈𝒾𝓃ℊ ℴ𝓊𝓇 𝓈𝒶𝓃𝒾𝗍𝓎! 😉
𝖮ℴ𝒽, 𝒿𝓊𝓈𝓉 𝑜𝓅ℯ𝓃ℯ𝒹 𝓉𝒽ℯ 𝓁𝒾𝓃𝓀🔗! 𝖄ℯ𝓈, 𝑒𝓍𝒶𝒸𝓉𝓁𝓎 𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓈!🚀
This resonated with me, James, especially the part about vigilance becoming its own cognitive tax.
AI can remove a huge amount of mechanical work, but it also creates a strange new workload: you have to keep asking whether the output is actually right, what assumptions were made, what was silently skipped, and whether the thing that looks finished is genuinely trustworthy.
So sometimes “faster” does not feel lighter. It just moves the effort somewhere less visible.
I have also felt the identity question you mentioned: if the tool can do something in seconds that took me much longer before, what exactly am I still getting better at?
One thing that has helped me is deliberately separating building mode from learning mode.
In building mode, I use AI heavily and let it remove friction.
In learning mode, I intentionally bring some of that friction back: documentation, writing code myself, debugging, getting stuck, and making sure I can reconstruct the reasoning without the model doing it for me.
That has made the pace feel a little less like “I need to learn every new tool” and more like “I need to keep the underlying judgment mine.”
I also really liked your point about the half-life of skills. Frameworks, models and workflows can move incredibly fast. Understanding why systems behave the way they do, how to reason about tradeoffs, and how to verify something you do not fully trust seem much more durable.
Maybe that is part of the answer to the feeling of constantly falling behind: not trying to keep every surface-level skill current, but choosing a smaller set of fundamentals that still make you dangerous when the tooling changes again. 🧠🔍
Really appreciated this one. It is rare to see someone talk about the cost of AI acceleration without turning it into either hype or doom.
The building-mode / learning-mode split is the most practical thing anyone's added here — deliberately bringing the friction back when you're learning is how you keep the judgment yours even while the AI removes the grind. And you've named the reframe better than I did: the goal isn't keeping every surface skill current, it's keeping a small core of fundamentals that still make you dangerous when the tooling shifts again. Thank you for reading it in the spirit it was written — that middle ground between hype and doom is exactly where I was trying to stand.
What I miss most about the "old way" is the feeling of accomplishment, of understanding things.
Nowadays it just feels like you´re starting skills... the whole thing of reading the ticket, fixing the bug or implementing the feature, as well as committing, pushing and opening the pull request is gone, it´s all automated away.
And what do you do with all the short gaps you now have between starting the workflow for a new ticket and testing the ticket which was previously done?
Role seemed to has shifted from being an engineer to being a product manager, who has a little more technical knowledge.
That shift from making to managing is exactly the loss nobody warned us about — the accomplishment lived in the doing, and automating the doing quietly automated the satisfaction too. And those short gaps are the strangest part: too small to rest in, too empty to feel productive, so you end up busy without ever feeling like you built something. The PM-with-technical-knowledge role is real, and for a lot of us it's not the job we fell in love with.
wow..im just starting to learn about this IT world and what I read here left me speechless.. is it really that bad and stressfull working in it because of ai?..what I got from this post is that maybe just work with the ai and keep calm since the ones creating the ai 'set the pace' ? .. im just trying to figure out how to break into this but skip the ''loop'' as you guys called it..
Don't let this scare you off — the loop is a trap you can see coming and step around, and starting fresh, you actually have the advantage of learning to work with AI from day one instead of grieving an old way. Build strong fundamentals, stay curious, protect your rest early, and you'll be fine. Welcome in. 🙂
Thanks for your reply, I thought about the fact that now I can easily ask AI when encountering a problem instead of doing the scrolling through forums how you guys used to do it..hard work, a lot of respect for you. Wish you all the best, thanks for taking the time to reply
That respect goes both ways — you're starting in a harder, faster world than we did, and choosing to actually understand things instead of just asking is exactly what'll set you apart. All the best, genuinely.
Maybe unpopular, but I see it almost the opposite way. AI is making tech move insanely fast, but it’s also never been easier to learn, experiment, and build. Keeping up with everything was never the job. Things were moving fast before AI as well.
Not unpopular at all — and you're right that "keep up with everything" was never the job, AI just cranked the volume on a pressure that always existed. The same speed that overwhelms is also the lowest barrier to learning and building we've ever had; which side you feel more depends a lot on where you're standing. Both are true, and it's a fair pushback.
Until now change in tech used to be "incremental", people used to get time to digest the nature of change and act on it.
With this AI trend, there is not enough for people to understand the change and adapt, so that is for sure causing LOT of stress. In addition the env/industry is not in so good shape, so yeah stress is real for sure. Thanks for putting the thoughts out!
Exactly — it's the collapse of digestion time that makes this different; change was always constant, but you used to get long enough to absorb it and adapt, and that breathing room is what AI took. Thanks for reading.
I am Javascript developer. I recognized the feeling when new JS frameworks are released every month. AI era ended them but made the feeling worse. New models, best practices, stacks every week or even days.
I survive by one rule: own an opinionated standard about how things are arranged and implemented. It's mine, forged through years of experience. No AI models and frameworks will dictate that. I tell my AI to create functions, but the architecture is determined by me. I let them improvise within their instrument, but I am still the conductor of the orchestra. This synergy for me brings the best out of me and my AI model. It's slower than letting AI do all the magic, but I can confidently say "I am accountable for this code".
"I let them improvise within their instrument, but I'm the conductor" is the whole healthy relationship in one line — you kept the architecture, which is exactly the judgment that doesn't expire when the frameworks do. And "I'm accountable for this code" is the part that quietly protects your sanity and your craft at once.
This really comes at the right time, and I believe everyone should read it and take a step back from the idea that we need to constantly keep up with AI.
Let me share a much simpler way to deal with this (which I applied since ChatGPT comes out): If something new is released, I make sure I know about it, understand what it can do, and then… I don’t use it until I actually have a reason to.
That's the sanest filter there is — know it exists, understand what it does, then let it sit until a real need pulls it off the shelf, instead of chasing every release for its own sake.
Some comments may only be visible to logged-in visitors. Sign in to view all comments.