> Everyone feels like they're just trying to punch the drywall and grab as much copper wire out of the walls as they can until they're finally let go and/or the whole company fails

That’s very graphic.

The thing is, I already felt a bit like that before AI. It’s just money. This quarter’s. The rest doesn’t exist. Make flashy features faster and you’ll be promoted. Make things carefully so that they last and can be maintained easily, and you are be ignored.

I say this not as an engineer that tried to write maintainable software and now is butthurt, but as an (ex)manager who tried to promote such people. And now is butthurt. I found myself telling my engineers that if they wanted to get promotions they had to prioritize the shiny and skip the rest.

I hated it.

Now I am back to Engineering. I do use AI heavily at work because no one cares but if my output is “too slow” I will look bad. I at least try to raise concerns when I see them. The answer tends to be “yeah, we can’t afford to do that properly now”.

I use AI way more sparingly for my personal open source stuff. Because I care.