Yes, writing code is easier than ever.
AI assistants autocomplete your functions. Agents scaffold entire features. You can describe what you want in plain English and watch working code appear in seconds. The barrier to producing code has never been lower.
And yet, the day-to-day life of software engineers has gotten more complex, more demanding, and more exhausting than it was two years ago.
This is not a contradiction. It is the reality of what happens when an industry adopts a powerful new tool without pausing to consider the second-order effects on the people using it.
If you are a software engineer reading this and feeling like your job quietly became harder while everyone around you celebrates how easy everything is now, you are not imagining things. The job changed. The expectations changed. And nobody sent a memo.
The Baseline Moved and Nobody Told You
There is a phenomenon happening right now that most engineers feel but struggle to articulate. The expected output of a software engineer in 2026 is dramatically higher than it was in 2023. Not because anyone held a meeting and announced new targets. Not because your manager sat you down and explained the new rules. The baseline just moved.
It moved because AI tools made certain tasks faster. And when tasks become faster, the assumption follows immediately: you should be doing more. Not in the future. Now.
A February 2026 study published in Harvard Business Review tracked 200 employees at a U.S. tech company over eight months. The researchers found something that will sound familiar to anyone living through this shift. Workers did not use AI to finish earlier and go home. They used it to do more. They took on broader tasks, worked at a faster pace, and extended their hours, often without anyone asking them to. The researchers described a self-reinforcing cycle: AI accelerated certain tasks, which raised expectations for speed. Higher speed made workers more reliant on AI. Increased reliance widened the scope of what workers attempted. And a wider scope further expanded the quantity and density of work.
The numbers tell the rest of the story. Eighty-three percent of workers in the study said AI increased their workload. Burnout was reported by 62 percent of associates and 61 percent of entry-level workers. Among C-suite leaders? Just 38 percent. The people doing the actual work are carrying the intensity. The people setting the expectations are not feeling it the same way.
... continue reading