Gergely Orosz's Contrarian AMA: 'AI Doesn't Make Work Easier,' and He Writes With Zero AI to Keep the Skill

The Pragmatic Engineer·medium signal

In a July 8 Pragmatic Engineer AMA, Orosz pushed a deliberately uncomfortable take — that AI often doesn't make work easier, and that people who find it effortless may not be pushing hard enough. He revealed he uses zero AI in his writing (Grammarly off) to avoid skill atrophy, while consciously accepting that his hand-coding ability will degrade because he does use AI there. Backed by his survey where ~30% of engineers report hitting AI usage limits, it's a credible counterweight to the 'everything is 10x now' narrative — a skill-atrophy tradeoff builders should decide deliberately, not by default.