The Identity Crisis as a Developer

AI is here to stay; that’s certainly how things look right now. If I were in the big business of producing AI products, my priority would be to directly challenge the cost per token vs intelligence output. OpenAI has documented in their financials how they make $1 for every $1.69 spent (source) - that’s a net loss for every single transaction. Billions down the drain, yet the data centres and hyperscalers are hoping that circular financing they participate in will leave them on the right side of a seriously thick wedge of cash.

The cost of AI as it stands is too high, and while the biggest costs fall on the businesses providing AI, people do get stung by it. The thing is, other parts are heavily subsidised. It’s prone to the ‘shrinkflation’ we’ve come to experience when looking in a tub of Celebrations each Christmas. Same price, less to take out. Awkwardly, AI is strangely addictive to use. Even if you’re not weak-willed and don’t succumb to offloading onto an AI, a developer’s role has changed drastically. While not all developers are being dropped, you can bet the output expected has grown considerably in the past 12 months.

What used to take days now takes hours. Ideas can be built and trashed in the same day with less cost. In theory, it means there’s room for more innovation and certainly the perception of making things more efficient. There have been reports recently that challenge this perception, citing limited gains (but gains nonetheless) as a result of AI being bundled into employees’ day-to-day jobs.

There are, however, a few of us who have found this shake-up quite the rollercoaster. It’s not just about the constant perceived threat to employability, but a deeper, more personal identity crisis unfolding. Like many, I’ve always in part characterised my worth by my ability to do things at work. Being seen as the ‘smartest’ or ‘the guy to go to’ for things probably shouldn’t be an identifier of self-worth, but as a bit of a workaholic, you can’t always pick what does or doesn’t feel like a judgement of you.

Many a time, rather than coming over to ask a question, people just default to asking AI. The way some people talk about AI, you’d be forgiven for thinking some believe it to be a human relationship. That absence of being challenged leaves me personally feeling a bit lost. I love IT, and the work I produce now is arguably among the best I’ve ever produced, but I feel less successful now than ever before. Where I used to derive joy from solving a problem, that’s all gone. Finish that prompt and move on to the next thing. I can better express desired outcomes, which is great, but it comes at great mental cost. Never before have I found myself as close to collapse from mental exhaustion as I am now. I’m in my early 30s, hardly past the point of no return.

I like to feel like I have a strong will, and my family raised me to take things on the chin and never surrender. Some might exclaim it’s all just me being dramatic; I can assure you, it’s not.

Someone I know said to me, “You never see anyone thank air traffic controllers. Every day they ensure the lowest possible risk of incidents, and that work is thankless. You only hear about them when something goes wrong.” Honestly, that resonated with me hugely, and since then I do (in my head) thank air traffic control each and every time I fly. As a developer, I feel very much like the air traffic controllers: regardless of the good, only the bad gets highlighted. Thing is, I have expectations set against me as if I’m an AI. I’ve certainly found that when some people ask me something, it sounds like a verbal prompt they gave to an AI earlier…

“Rewrite the above as if a human wrote it” - whoops, how did that get in there… oddly, I still wrote this without AI. Maybe there’s hope in there somewhere. Stay the course; we’ll make it eventually. Let’s see what the next few months have to offer.