OpenAI: A Former Employee Describes a More Solitary Coding Experience

In two months at OpenAI, Kasra Kyanzadeh says he discovered a fragmented and solitary daily life with AI agents, leading to exhaustion. At 33, he left the company to pursue filmmaking, insisting that he was not targeting OpenAI but rather the way of coding with agents. His observations align with other feedback from developers and a manager at Anthropic, who mention weakened collaboration.

Fragmented tasks and more code review: an exhausting daily life

Kasra Kyanzadeh explains that tasks are completed in small units of a few minutes, a "worst duration" in his view, insufficient for accomplishing something meaningful but enough to push one to move on to another task. He says he would then launch another agent, find himself juggling five or six different threads, or simply open Twitter. He also mentions the time spent reviewing code and checking for errors. According to him, the amount of time dedicated to code review has increased, an activity that most have never enjoyed. Overall, he describes this mode of working as exhausting.

Less collaboration: agents isolating programmers

Kasra Kyanzadeh argues that AI agents allow a single engineer to handle an entire feature, which reduces collaboration and the shared satisfaction of "we accomplished this together." He highlights that OpenAI offered social moments, like happy hours, and praises the teams, but believes these activities do not compensate when work boils down to individual projects. He summarizes his feelings with a phrase: "human connections are better formed through stress." This observation is not isolated. Developers report a form of paralysis related to AI, and Fiona Fung, head of engineering at Anthropic, states that AI agents make the company's programmers more solitary. Kyanzadeh describes coding with AI as "more solitary" and "mentally exhausting."

Two months at OpenAI, then a shift to filmmaking

Joining in June with the team responsible for the Codex desktop application, Kasra Kyanzadeh stayed for only two months. By mid-August, he says he felt tired and exhausted, then left OpenAI to pursue filmmaking, a long-standing project. He claims the team was understanding and indicates he completed his project before leaving. He clarifies that he does not blame OpenAI but rather the way of coding with agents, believing that OpenAI is even underestimated as a company. He says he missed daily cooperation and working with others, while praising the expertise present at OpenAI. His perspective on tools has evolved: after founding Lightpage in 2024, during the "era of tab completion models" that removed much syntax without relieving the need to think about architecture, he asserts that by December coding had "slipped" and that agents allow a single person to own an entire feature. He presents his time at OpenAI as an experience to feel what it means to build at scale in this new era, but says he no longer feels he is doing his best work. Previously, he had joined Airtable when the company had five employees, then Watershed in its early days, before launching Lightpage.