The way I tell this to people is "I have never worked less and I have never been more productive".
All of my effort goes into ensuring that agents work autonomously for days to weeks without me having to coddle them. This takes a lot of effort to ensure that my memories are pruned, my git logs are clean, that I've transferred my way of thinking to agents so that they can make autonomous decisions which are 60-80% aligned with what I would want.
And the reason I go with 60-80% is that's the level of alignment I expect to get from my product & engineering teams, in a given sprint/period. Like with them, I've accepted that I'm not the perfect solution and it's going to go through a few iterations before I shape it into what I want it to be.
If I had to constantly chat with my agents, I think I'd be burnt out too. because I find that it's an absolute drag talking to the machine.
edit: changed the last sentence, which was unintentionally judgey.
[–] talon8635 3 days ago
[–] bushido 3 days ago
I don't mind talking to machines. I do mind micromanaging them, and I ming micromanaging people as well, and I don't like being micromanaged.
I added that last bit because in the rare circumstance that I am constantly going back and forth with AI, I feel that I'm the one who's being micromanaged.
> Does this not result in some inherent level of mental/skill degradation though
Not in my experience. I get to try a lot more things without having to actively sit with it. In the past, I would assign it to a engineering team if it was practical for the company. If it was side projects, if it was really, really important, maybe I'd squeeze in some time on the weekends, but mostly I didn't have time for it.
Now, experiments really come down to do I have the personal or professional budget to do it. I do use a lot of the subscription still, so it's do my subscriptions have capacity. I try every harebrained idea that comes to mind.
I definitely feel I've developed more skills in the last 6 months, than I did in the 2-3 years before it.
YMMV
[–] talon8635 2 days ago
Are you a manager then? If so, managing a swarm makes complete sense and wouldn’t in any obvious way degrade your professional skill set
I don’t have a complex system of agents buzzing around doing my work for me. I’m sure I’d be more productive (from company standpoint) if I did. Does this not result in some inherent level of mental/skill degradation though? Or at least skill transfer away from code and fundamentals/architecture/design and towards configuring autonomous systems?