"AI promised less work, and I've never worked more": one VP's year in GitHub data
Nov 1, 2026Original Orestis Ioannou · AI Promised Less Work. I Have Never Worked More. ↗
In 3 lines
- Agents did not cut work, they widened what feels worth doing, so the load grew.
- One VP's GitHub contributions hit 2,102 this year, more than any full year from 2021 to 2025.
- Comments split between 'it was never going to shrink' and 'boring parts are gone'; a paper to-do list was one fix.
"The pitch was that AI would give us our time back. I have never worked more." Orestis Ioannou, VP of Technology at Bold.org, wrote this on Oct. 27 using his own GitHub contribution history. It reached 685 points and 664 comments on Hacker News. This piece summarizes the post and the debate in the comments.
The week of two or three tasks became a fleet of agents
Orestis Ioannou, VP of Technology at Bold.org, says his workload changed shape. He used to hold two or three serious tasks a week, such as a feature or a tricky bug. Now several agents run in parallel on implementation, a production investigation, a review and research. Each needs him only sometimes, but every "sometimes" means reloading a different repository and a different set of decisions, which he finds more draining.
His GitHub activity is back to where it was in 2020
He pulled his GitHub contribution calendar from 2019 onward. 2020, his full-stack year, was the peak at 2,711 contributions, and as a Principal Engineer he averaged 114 a month. By Oct. 27 this year he had 2,102, more than any full year from 2021 to 2025, and August's 427 was his busiest month ever. He cautions that the count is a rough signal, not a measure of value.
A manager title, a full-time coder's graph
The twist is the role. He now leads engineering, so the graph should look like his Principal years, yet his median weekday rose from 3 or 4 contributions in 2022 to 2025 to 7 this year. Days with 24 or more contributions happened once a year before and have happened 16 times already. His reading: agents did not just finish his workload faster, they made it easy to give himself a much bigger one.
Three bursts and burnouts this year
He describes 2026 as waves, not a steady climb. A new model or workflow makes something possible, implementation is cheap, so he starts agents for every idea. A few weeks later reviewing and context switching catch up and he pulls back. January and February, April and August were bursts, and at the end of one he feels tired of AI. Even the quiet months ran above his old average.
Hacker News: the work was never going to shrink
The post drew 685 points and 664 comments on Hacker News. One commenter wrote that expecting an employer to pay the same for less work was an illusion, and the real options were more work or layoffs. Another argued technology has never meant less work for workers, and that if the productivity gain is real, it should be won through collective bargaining such as a four-day week.
Hacker News 댓글 · news.ycombinator.com ↗The pushback: the boring parts are gone
Optimists spoke up too. One commenter said missing semicolons and log-combing are gone, leaving the fun parts, and blamed today's fatigue on techniques that are not yet standard. Another said voice commands let them handle CRM and accounting tasks while walking on a beach. The claim is that the work did not just grow, it changed.
Hacker News 댓글 · news.ycombinator.com ↗What commenters suggest: a daily plan and a less reachable phone
Commenters offered concrete fixes. A common one is to write the day's task list on paper before opening an LLM, and to treat side quests as something that needs a separate planning session. One person who put their agent setup on their phone found every passing thought became a prompt, and switched to a basic flip phone. The author says he has not found a balance yet.
Hacker News 댓글 · news.ycombinator.com ↗
