Im a data janitor at my job. Theres no real love for stuff I make for the job. Sure I do a good job, but I dont pretend im making anything other than take data here -> clean it up -> put data new place half the time.

One thing LLMs have done is balloon the amount of projects that exist. Once a proof of concept is made, iterating on an AI project becomes a bit harder than normal, since your not the one who made the initial product. Also management often wants it out NOW rather than waiting on unsloppifying anything.

And management has now had a couple of years moving peoples jobs to an AI project. Which means ironically im doing MORE work since there is just more code all over the place. And AI is starting to get expensive per token... So they are hiring again haha.

Meanwhile at my house, ive been playing around with my open source ebook reader without any AI involvement. Its fun to make a small change and look at it from all angles. Small changes to make something for me.