So what are you doing with the time?

Sun, 18 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Writing the code wasn’t the bottleneck. People thought software developers were slow, but writing the code isn’t the whole job. Understanding what needs to change, figuring out how it fits, working with other people, and getting something useful into someone’s hands are part of it too. The work is still misunderstood.

Now that we can generate code faster than good ideas, what the hell else is everyone doing? If we can write things so quickly, why aren’t we writing better things for ourselves, our developers, and our customers?

Producing more code doesn’t tell me whether someone can finish what they came to do, or whether we’ve made their day less frustrating. And if we’re still struggling to ship useful increments, writing the next change faster doesn’t answer why.

I’m asking myself these questions too. I haven’t neatly defined what better looks like across all of this, and I’m not claiming I’ve figured it out. But there are things I’m trying to make room for.

In my projects, I’m making tools and utilities for tests, screenshots, and local execution. I use them daily and for every production release. I want a potential contributor to be able to do those things without needing the technical knowledge underneath them, or needing an LLM to work it out again.

Easier contribution is the goal. I don’t know whether anyone else has touched the tools yet, because nobody has said so. I can tell you they’re usable and part of my own work. I can’t yet tell you they’ve made someone else’s contribution easier.

But that’s somewhere I want the effort to go. If someone wants to help with a project, I’d rather they could run what they need than have to reconstruct how I do everything first.

Learning is part of the job

I’m also pushing my people to learn, to slow down where it makes sense, to determine what makes sense.

Learning! My god. We’ve eschewed learning in favour of execution speed.

I mean learning about the tools they’re using, learning new technology, studying for certifications, reading books, analyzing repositories. All the learning a good job should offer and encourage. It doesn’t all have to be justified by the ticket in front of someone today.

I’m trying to define endpoints in the work where people can stop and do something else, and making sure they feel safe and available to pause. Sometimes that means temporarily taking the communication lead on a project back from them. Saying there’s room to learn doesn’t do much if they’re still responsible for every question that comes in.

A big key here though, we talk about it, clearly. Do they feel like they’re learning or growing? I need to hear their answer, rather than assume that because I’ve encouraged it, it’s happening.

This is something I’m working at. I don’t have a claim about how much more productive it makes anyone, and I don’t think learning should need that claim to deserve a place in the working week.

We aren’t just brains in jars

Dr Cat Hicks’s The Psychology of Software Teams describes the “Brains-in-Jars” idea in its chapter 2, “Breaking Up with Brains-in-Jars.”

I desperately care about the human impact of AI. And I feel like bringing back the human elements means spending more time talking to people, coming to them, rather than waiting for them to come to me.

I feel like my teams and I get more value from intentional time together now that we’re being told AI means everyone should “10x” their productivity, or whatever bogus efficiency claim it is.

More connection to the people, more camaraderie, more understanding of the work, the successes, the struggles. More trust, more autonomy, more pleasure in showing up to work.

Those things matter to me. I don’t want to have to turn enjoying working with people into a claim about how much more we’ll produce. Understanding someone’s struggles matters even when the conversation doesn’t end with a way to get more work out of them.

We aren’t just brains in jars.

I’m not arguing against using tools to get something done faster. I’m asking why faster execution should crowd out everything else that makes the work worth doing. If we can make more room for people to learn, contribute, and spend time together, why wouldn’t we?

So when I ask what you’re doing with the time, I’m not asking why you haven’t filled it with more output. I’m asking what you’re making better for your users and your people, and whether you get any say in where that time goes. If you’re responsible for a team, that includes what you’re doing to make room for them.

Without good people, what do we have left?

Developer-Experience on Coffee or Blog

So what are you doing with the time?

Learning is part of the job

We aren’t just brains in jars