Generative AI is permeating the tech industry at an unprecedented pace, from code development to product design, with many tasks that once took days now being compressed into minutes. However, recent surveys show that this leap in efficiency has not shortened employees' actual working hours, but instead made their lives even busier.
Using time for new tasks
An Amazon business intelligence engineer said that although using internal AI tools cut the time needed to write documents by half, the time saved was quickly filled with new tasks like data cleaning. A Google security engineer also revealed that using AI now allows them to compile meeting summaries covering half a year in just a few minutes, but they immediately have to move on to the next task.
The setup of automated processes itself also consumes energy; employees find that importing tools and verifying results actually extend the initial working time. Product managers and designers have also found that while AI can quickly generate initial drafts of requirement documents, key strategic judgments and trade-offs still require high-level human involvement.
Work granularity changes from hours to minutes
In the field of code development, the acceleration effect of AI is equally significant. Tasks that previously required a week can now be completed in a day with the assistance of tools like Claude Code. The code review and feedback cycles between teams have also been shortened from several days to several hours, accelerating the overall collaboration rhythm indefinitely.
Real feedback from frontline employees indicates that AI is rewriting the work granularity of the tech industry from hour-level to minute-level, bringing not relief but speed. In this technological transformation, AI has not reduced the total amount of work, but rather made employees rush to the next task at a faster pace.
