Came here to say that. I’d rather spend 4 days automating my local development environment than spend half an hour every time figuring out why my deps are mismatched, or what is the correct env var to put over there.
If everyone on the team wastes 10 minutes on random BS every day, it is thousands of money compounding over months.
When it comes to tech layoffs, the AI argument is almost complete BS. If they really wanted to increase productivity, they’d be purchasing agent subscriptions, not laying ppl off.
The layoffs are happening because it is too easy to outsource tech work to exploited workers in foreign countries. In the vast majority of these cases AI should be read as “Actually Indian” (with utmost respect to my Hindu-speaking colleagues, I have learned so much from you).
They are just exploiting the lack of international labor protections, there is nothing new.
I think it remains to be seen. If the vast majority of text I read is synthetic, my writing will naturally start to smell synthetic too.