I feel exactly the same
kinda feeling the AI meaning crisis rn
a) blogging feels less compelling
many posts in my drafts feel less compelling.
“check out this technical trick” feels obviated - LLMs code now.
“SWE meta-advice”, à la my post “engineering buy-in” feel weird - are most still applicable in v diff industry?
“doing the math on X” - usually not powered by a deep insight, just doing the work. llm deep research isn’t as good but it’s like >50% there
some feeling of being an okay writer and maybe falling below the LLM waterline soon?
some feeling of loss of valuable SWE meta-knowledge being devalued soon
b) macroscopic career stuff is ???
it’s weird to be in an era where 1. there’s big technological change happening, 2. i think it’s likely enough to have bad outcomes that i don’t want to work on scaling it
v odd for career meaning to live in the time & place where it’s happening, but opt out of participating.
working on other stuff is cool, but 1) feels weird working on stuff that matters only where scaling fails, 2) really uncompelling to work with this deep myopia
startups are cool when you can think in like 5-7y timeframes? it’s very hard to think past like 1-2y rn, and that’s making many things less compelling. trendchasing mostly feels kinda yucky.
c) microscopic SWE collaboration is getting more annoying
i still enjoy LLM-aided coding.
but I’m getting kinda fatigued reading LLM-written design docs & proposals.
getting sloppy 50k LOC PRs tossed at me w clear lack of authorial review.
so, what do I do?
best bets:
a) become less career-interested: noticing I’m like a 90th to 95th percentile career person? can just stop centering this within my identity.
have hobbies, kids, live a good life, let the world take the path it does.
perhaps do the FIRE thing, but moreso just interpolate towards that ethos & relationship with work.
b) ostrich mode harder
try to do deep/long-term work, look at the chaos less.
kinda trying to do this by being on twitter less.
sure writing might be more sisyphean now but hey it kinda always was always
kinda seems promising to find remaining realms of thought over frenetic descent, where I’m skilled too, but idk what they are
maybe I’d be better off far from San Francisco
maybe I’d enjoy work with more grounded super near term impact more
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