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DR Derrick Reimer Derrick Reimer Software founder and developer behind SavvyCal, a scheduling app, based in Minneapolis.

“It's a sign that the work is requiring a different kind of attention… it comes back pretty fast with a lot of stuff. And if you want to keep some degree of understanding of what's going on, you are having to take in a lot of code, a lot of information, a lot of logic, and make decisions at a more rapid pace. So there's an exhausting element to it. And I think a lot of developers are feeling the loss of craft, which I think is really mentally challenging for a lot of folks.”

The Art of Product · Software Engineering & Infra · November 2026

“It's a sign that the work is requiring a different kind of attention… it comes back pretty fast with a lot of stuff. And if you want to keep some degree of understanding of what's going on, you are having to take in a lot of code, a lot of information, a lot of logic, and make decisions at a more rapid pace. So there's an exhausting element to it. And I think a lot of developers are feeling the loss of craft, which I think is really mentally challenging for a lot of folks.” — Derrick Reimer, The Art of Product

Context

Derrick had just said that he and his developer no longer listen to music while they work. Asked how the shift to agent-driven development is going for his team, he describes the mental cost of reviewing agent output.

Transcript

The Art of Product Around 39:08 into the episode
Derrick Reimer

…has just completely changed, which I think, you know, it's the double-edged sword, right? It's like we can get so much more done, but also, like, I was talking to Jesse, my developer, about this the other day. Like, we both came to the realization, like, we don't listen to music anymore while we

Ben Orenstein

work. And that's like

Derrick Reimer

a, I mean, it's a sign that like the work is requiring a different kind of attention. You know, it's like, in some ways, it's, I don't know, it's hard to characterize what it's like because in some ways it's easier because, you know, the agent's doing most of the heavy lifting. But also like it comes back pretty fast with a lot of stuff. And if you want to keep some degree of understanding of what's going on and how to redirect and how to refine, like you are having to like take in a lot of a lot of code, a lot of information, a lot of logic, and make decisions at a more rapid pace. So there's like an exhausting element to it. And I think a lot of developers are feeling the loss of craft, which I think is really mentally challenging for a lot of folks. Totally.

Ben Orenstein

That's been a thing for us. And I think I kind of have to push on a little bit, which is like, I think it's so important that we go fast, fast error.

Derrick Reimer

Yeah.

Ben Orenstein

And that we are a little bit less precious about how some of the source code looks.

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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