A competent developer working with Claude Code or Codex could now replicate the core functionality of a mid-market SaaS product in weeks. Not perfectly or with every edge case handled, but well enough that the CIO reviewing a $500k annual renewal started asking the question “what if we just built this ourselves?”
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The interconnected nature of these systems weren’t fully appreciated until this print, either. ServiceNow sold seats. When Fortune 500 clients cut 15% of their workforce, they cancelled 15% of their licenses. The same AI-driven headcount reductions that were boosting margins at their customers were mechanically destroying their own revenue base.
Here's the thing that broke my brain for a while: AI genuinely makes individual tasks faster. That's not a lie. What used to take me 3 hours now takes 45 minutes. Drafting a design doc, scaffolding a new service, writing test cases, researching an unfamiliar API. All faster.
[..]
But my days got harder. Not easier. Harder.
[..]
Before AI, there was a ceiling on how much you could produce in a day. That ceiling was set by typing speed, thinking speed, the time it takes to look things up. It was frustrating sometimes, but it was also a governor. You couldn't work yourself to death because the work itself imposed limits.
AI removed the governor. Now the only limit is your cognitive endurance. And most people don't know their cognitive limits until they've blown past them.