Apoorva Pandey commented on my last post that when working with AI, "Multitasking is essential for efficiency". How true.
When I was a software developer, I often worked alone. At times, I would collaborate on a specific task, but mostly it was up to me. If I didn't know how to do it, I'd start my research online. Sometimes the examples were helpful, and I could cobble my project together. Over time, my skills grew, and I became a team lead.
Managing people is a different skill set from coding. It helps to understand developers' challenges, but now the responsibilities are higher-level, and time and effort go into honing people-management skills. I poured myself into that endeavor, and it was a rewarding chapter.
Now, I work almost exclusively with AI. It's an interesting combination of my past. It does require technical skill, and good design is more important than ever. Building the wrong thing fast just leads to rework. Flexible and robust designs, human usability (UX), cost, security — these are all still important.
To make the best use of my time and creativity, I often work on several projects at once. Even writing this short article, I find myself switching to tend my AI agents and to check on their progress.
The hope of OpenClaw and similar, more autonomous AI agent frameworks — where AI runs longer tasks on its own — will certainly accelerate everything. The skills I'm learning now may soon be outdated. I kind of hope not, actually. The creative challenge that AI offers me is rewarding. My input is still valuable, and I still get to contribute.
For how long do we get to enjoy the AI sweet spot? Isn't that always the question we wrestle with as humans? How long do we get to enjoy any good thing that comes along?
Now, back to the other three things I'm bouncing between.