This is an important point. My light-bulb moment was when I talked to a product owner in a previous job, and I expressed surprise around an expensive planned change, because it didn't seem that valuable to our customers.

He said, "Almost half of what we do is not that valuable to our customers, but it's valuable to him, and her, and him", pointing through the conference-room window at my fellow programmers, "and that's why we do it. If we only did things that were very valuable to our customers, we wouldn't have nearly as many good engineers on the team as we do."

When I was given a semi-ultimatum "use AI or get fired" kind of thing for writing code I had a brief bout of depression/sadness. Whereas my friend doesn't care/says "I get paid to not work". I have gotten past it, now I'm just like, I'll do what I need to do to get paid since unfortunately I'm in a lot of debt so I need this job. I learned to code in 2013 so I like typing the code myself but now it seems like a waste of time. I still write my own code for myself/hardware hobby.

I think this is a larger question we should be asking. YES, we can build this world: a world where robots do our chores, serve our coffee, check us out at the grocery store, and let the AI agents do the parts of our jobs we love.

But SHOULD we? With great power comes great responsibility - and I'm getting the impression we're (quickly) building a world that isn't very fun to live in. We technically have a choice here - DO we want bots writing our prose and responding to our customer service inquiries?

Yeah I definitely agree with this. AI has become very useful to me, but it has also definitely automated some of what used to be my favorite parts of my work.

I am having some success in working to acquire a taste for different parts of the work. But I suspect that this won't be an option for most people.

> That's going to give back the productivity gain and more, while also decreasing my quality of life.

but did we increase our EBITDA for the quarter?

> customer-service employees who enjoy building relationships but are increasingly expected to supervise AI agents instead.

It sucks for the employees, otoh it might be the only way we're going to beat Baumol's Cost Disease.

In the past few decades productivity has exploded, but service employees have largely failed to increase productivity in any way because it's harder to automate these tasks.

It's the reason the costs of things like education and healthcare are downright extortionate, the reason you're paying back your college well into your fifties, the reason you don't call an ambulance for someone in the US because you don't want to ruin their life financially.

We may have to trade the personal fulfillment in these jobs for the broader affordable access to these services.

Most people don’t have jobs they enjoy, programmers have somehow escaped this; better pay and more “protected” time instead of doing what the rest of us were doing all along

> What's a 20% productivity gain

Where did the 20% number come from? I’d argue it’s way more than that (or variable, i.e. dependent on who’s using it/how it’s being used/what it’s being used on).

Having said that, the number, to me, doesn’t even matter. You could replace that with 200%, and it’d be just as true.

As always... no AI-hypester ever talks about Amdahls law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law).

The vast majority of jobs are not full-filling or enjoyable. Because there were way more job seekers than jobs.

Programming was one of the ones which was, because there were fewer programmers than openings. Now that's flipping, thus naturally, the enjoyment is going to be sucked out of it.

> What's a 20% productivity gain if I constantly feel deflated by work that used to energize me?

I think it's called 'capitalism'

The cynic in me has learned one is measurable and can go on a slide deck, the other is vague and hard to measure.

Many successful people in their 40s could quit work already if they only decreased their monthly costs.

I think it is more important than ever to manage your wealth in a way that sustains you from capital alone in a world where employment gets progressively more toxic.

The way to achieve it is buying maintenance efficient and cheap car, make renovations smart, make good choices all around to minimise expenses. Operate your life like a corporation. First, cut the expenditures.

For me the ability to do whatever I am interested in at the moment, is worth almost any sacrifice.

Then I can seek one time contracts or short time jobs that fulfil my mental needs.

My monthly expenses are no more than 5000 dollars and mostly consistently less than that.

Which is okay because the money spending doesn’t bring me any joy nowadays. The money isn’t what gives me happiness. Only other people can provide that and activities that are dirt cheap usually, like reading or broadly understood hacking

Consumption is a short lived and deceptive joy that causes more guilt than whatever dopamine it is worth really. Governments hate people like me which means I must be doing something right.

Don't worry. They'll find some freak that actually enjoys it and is even willing to be paid less!

It's like if your career switched from solving puzzles to filling out TPS reports.

I mean that sucks, but I have many tales of people, who were passionate and outstanding in what they did, and were rewarded with a leadership position for their efforts.

Now they get to fill out excel sheets, babysit people and sit in planning meetings.

Then they'll fire you, find someone who will work for the wage that the now-degraded productivity justifies, and get them to use the AI.

anecdotal but a good number of people have clearly stopped working as much or quiet quit. some even left the company or the industry. CEOs are also telling everyone to 5x their output, AI will replace them.

Whatever productivity gains models are giving us is being eaten away by other factors.

> That's going to give back the productivity gain and more, while also decreasing my quality of life.

Unfortunately though, what does that matter? Your employer does not care how do you feel. You are paid to bring them benefits, they aren't running a charity. If you do feel down, that is your issue and you shouldn't let that influence how you work.

Just to be clear, I don't like that either. But it is what it is.

Most people don't have the luxury of finding joy and meaning in their work. You aren't hired to have fun, you're hired to create value and wealth for your employer. Just do what literally everyone else does and grind through it until you get a pension and hope it's enough to let you die with a bit of dignity.

[dead]

> That's going to give back the productivity gain and more, while also decreasing my quality of life.

Is everyone entitled to a high quality of life?

If not, then who draws the line as to who deserves what benefit in life? You?