The tech overlords have signed a demonic blood contract, and now our feet are being held to the fire. All this talk about productivity is unsettling when you realize how it manifests in your job. Everyone I know is working way harder than before AI. Demanding deadlines seem never-ending, and most large companies seem to be drinking the token-maxing Kool-Aid. The sad part is that there is some truth to this “boost” in productivity, but this boost is being misapplied by many. With Halloween coming up, let’s explore the spooky side of this “AI or die” life we live now.

Skeletons in the Closet: Death by Merge Request

The current siren call is that using AI can boost productivity, which means you can ship more features faster. The problem now is the hundreds of MRs devs have to “review.” Now, since there are so many MRs, we have people pushing with no code review or using multi-agent code reviews, which is a fancy way of saying we don’t know how to read or be responsible.

This is all done because people have lost their minds, and their managers or org leaders insist that this is the way forward. So you spend your 40+ hours at work prompting until you can get a crappy MR out and get it through an agent’s code review—or have it fixed and pushed by the agents. The cracks are showing. These large software systems are breaking, and people do not care about the work anymore. The sad part is that the ones who do care get pounded by leadership to give in and keep pressing the “Enter” key in their favorite agent.

This leads to people pushing major breaking changes or causing death by a thousand cuts. This takes its toll on systems. The sad part is that when things break, who do you go to? I mean, you can’t ask the programmer how their program works in the year 2026—that would be too crazy an ask. So now we have to prompt again to understand what broke and why, and sometimes the explanation is still wrong.

Side note: why does every company want all these new features? Spotify doesn’t need new features; it needs to fix its current issues and optimize for better streaming. Why does DoorDash need a food-ordering agent? This is so stupid it makes my IQ melt.

This blood ritual and obsession with productivity are misguided. There is a better way.

The Light in the Jack-o’-Lantern

I realize I can’t control the direction of large companies, but forcing more MRs that many feel lead to more bugs and useless features is like forcing a square peg into a round hole.

There is a productivity boost that we can take advantage of, and it may turn out to be healthier in the long run. Agents allow us to work and explore a feature in more depth in a shorter time span. Instead of rushing out garbage, you can use agents to think and design better systems. Even if you are more anti-AI, let’s at least use them to help search for certain patterns or docs for libs. Instead of rushing to a zero-sum system that explodes, craft the best features possible.

You need to slow down and speed up at the same time. Do not rush the feature; explore how to make it better. If it’s a research task, give yourself time for a more thoughtful write-up or proof of concept. Don’t get stuck on the small things (syntax, spending hours searching for docs, spending hours or days refactoring a small number of files). Use agents to help refactor into a few different patterns to see how each might work, and then pick the best one using your human intuition and craftiness. Only you understand the team, full system, goals, and customer.

You need to push back and say NO to your managers if you’re in a position where you won’t get sacked immediately. Spend your time choosing the best ideas to focus on, and go deeper into making those algorithms, models, and frontend and backend systems much more efficient so you can deliver a supreme product.

I understand this may only be possible on small or medium-sized teams with a high level of trust. I don’t know how to fix large companies and teams that have signed up for this spooky pact that requires burning out engineers and building terrible systems. Please, Epic, I beg you to fix the many half-broken features in Unreal Engine.

Conclusion: Fight Back Against Shallow Productivity Demons

These people obsessed with “productivity” are steering the ship into an iceberg. Instead, help steer us towards greatness. We have so many tools to use these days. Care about the work you do. Care about the code and read it. Channel the managers’ obsession with productivity into deeper and more meaningful features. You can push deeper than ever, be more creative, explore ideas in parallel, and create efficient software—something we somehow lost along the way. Love the craft and dig deeper into it.