On Gentleness in the Age of Agents

In the conversations that dominate my X feed about AI, agents, the state of the tech industry in Q4 2026, I think there is something missing from the conversations we as an industry are having.

Empathy.

We oscillate between p(doom) and p(bloom). Marketing hype is plentiful. AI and agents have changed everything. Whether this change has settled in your corner of the world yet, only you know. The impact of these changes is not evenly distributed.

Many in the tech industry are excellent at pattern matching and extrapolating, so we tend to have takes on where this all leads. This skill is core to our ability to be software developers. We anticipate bugs. We predict how people will use the things we make. We relentlessly pursue change and cause it.

I think the rate of change we're experiencing as an industry is unlike anything that's happened in human history. Every time a new model drops, the possible set of things a computer can do expands. For people who have historically been paid and likely prided themselves in staying on top of technology to maximize its use, I think many are struggling to absorb the change at the rate it happens. We are in a race and everyone is using rocket cars.

As an industry, we're inoculated against a certain degree of change anxiety. Learning new things is fundamental to our job. We make new things. We cause change. We're the ones responsible for new languages, new libraries, new frameworks, and new features across every aspect of the tools we use. Version control is built for the very purpose of managing changes. We're professional at change.

If you step back beyond the keyboard, you find a person with a family, with friends, with concerns outside of keeping up with the latest releases. The tension between the need to keep up with a changing craft, a changing job market and needing to show up at home and be a present partner, parent, or friend is immense. If your home life is any bit busy because you have a young family or are working through the normal course of doing life with other humans, you're likely feeling overwhelmed.

I know I am. I had my first child in the last few years. This summer, I took the leap out of a comfortable, stable job to pursue an idea I've been working on for years. I'm trying to care for my health in a career that requires me to sit in front of a screen. My parents are aging. The politics of my country are noticeably less stable than they were in the past. The economy of my country struggles due to a mix of self-inflicted problems and external forces.

Frankly, it's a lot and some days I don't know the way forward. Yet, I get up. I show up the best as I can and keep going. My life is messier than I want.

As I watch conversations on social media, I think we could all be kinder to one another. It's not p(doom) vs p(bloom). I think many see the possibilities of this new technology. I think the challenge we all face is reconciling the new world we live in with our day to day lives.

Let me share an example. I think AI and agents are amazing. They have made it possible for me to try to build things faster than before the Age of Agents. I fancy myself capable of learning most things and I know I could eventually build the things I've built in the last few months. It would have taken months, maybe years. I love that Claude told me that it will be a couple months and finished in 15 minutes.

And yet I struggle with wielding this new superpower. When things were slower, changes to workflows were less necessary. We had years to refine the software development process. Seemingly overnight, many well-established rhythms have been changed. What was once done by a human colleague, that you could talk to and joke with, is now done by an agent who is incredibly smart and yet has no sense of the room. I can no longer depend on my colleague's innate laziness to provoke conversations about reducing complexity. Instead, the agent will grind on.

To be clear, I don't think these are reasons not to use agents. What I'm trying to highlight is that these problems provoke a degree of reflection and reevaluation of things we used to take for granted and that is work. There is also an emotional weight to it because this new agentic colleague of ours can't be trusted the same way. And what an agent can be trusted with changes with each harness and model iteration.

I think we need to be gentle with our colleagues who are each in their own process of engaging with the changes provoked by agents.

For some, the changes in how we build software will cause them to leave the industry. We need to accept that this is a completely valid viewpoint. It's a different job now and it might not be a good fit for some. We have all chosen software development and said no to a myriad of other vocations. It's perfectly valid to change your mind and not be derided for not wanting to embrace the new paradigm.

The more we practice this gentleness now, the better we'll be able to support those around us when the rest of the world starts feeling the impacts of AI. If we, the people who understand technology, are feeling angst, imagine what those to whom this is all magic will feel.

Empathy. Patience. Gentleness is the only way forward.