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AI promised less work. I’ve never worked more

The pitch was that AI would give us our time back. Write less boilerplate, delegate the boring parts, go home earlier.

当初的宣传是人工智能将把时间还给我们。少写样板代码，把枯燥的部分委派出去，早点下班。

I am not complaining about the tools. I use agents for all of my engineering work now, and I wrote about how that setup evolved and why I still read the code. I can investigate and ship things that would not have been worth starting two years ago.

我并不是在抱怨这些工具。我现在所有的工程工作都使用智能体（agents），我也写过关于这种设置是如何演变的，以及为什么我仍然坚持阅读代码。我能够调查并交付那些在两年前根本不值得启动的项目。

But somewhere this year I noticed that I am working more than I ever have, and that it feels heavier than it used to. Not because any single task is harder. Because there are so many more of them, all at once.

但今年我注意到，我的工作量比以往任何时候都多，而且感觉比过去更沉重。这并不是因为某项单一任务变难了，而是因为任务的数量太多，而且是同时涌现的。

This post is me trying to understand that, with some data from my own GitHub history.

这篇文章是我试图理解这一现象的尝试，其中包含了我个人 GitHub 历史中的一些数据。

As a full-stack engineer, a normal week for me meant two or three serious tasks. A feature, a tricky bug, maybe a migration. Each one needed real focus, but I could hold one of them in my head at a time, finish it, and move to the next.

作为一名全栈工程师，我正常的一周意味着两到三项重要的任务。一个功能、一个棘手的 Bug，或者一次迁移。每一项都需要全神贯注，但我可以一次只处理一件，完成后再进行下一件。

Today my week looks completely different. I have several agents running in parallel: one implementing a change, one investigating a production question, one working through a review, another doing research I will need later. None of them needs me all the time. Every one of them needs me sometimes.

如今我的一周看起来完全不同了。我有几个智能体在并行运行：一个在实施变更，一个在调查生产环境的问题，一个在处理代码审查，另一个在做我稍后需要的研究。它们都不需要我时刻盯着，但每一个都需要我时不时地介入。

That “sometimes” is the problem.

这个“时不时”就是问题所在。

Each agent eventually comes back with a question, a plan to approve, a diff to read or a result to make sense of. Responding means switching contexts: reloading a different problem, a different repository and a different set of decisions.

每个智能体最终都会带着问题、待批准的计划、待阅读的差异文件（diff）或需要解读的结果回来。回应它们意味着切换上下文：重新加载一个不同的问题、一个不同的代码库以及一套不同的决策。

Two or three serious tasks a week was tiring in a familiar way. Working with many agents is tiring in a new way. My attention is spread across more problems, and I find moving between them much more mentally draining.

每周两到三项重要任务带来的疲惫感是熟悉的。而与多个智能体协作带来的疲惫感则是一种全新的体验。我的注意力分散在更多的问题上，我发现要在它们之间切换，在精神上消耗巨大。

I pulled my GitHub contribution calendar for every month from January 2019 to today and marked my roles at Bold.org, which I joined in January 2020: Full Stack Engineer until August 2022, Principal Engineer until August 2025, and Vice President of Technology since then. These are GitHub’s contribution counts, including private work, so they mix commits, pull requests, reviews and issues. It is a rough signal of activity, not a measure of value. 2019 is an incomplete baseline: my job before Bold.org used a self-hosted GitLab, so GitHub only shows what I did outside it. But the shape is hard to ignore.

我调取了从 2019 年 1 月至今每个月的 GitHub 贡献日历，并标注了我在 Bold.org 的职位（我于 2020 年 1 月加入）：2022 年 8 月前是全栈工程师，2025 年 8 月前是首席工程师，此后担任技术副总裁。这些是 GitHub 的贡献统计，包括私有工作，因此混合了提交、拉取请求、审查和议题。这只是一个粗略的活跃度信号，而非价值衡量标准。2019 年的数据是一个不完整的基准：在加入 Bold.org 之前，我的工作使用自托管的 GitLab，所以 GitHub 只显示了我在那之外的工作。但这种趋势很难被忽视。

The first part of the curve is what I expected:

曲线的第一部分符合我的预期：

As a Principal Engineer, more of my work went into architecture, deep dives into concepts, setting up projects and planning, rather than fixing bugs or iterating on features. Becoming VP of Technology continued that shift, with even less feature work expected. At least until AI came along.

作为首席工程师，我的大部分工作转向了架构、深入研究概念、项目设置和规划，而不是修复 Bug 或迭代功能。成为技术副总裁后，这种转变持续进行，预期的功能性工作更少了。至少在人工智能出现之前是这样。

Almost all of this is private work. The dashed line in the chart is public contributions only: it was near zero from 2021 to 2025 and came back this year, with 191 so far, but that is still less than a tenth of 2026.

这些几乎全是私有工作。图表中的虚线仅代表公开贡献：从 2021 年到 2025 年几乎为零，今年有所回升，目前为 191 次，但这仍不到 2026 年总量的十分之一。

The twist is the role. In 2020 I was a full-stack engineer doing feature work full time, and this is roughly what that looked like on GitHub. Today I lead engineering at Bold.org and do far less feature work than I used to. On paper my graph should look like my Principal Engineer years, or lower. Instead it is back where it was when writing code was my whole job.

