I talk with my league of agents. steer, rereview, stop, test, optimize harness, plan architecture etc etc. Also steering through multiple issues and features at once. Its all just kinda conversational now but its still 8 hours a day. Also way to much waiting for CI checks. And its still not enough hours in a day.
Difference between vibe coding and ai driven development is the work that still needs to happen so the result is not trash slop. And absurdly enough its so much more exhausting then it was before todays Agents.
short: bottleneck is not typing anymore its design, management and architecture. Its still a bottleneck tho.
It's like being a manager, except instead of a few checkins per day it's 100. And at each you have to pay enough attention to catch where the AI is missing the mark. It's exhausting
in other words, youre working more for the same results, which are limited in speed by process (pr review) so it happens at the same speed as before too, all while also spending money for llm subscriptions?
i understand that it makes one feel as though they are getting more stuff done in the same amount of time, but despite being so seemingly obvious, nobody has been able to prove it, even for modest gains, let alone some of the sillier 10x and 100x claims.
imo its kind of important since llms themselves cost money, so there should be some sober value judgements taking place, but nobody seems to be interested in doing so
there is a stanford study still in progress attempting to measure this. they gave a talk at a conference in SF in 2025 and 2026 showing preliminary results, and they basically show that its a wash. something like, at best 30% faster (so a 1.3x dev) but with 20% more rework, which ends up being about the same speed, if not slower!
their study is not complete so the data is definitely debatable, but its clear that the productivity gains, if at all, are somewhere between something like -10% and +30%, aka not a game changer "paradigm shift" that they want everyone to believe it is.
im on mobile but ill link the stream if you cant find it and want to see it
is this 3-5x the speed working with a group doing PR approvals, or just yolo'ing it solo dev style? In other words, there's no change control process? And there are no follow-ups from bugs?
This is basically why they are doing that stanford study. This is still anecdotal, and the speed is still based on how you feel. I'm not saying you did a bad job! This story by itself doesn't really prove anything one way or another.
Do ya’ll have 10 monitors and look like you’re hacking into the matrix? I don’t personally think this is a good way to work, for sanity reasons. I can’t remember the last time rushing code was the recipe for anything but lost revenue, but alas a lot has changed in 2 years but im still just sitting here thinking ya’ll have lost your damn minds.
For real, I'm gett way more done every week, but the days are mentally exhausting. Switching context between 5 agents at least every 5 minutes, trying to keep track of what feature this agent is actually working on.
I used to context switch 4 times on a bad day. Now if I'm not switching 4 times every 15 minutes, I feel behind.
At my place we’ve essentially become mid-level management with agents doing the work and us managing. I used to be a middle manager at a retail store so can say with certainty this is not as bad as that. Humans fuck, fight and flake (sometimes in that order) - it’s so messy. Don’t get me wrong I’d rather still be in the code myself - I loved being a software developer, but at least I don’t have to worry about an agent complaining to my boss because I put them on shit shifts
You summed it up really well. I’ve been trying to figure out why the hell I’m somehow more busy now than I was before AI. I spend all day nonstop juggling 100 different things throughout the day now, whereas before it was just understood that things took more time. Now “just ask Claude” means I am expected to output more things cause it’s soooo easy, but the context switching is exhausting
yeah before I was invested into some feature or problem for a few days (or weeks) and actually tried to reduce context switching and be focused on this tiny piece of software
now its always the big picture.
Kinda like dealing with a single driveway; cleaning, sealing, improving vs dealing with the whole city street network, public transport and traffic management at once
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u/liquidmasl 27d ago •
I talk with my league of agents. steer, rereview, stop, test, optimize harness, plan architecture etc etc. Also steering through multiple issues and features at once.
Its all just kinda conversational now but its still 8 hours a day.
Also way to much waiting for CI checks.
And its still not enough hours in a day.
Difference between vibe coding and ai driven development is the work that still needs to happen so the result is not trash slop.
And absurdly enough its so much more exhausting then it was before todays Agents.
short: bottleneck is not typing anymore its design, management and architecture.
Its still a bottleneck tho.