""We used to call it an engineer, now it is like a reviewer," Khare told Business Insider. "Every time it feels like you are a judge at an assembly line and that assembly line is never-ending, you just keep stamping those PRs." Khare wrote a lengthy essay titled "AI fatigue is real and nobody talks about it." In it, he wrote that AI fatigue is "the kind of exhaustion that no amount of tooling or workflow optimization could fix.""
"His typical day is no longer devoted to deep focus on a single design problem, Khare wrote, but rather to context switching between as many as six different problems. "Each one 'only takes an hour with AI.' But context-switching between six problems is brutally expensive for the human brain," he wrote. "The AI doesn't get tired between problems. I do.""
AI tools have boosted code output while simultaneously making engineering work harder and less sustainable. The technology reduces individual production cost but raises coordination, review, and decision-making burdens, producing a paradox of productivity. Engineers experience relentless review workloads akin to judging an endless assembly line, leading to exhaustion that tooling and workflow optimization cannot fix. Daily work has shifted from deep focus on single problems to frequent context switching among multiple tasks, increasing cognitive load. High output quarters can coincide with greater emotional and mental drainage. Engineers seek ways to limit AI usage and establish sustainable practices around AI integration.
Read at Business Insider
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