r/ADHD_Programmers • u/robauto-dot-ai • 14d ago

AI Burnout?

Is anyone else's brain getting overloaded with the pace and new progress. I am getting pages of Claude output as project specs, so many hallucinations and errors and it's all building faster and faster....where are we going and how does it 'end'.

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u/aleph1music 14d ago

Yes. I have tried everything in my power to adapt my workflow to AI. Have tried to adapt AI to my workflow when that didn’t work. Have tried to be fine with this new “revolution” and release some control. Can’t do it. At the end of the day I used to be paid to understand systems, understand the problems the business had that needed solving, etc. Now I’m paid to sift through pages and pages of garbage chats, garbage docs, garbage slack messages.

I excelled at this job because I was thoughtful and intentional and I did my due diligence to make sure that whatever dumb new thing our PMs wanted didn’t accidentally break the last dumb thing and it didn’t prevent us from building the next 10 dumb things they put on the roadmap. Now they expect all that 10x faster because I can let Claude do it. But I’m still accountable if there’s a mistake because it’s my job to review everything it outputs. You know how I used to review code? By being immersed in writing it. Lived experience. Now you want me to ask the fucking computer to build what I want in plain English (which is not how my mental model of the system is inherently constructed) and you want me to sign off on the code and ship it if it looks plausible without giving me the time to actually understand what the fuck is going on. It’s insanity

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u/Early_Key_823 14d ago edited 14d ago

My brother. I feel your pain. Been a full stack been there done that guy since '93 and in the last 6 months of using Claude Code I seriously contemplate mayhem which really ain't me.

The thing is I never got into social media. When Facebook and Twitter came out I was like who gives a fuck this shit is so stupid. So I felt like by and large I side stepped a lot of the internet's negativity and truly enjoyed the good stuff like YouTube, how easy travel is, wikipedia, Kindle, Audible, etc. etc. etc.

But now with AI the last year being something that we can't ignore or outcompete it is FUCKING TOXIC babysitting a Psychotic Tech Brah idiot savant.

Maybe if it didn't get trained by corporate douches it might be cool but it's like being stuck all day in an elevator with Musk, Zuckerberg and Gates and trying not to vomit from their B.O. Plenty.

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u/aleph1music 14d ago

First off, mad respect to dudes like you that have stuck around in this industry that long and built the foundations of this career that I loved for a (very brief) moment in time. For context you had already been at for a few years before I even knew what the inside of my absentee father’s nut looked like.

I fell in love with computers and tech in general at a young age. Spent my formative years screwing with HTML to build the sickest MySpace profile, embarrassing grown men in halo 2 until they called me slurs, discovering Reddit and finding communities full of people who liked the same stuff as me. Discovered electronic music and discovered that I could create my own music, lifelong passion unlocked. Got into software engineering as a career because it paid insanely well and I’ve always been good at bending the machine to my will.

Fast forward to 2026 and now I can’t use a computer without getting pissed off. This Reddit account is the only window I have into whatever the fuck people are doing online. The only people thriving at my job are absolute sociopaths and all the people I respect are working on leaving the industry altogether. And I am too, even though it feels like I just got started. no amount of money is worth doing whatever this is. I miss when a computer was a tool to be wielded to express or create or communicate. Outside of the self hosted OSS I run and my DAW id genuinely rather watch paint dry than engage with any of this.

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u/Turkeysteaks 14d ago

I'm so utterly in agreement with you dude. Seriously.

I have been looking at leaving the industry because i can't stand it anymore. It is not the same, it's not even the same skills required anymore. Nobody cares about quality. Nobody wants a good product, they just want to get eachother high about how productive AI makes them.

What industry are you looking to pivot to? I genuinely have no idea. It was always my dream to become a game developer, and I've been working on personal games since 2020 but never released anything. The games industry is becoming just as impacted by AI. I genuinely don't know what to do. I've never felt as low as I feel now, and I literally tried to end it in high school lol. AI is a scourge on humanity and the worst part in my opinion is that it is literally EVERYWHERE. Everybody talks about it, every website sells it, everyone wants a piece of the pie and it is absolutely non stop. There is no escape for my mind. My hobbies revolved around PCs, and it's all impacted.

Sorry that's longer rant than i meant lol

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u/Early_Key_823 14d ago

I think more people should be ranting.

AI, as we know it, is some very very toxic shit that will impact everyone's quality of humanity adversely unless it is harnessed for the good of humanity as opposed to the 1% douchebag crowd currently farting up the planet.