Simon Willison: 'AI-Pilled' Engineers Are Working Harder and Burning Out Faster
Simon Willison has a gift for naming things precisely. He coined “prompt injection.” He coined “AI slop.” Now, on Lenny’s Podcast, he’s naming a pattern that a lot of AI-augmented engineers are living but haven’t articulated: the lethal trifecta. The Lethal Trifecta Speed. Availability. Compulsion. Willison — Django co-creator, prolific blogger, and one of the most trusted practical voices in the AI developer space — describes a pattern he’s seen in himself and others: AI coding agents make you faster. Faster means you can do more. More availability means you can always be working. And the combination of capability and compulsion means you push past the limits that used to be enforced naturally by the slowness of unassisted work. ...