Software engineers are pushed to their limits (and beyond). Unrealistic expectations are established by Twitter "I shipped an Uber clone in 2 hours with Claude" forcing every developer to crank out PRs, managers are on the look out for any kind of perceived inefficiency in tools like GetDX and Span.

If devs are expected to ship 10x faster (or else!), then they will find a way to ship 10x faster.

I always found it weird how most management would do almost anything other than ask their dev team "hey, is there any way to make you guys more productive?"

Ive had metrics rammed down my throat, Ive had AI rammed down my throat, Scrum rammed down my throad and Ive had various other diktats rammed down my throat.

95% of which slowed us down.

The only time ive been asked is when there is a deadline and it's pretty clear we arent going to hit it and even then they're interested in quick wins like "can we bring lunch to you for a few weeks?", not systemic changes.

The fastest and most productive times have been when management just set high level goals and stopped prodding.

Im convinced that the companies which seek developer autonomy will leave the ones which seek to maximize token usage in the dust in the next tech race.