Living in the inflection point
February 10, 2026
I don’t know why this week became the tipping point, but nearly every software engineer I’ve talked to is experiencing some degree of mental health crisis… Many people assuming I meant job loss anxiety but that’s just one presentation. I’m seeing near-manic episodes triggered by watching software shift from scarce to abundant. Compulsive behaviors around agent usage. Dissociative awe at the temporal compression of change. It’s not fear necessarily — just the cognitive overload from living in an inflection point.
If, like, pretty much everyone, you’re feeling overwhelmed, anxious, even if you might also be feeling excited at the possibility and capabilities of emerging AI technologies for you as a software engineer, I highly recommend this piece.
A lot of it very much resonated with me, in particular the observations about the importance of glue work and of learning as a way of coping.