反转在于职位。2020 年我是一名全职从事功能开发的全栈工程师，这大致就是当时在 GitHub 上的表现。今天，我在 Bold.org 领导工程团队，从事的功能开发工作比过去少得多。从纸面上看，我的图表应该看起来像我担任首席工程师时期，甚至更低。但实际上，它回到了我以写代码为全部工作的水平。

What changed is how much work feels worth taking on. When coding is cheap, I can fix bugs I would previously have left alone, improve patterns across the codebase, take on new projects and turn more ideas into something real. Much of this is work I would never have considered before. Agents did not just make my existing workload faster to finish. They made it easy to give myself a much bigger one.

改变的是我所认为“值得承担”的工作量。当编码成本很低时，我可以修复以前会搁置的 Bug，改进整个代码库的模式，承担新项目，并将更多的想法变为现实。其中许多工作是我以前从未考虑过的。智能体不仅让我现有的工作完成得更快，它们还让我很容易给自己增加更大的工作量。

Looking at the monthly totals, 2026 is not one steady climb. It is a series of bursts.

观察月度总数，2026 年并不是稳步上升的，而是一系列爆发式的增长。

January and February were the first clear burst, with 277 and 233 contributions. This is when I started working seriously with agents, and when the observability experiment that became our internal company agent took off. Every week revealed something new I could suddenly delegate, and I wanted to try all of it.

1 月和 2 月是第一次明显的爆发，分别有 277 次和 233 次贡献。那时我开始认真使用智能体，也是我们后来成为公司内部智能体的可观测性实验起步的时候。每周我都会发现一些新的、可以突然委派出去的任务，我想尝试所有这些。

March to June generally winds down, from 203 contributions in March to 77 in June. But April was a smaller burst along the way, another month when I had ideas and acted on them. I think improvements in the models were part of that renewed energy. Its monthly total of 187 is below January to March, but it includes a 29-contribution day and 68 public contributions, my highest public total of the year.

3 月到 6 月总体呈下降趋势，从 3 月的 203 次贡献降至 6 月的 77 次。但 4 月期间出现了一次小规模爆发，那是我又有想法并付诸行动的一个月。我认为模型的改进是这种活力重现的部分原因。4 月 187 次的月度总数低于 1 月至 3 月，但其中包括了单日 29 次贡献和 68 次公开贡献，是我今年公开贡献最高的一个月。

August is the biggest burst of all. Coming back from my summer break, the calendar shows a full week of zero contributions in early August. Then every weekday from August 10 to August 27 was between 14 and 43. August ended at 427 contributions, the busiest month in the whole timeline. September stayed high at 301.

8 月是所有爆发中规模最大的一次。从暑假回来后，日历显示 8 月初整整一周没有贡献。随后从 8 月 10 日到 8 月 27 日，每个工作日的贡献都在 14 到 43 次之间。8 月最终以 427 次贡献结束，是整个时间轴上最忙碌的一个月。9 月依然保持在 301 次的高位。

Every cycle starts the same way. A new model or a new workflow makes something possible that was not possible last month, and my head fills with ideas. Because implementation is now cheap, there is no natural friction stopping me from pursuing all of it at once. So I do. I start more agents, open more threads and say yes to more experiments.

每个周期都以同样的方式开始。一个新的模型或一个新的工作流程使上个月无法实现的事情成为可能，我的脑海里充满了想法。因为现在的实现成本很低，没有任何自然的阻力阻止我同时追求所有这些想法。所以我做了。我启动更多的智能体，开启更多的线程，并对更多的实验说“是”。

That works for a few weeks. Then the reviewing and context switching catch up with me, and I pull back to a more stable flow. I stay there until something exciting comes along, or until a holiday recharges me enough that I go straight back into another burst.

这种情况能维持几周。然后，审查和上下文切换的压力就会追上我，我便退回到更稳定的节奏。我会在那里停留，直到出现令人兴奋的事情，或者直到假期让我恢复足够的精力，让我直接进入下一次爆发。

I count three of these cycles since January.

自 1 月以来，我经历了三个这样的周期。

At the end of a burst, I feel tired of AI. I do not want to start another agent or think of more ideas. I do my normal work, but I stop chasing the extra projects and possibilities because I do not have the mental bandwidth for them.

在一次爆发结束时，我感到对人工智能感到厌倦。我不想再启动另一个智能体，也不想再想出更多的点子。我做我的日常工作，但我停止追求额外的项目和可能性，因为我没有足够的心理带宽来处理它们。

The part that surprised me most is not the peaks. It is how much I am doing between them.

最让我惊讶的不是那些高峰，而是我在高峰之间所做的工作量。

March did not feel like the bursts in January, February or August, but I was still doing substantial work. It had 203 contributions, against my Principal Engineer average of 114 a month. I was still acting on ideas, but that level of activity no longer felt lik

3 月的感觉不像 1 月、2 月或 8 月那样爆发，但我仍然在做大量工作。它有 203 次贡献，而我担任首席工程师时的月平均贡献为 114 次。我仍然在付诸行动，但那种活跃程度不再感觉像……