People are applauding a software engineer's 'honest take' on AI in the workplace

• The software engineer behind OpenCode has struck a chord with his blunt views about AI in the workplace.
• Dax Raad said coding isn't the bottleneck — it's good ideas, bureaucracy, and the "realities of shipping something real."
• He said workers face little motivation to use AI to be more productive instead of simply working "with less energy spend."

A company can use AI to code faster than ever — but that won't matter if the idea itself is lousy.

That's just one point from a scathing critique of the current state of AI in the workplace from veteran software engineer Dax Raad, whose blunt assessment is resonating with many workers online.

Raad, the developer behind OpenAuth, said the bottleneck facing companies isn't coding productivity — it's a lack of good ideas, unmotivated employees, corporate bureaucracy, and "the dozen other realities of shipping something real."

Before AI, companies were reined in by development costs, he argued in a February 14 post on X that has since gone viral on Reddit as well. While it's easier than ever to produce code, that doesn't mean the original idea was worthwhile — or that employees will produce more instead of simply using AI to work "with less energy spend."

"your org rarely has good ideas. ideas being expensive to implement was actually helping," Raad wrote.

Raad described a search for meaning among employees faced with potential productivity gains from AI, arguing that the "majority of workers have no reason to be super motivated, they want to do their 9-5 and get back to their life."

Part of the issue, he wrote, is that some workers may simply use AI to coast. "they're using it to churn out their tasks with less energy spend," he said. That can actually make work harder for those who are giving it their all, he wrote.

"the 2 people on your team that actually tried are now flattened by the slop code everyone is producing, they will quit soon," Raad wrote.

There are also very real monetary costs to outfitting a company's engineers with AI coding tools and the tokens required to power new AI features.

"your CFO is like what do you mean each engineer now costs $2000 extra per month in LLM bills?" he wrote.

Raad, who also created OpenCode, an open-sourced AI coding tool, said that people shouldn't mistake his criticism of AI.

"so many people don't understand how I can be critical of AI while also building an AI tool," he wrote in a different post on X.

The OpenCode developer has begun to develop a reputation for expressing skepticism about AI's progress, or at least the hype around it. In a recent "contrarian talk," Raad said that his job is just as hard as it was before AI.

"I'm tired of people feeling like suddenly the tables are going to turn and things are going to be easier," he said during a talk with the AI Engineer podcast. "They're not easier. My life is just as hard as it's ever been. It's just as hard as it's ever been to do something amazing. But it's also where all the fun comes from, where all the purpose comes from."

Raad's views have resonated within the development community. His post on X has been viewed roughly 793,000 times, and a user who shared Raad's thoughts on Reddit has received over 22,000 upvotes. On Medium, JP Capras, a fellow engineer, praised Raad's "honest take."

"Omg, you guys are making me feel much less alone now :D," a Reddit user replied, adding that requests from their management have "destroyed" their development process.

"It's funny how accurate this is to my current situation," reads the top-voted comment on the viral Reddit post.

Some companies have said AI has allowed them to do more, faster — and others have talked about the potential to "fail fast" and iterate. Okta, Salesforce, Snowflake, and Blackstone have all leaned heavily into utilizing AI.

"It's increased the pace of what's possible," Eric Kelleher, president and chief operating officer of digital-identity company Okta, previously told Business Insider.

A new perspective on 'AI fatigue'

Raad's perspective comes amid a broader concern about "AI fatigue."

Siddhant Khare, who builds AI tools, recently wrote an essay about what he described as how "the tool that was supposed to save you time has consumed your entire day." In short, it's the view that whatever AI may increase in productivity, it comes at the cost of a burned-out workforce.

Steve Yegge, an Amazon and Google vet, recently said companies should consider a three-hour cap on AI-assisted work or risk their workforces crumbling.

"I seriously think founders and company leaders and engineering leaders at all levels, all the way down to line managers, have to be aware of this and realize that you might only get three productive hours out of a person who's vibe coding at max speed," Yegge told "The Pragmatic Engineer" newsletter.

Raad's larger point is that AI isn't a magic wand that companies can wave and expect to suddenly find success — and that real pain points remain.

"even when you produce work faster you're still bottlenecked by bureaucracy and the dozen other realities of shipping something real," he wrote.

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