The new cost of coffee
Generative AI is changing not just the efficiency of our work and the shape of our outputs but the structure of our work. One striking change is what can be done in very small time windows (say, one to ten minutes). This is enough time to:
- Feed a task from a list into an asynchronous generative AI tool;
- Review a small output of a generative AI tool;1
- Kick off an experimental project (see here for more);
- Make sure my agents aren't blocking as they wait for me;
- Update one of various lists of issues or reminders.2
That list is extremely non-exhaustive. The point is that software engineering scales down really well these days.
Powerful institutions and habits, however, were built for the old world. For many years, I fought to protect one or two long deep-work sessions per day, and used other time for correspondence, casual chats, reading, or other pursuits. I was unlikely to get high-quality work done when (i) I had already used my best energy for the day and (ii) I had shorter uninterrupted blocks of time. That was efficient for me, but now it very much is not.
Many software workplaces, including several I've worked in, are implicitly built around this work schedule. It's reasonable to provide nice leisure perks and coffee bars if you can expect your programmers to use them when the opportunity cost of doing so is very low. This ethos extends beyond the perks and expectations themselves to the stated values justifying them: "letting employees be themselves," "preserving work-life balance," and so on.
I am emphatically in favor of encouraging casual conversation, letting programmers keep flexible schedules, and so on. But I suspect that such policies can be understood as a strategy credit. Offering them didn't cost much.
The opportunity cost of a leisurely coffee break has gone way up. Any given person or organization might have reasons of morality, culture, or preference to keep and encourage the old norms and structures, which (if I'm right) were symbiotic with a low-opportunity-cost-of-coffee world. Casual chats, asynchronous communication, and yoga breaks can, obviously, be necessary and valuable. Insofar as you're trying to maximize your software outputs, however, you need understand the new reality.