Today at the Macondo Literary Festival, 80-year-old Abdilatif Abdalla began by saying:
“I wish we were having this conversation in Swahili… That’s the only language in which I’m fluent, in which I can express myself with confidence. I’m not fluent in English, so you might find me sometimes trying to find words to express myself…”
I actually only understood this part later through the AI notes. It really stayed with me, because I can express myself very well in Chinese, but my English is not good. I was not unfamiliar with the topics of the discussion, but this sentence touched me more than the whole theme.
I am done with this shit. It is over. The state of engineering right now is horrible. It has been half a month since I started a new role at a big company. Nobody knows anything here. The specs, code, tests, PRDs, tickets, resolution of those tickets, reports, etc., everything is made by Claude Code. Nobody on my team likes this. They are being forced to ship as much as they can. I have heard multiple times from higher management that pushing code is not a bottleneck, so why are we slow? People are working 12 to 13 hours a day just to press enter. Nobody is reading anything. Humans in corporate are doing nothing on their own. Everyone, literally everyone, from an L1 to an L7 engineer here is doing the same thing. Talk to Claude. There is no sense of victory. Nobody is resolving bugs. In reality, nobody is thinking anymore. Everything is done by LLMs. It is so soul-sucking. I would not mind it, to be honest, if we were at least given the time to check out the code and see what is going where. But no, the goal is to just ship. No matter what happens.
I think this is also why I felt a little strange today. If the discussion had been in Chinese, I could have said a lot. I know many of these topics, and I have my own thoughts about protest, politics, history and society. The problem is not that I have nothing to say. The problem is that I cannot say it well in English.
Since moving to Nairobi, I’ve been looking for ways to meet people outside work, particularly in agriculture, AI and diplomacy. I ask ChatGPT to find events and contacts, sign up for things and send emails. Some of this started before I moved here. In February, I wrote to an agricultural organisation I wanted to get in touch with. I never heard back.
A few nights ago I went downstairs for dinner and got talking to a small group of friends over beers. One of them turned out to work for that same organisation. His work involved AI, and he’d just come back from a meeting in Rwanda, where I’d previously worked. Another person at the table worked at a diplomatic mission here in Nairobi.
I’d been sitting upstairs trying to find people in all these fields, and then met them just by going downstairs for dinner. 😂 We had plenty to talk about and exchanged numbers.
I’ve enjoyed having some different conversations here, too. With some of my Chinese friends, drinks often turn into another discussion about the economy, how difficult business has become and how hard it is to get anywhere these days. I join in, and much of what we say is true. But I get tired of going over it all again. I heard these conversations back home, and now I’m having them abroad as well.
More than one person I’ve met here has told me that the first thing they associate with China is high technology. That was not quite the answer I expected. I don’t know who’s been doing our advertising, but it’s nice to hear something different. 😅
Maybe a lot of this comes down to who I happen to be meeting and the setting. Everyone is out for the evening, having a drink. I don’t know whether I’d feel the same in a different crowd, but I’ve enjoyed the company so far.
I’ve looked them up since, of course. I’d like to hear more about their work, and there may be things we could do together. We also said we should have another drink. I hope we do. 🍻
Sir, you somehow united the US president, China, Jensen Huang, and half the AI industry against us.
you achieved GLOBAL COORDINATION but AGAINST pacing.