[throwanem]

So recent? I've been on sabbatical (the real kind, self-funded) for eighteen months, and while my sense has been things have not stopped heading downhill since I stepped off the ride back in 2024, to hear of such a sudden step change is somewhat novel. "Very different" just how, if you don't mind my asking?

(I'm also looking for local, personally satisfying work, in exchange for a pay cut. Early days, and I am finding the profession no longer commands quite the social cachet it once did, but I'm not foolish enough to fail to price for the buyer's market in which we now seek to sell our labor. Besides, everyone benefits from the occasional reminder to humility! "Memento mori" and all that.)

[sd9]

I feel like the models and harnesses had a step change in capability around December, as somebody who’s been using them daily since early/mid 2025. It’s gone from me doing the majority of the programming, to me doing essentially none, since December. And that change felt quite sudden.

The more recent shift after December is mostly explained by people at my company catching up with the events that happened in December. And that’s more about drastically increased productivity expectations, layoffs, etc.

I’m also considering a self funded sabbatical. I could do it. What sort of thing have you been up to, any advice?

[nidnogg]

I can relate to the feeling - this timing tracks for when most, if not all of my friends, all my co-workers (even the few who were resisting to adopt any AI toloing) flocked to just "Claude Code". Similar to how the masses gobbled VS Code a while back.

Company started doling out Claude Code configs, everything is now cli/agentic AI harnessed and news about "90% of this company's code is now AI Generated" pop up every other day.

It seems the last frontier to breach before this was nailing agentic black boxes to not crap out during the first hour of work. After that, it's really been much smoother for those tools.

[throwanem]

On reflection my prior reply here may have come off unintentionally insulting, for which I apologize. The "stupid and misbegotten ideas about AI" to which I referred are those of putative employers at this time, no one else's, certainly not yours as my construction carelessly implied.

[throwanem]

Uh, don't come into it expecting to know exactly what you're going to be up to, might be the best advice I could give. Oh, do plan! But loosely: especially early on, as you get out from under the crushing burden of constant stress and misery, there will be surprises. I haven't been doing a lot of hobby programming, for example, not much more than a few faces for my Amazfit wristwatch - but my diary's grown by about a thousand pages, well above the usual rate, and I've begun a new series of crappy-camera snapshot albums, this latter especially being a real surprise despite that I have been a photographer for many years now. (My daily driver since 2021 has been a Nikon D850 with three SB-R200 flashes on a ring mount, mostly chasing wild wasps to get their portraits from six inches away. Shooting a total piece of shit for a change has been a hilarious revelation!)

Imagination operates more freely and foolishness is less heavily ballasted, and any kind of emotional crap you've been keeping shoved to the side with the force of pressing obligations is likely to come out and start rearranging the metaphorical furniture. If you've got stuff like that, this will be a good opportunity to get to grips with it, whether you mean to or not. Prepare accordingly.

And finally, there's not too many more appealing social presentations in my experience than that deriving from the confident knowledge that, within reason at least, one has earned and is now deploying the privilege to do more or less whatever the hell one likes: not the confidence contingent on a fat wallet, but that inherent in having only those scheduled obligations one chooses, and also in understanding precisely the difference underlying that distinction. Very few people in this world have the skill to behave as if their time were entirely their own to command, and this makes a difference in deportment that others will notice and attend without necessarily knowing why. It is more subtle and far less brash than the confidence in wielding the name of an employer that everyone knows, but for like reasons it also has worth and durability which the other does not. Whether or not you keep it, the experience of having had it is about as unforgettable and as indescribable as the trick to riding a bike.

Thanks for the info! My last direct exposure to a frontier model was now almost twelve months ago, so I suppose I'll have to dedicate a few hours pretty soon.

[nidnogg]

Don't you feel that sabbaticals kinda get you off the new tech wave anyway? I usually check in on news much more often when bored at slow work days.

On the side, this might not have to do at all with your case, but the reason I personally keep putting off sabbaticals is that I feel it can severely compound my routine wrecking habits and I don't think I'd be too strong-willed to give it meaningful purpose. Not to mention the first point, i.e. it would 100% make my industry pessimism worse. I'd like to not bounce away from tech forever. Rather, figure what scratches the same itch I've been seeking since the start.

I'm all about big road trips, big adventures but I think the couch potato risk is all too real for me.

[throwanem]

Well, sure. It isn't for everyone, and this isn't my first time. Lots of folks struggle without exogenously imposed routine and structure, and wouldn't it be a dull old world if we were all alike? My diary is nine years old and, as of today, thirty-one hundred and one pages long. But for what it's worth, I neither desire nor intend ever to return to "tech" as you construct it in your comment here, and as HN the appendage of YC (1) also does. I learned how to work for a living well before any of that stuff really came along, and I confide I will still know how once it's gone. (Also, reading the news versus distracting oneself with it is a distinction worth considering for the difference it describes. Can be hard to be very proactive or muster much motivation when all one's energy goes to either earning a livelihood or to recovering from same, eh?)

(1) Peace, Dan! I imply no substantial or material connection, only nascence within the same culture and enshrinement of the same desiderata, as you well know - and well know can't be gainsaid, or not in factual terms at least.

[shimman]

Be weary of false prophets in these comments, none of these tools are anywhere close to production quality and now that major companies are suffering enough outages to negatively impact them (Amazon, MSFT, Cloudflare).

Much better take is to start establishing yourself as a slop wrangler. Lot of stupid money to be made from fools wanting to purify their slop.

[throwanem]

If you don't consider it "production quality" and I don't consider it "production quality" and the paying client does consider it "production quality," which two of these people are wrong?

[shimman]

Why does that matter and not you know... the actual outcomes and damages that are effecting real lives here?

Are you seriously arguing that the only thing that determines right from wrong is someone buying the thing? I mean that would explain most of the sickness that is neoliberalism currently infecting the US.

[throwanem]

I'm trying to warn that you had better pay attention to which incentives you select and where they lead you, because no one is wholly virtuous, and if you go around believing your moral worth is invariant over your behavior - as distinct from your own evaluation of that behavior - then that moral worth will rapidly diminish toward the negative. I would also like to see a clearer distinction drawn between economics and ethics. But if you imagine yourself to lack either agency or responsibility, over where and to how and for what and to whom you sell your labor, then no comment I could make will aid you.