The session
Waiting for the agent – Developers, coding agents and the absurd new workday
In Beckett’s play, two men wait by a tree for someone who never comes. Today we wait by a terminal for an agent that says it’s “thinking… (4m 12s)”.
Coding agents changed our job faster than any tool before them. We type less and ship more, yet many of us end the day more tired, more anxious and more alone than before. This talk is about what’s happening to the people behind the prompts.
We’ll walk through the absurd new workday: babysitting three agents at once, approving a 2,000-line pull request in a minute, and the “AI brain fry” that comes from never fully focusing on anything. Then comes the rollercoaster. You ship a side project in a weekend and read about layoffs on Monday. One quiet afternoon, an agent solves in four minutes the bug you chased for two days, and you wonder what all those years of craft were for. A new model lands every few weeks. And your new pair programming buddy forgets you with every new session.
The talk is funny, honest and a little self-mocking, and you leave with a handful of simple habits to try on Monday morning. Like the play, it ends with where the real comfort is. It’s not in what we’re waiting for. It’s in who we’re waiting with.