Code like a surgeon
a day ago
- The author argues against the view that AI will turn everyone into managers or editors, instead advocating for a 'surgeon' approach where humans focus on high-impact work.
- AI is currently effective for handling secondary tasks like writing codebase guides, spiking big changes, fixing TypeScript errors, and writing documentation, often running asynchronously in the background.
- There is a distinction between using AI for primary versus secondary tasks: primary tasks require careful, hands-on control with fast feedback (e.g., Cursor tab-complete), while secondary tasks can be loosely delegated to agents like Claude Code or Codex CLI.
- Delegating grunt work to AI solves status hierarchy concerns, as it removes the need to assign menial tasks to junior team members and allows for 24/7 availability without ethical issues.
- At Notion, the author finds value in working at a company bullish on AI coding tools and sees it as a product that enables 'working like a surgeon' for knowledge workers.
- The ultimate goal is not to delegate core work but to identify and offload secondary grunt tasks, allowing focus on the main work that matters.