AI Made Me 5x Faster. It Also Made Me 5x Worse at My Job.

Using AI coding agents can dramatically increase a developer's speed, but it shifts the primary bottleneck from writing code to specifying intent and verifying the output. The author recounts a near-miss where an AI-generated change with overly permissive settings was almost approved, illustrating the danger of "verification debt." This debt accumulates when developers delegate more work to AI than they can thoroughly review, leading to unexamined and potentially flawed code. Instead of using the time saved to run more AI agents, developers should focus on activities the AI cannot do, such as deeply reading documentation, writing detailed specifications, and collaborating with human colleagues on reviews.