alt Hacker News> Same seems to be happening with AI, people are just working more rather than less.
In the last big AI productivity thread I read on Hacker News the most common anecdote was people saying they weren’t more producing more at work with AI, they were just getting the same work done faster. After that they’d relax or switch to working on side projects.
I don’t think that’s going to last for everyone, but I do think it is a common response to AI. I don’t agree when you say that people are working more. I think, at this moment in time, most people are using AI to compress the time spent doing their work. Some people pick up extra tasks with some of their new free time. Others don’t.
I don’t think AI is leading to increased working time other than in the LinkedIn and X hustle and grind bubbles where posters are bragging about having 10 agent loops running constantly to launch their startup.
Replies
I certainly work more, and I don't post on LinkedIn or X.
There is nothing wrong with trying to build a business and taking on large projects with AI.
It seems like the smart thing to do when our employment as software engineers is foreseeably threatened in the near future.
I'm somewhere that does stack ranking so it's a prisoners' dilemma. As long as someone is running Claude constantly and producing PRs, we all get negative performance implications for simply allowing ai to help us be more effective at what we were already doing.
Honestly it's driving me mad and I'm thinking about looking for different work.
I don't know any knowledge-worker role that gives you a fixed X amount of work to do, and lets you chill if you get it done in Y amount of time. If the expectation is that with AI you should be doing your work in Y/2 amount of time, they all will just require you to do 2X the amount of work.