alt Hacker NewsThis is some anecdata, but I'll share it nonetheless as I have a pretty wide network of software and security engineer friends from which I've heard the following.
Almost no one I know wants agent usage to be a zero-sum activity. There are a few oddballs who obviously only got into software for the money, so any means to that end is acceptable. That does not stop those with say-so over things like employment (and, if you're in the USA, the associated healthcare), from treating it as a zero-sum activity.
When engineers are being told to maximize token usage, are constantly being brought into meetings where they're expected to reveal their latest and greatest use of LLMs, and not using enough tokens in your role is seen as a negative, then the pressure starts to creep in. Yes, I know this is silly to most people who read this site, and I agree. It's bonkers. But there is certainly something to the idea of "AI psychosis" in upper management that is making agent use zero-sum company-wide.
That's good to know, because all I really go off of is what I see posted online which is most likely skewed towards the polarizing takes (been unemployed for a while). Sounds like some positive news though, and I hope that these tools can help empower people to the point where they don't feel shackled by their jobs by doing something like lowering the barrier and manpower needed to succeed at entrepreneurship.
That shit with upper management sounds stupid af and I've heard the same type of shit from people I know who are in other fields. I'm guessing it's happening from a combination of ignorance, FOMO, investment, etc etc. But that is more of a systemic issue than anything to do with these tools imo.