VER-XIV-0038
“Half my team quietly fakes their work with AI and gets the same credit I earn.”
You do the real thing; they let the machine fake it, and the scoreboard can't tell the difference, yet. The temptation is to join them or to seethe. Both are traps. Building with your own mind means you keep your work real because the capability is yours, not because anyone's watching. Play the long game.
Your Practice
- Name what you'd actually lose by faking it, the skill, the trust, the self you're building.
- Keep doing the real work. Capability compounds; faked output is a debt that comes due.
- Where it's your call, build checks that reward genuine work over polished fakery.
- Don't waste your fire on resentment. The faker's bill arrives the day the easy tool fails them.
The Architects
“I'm going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone. You're going to be best able to design revolutionary products and features if you're working on your own. Not on a committee. Not on a team.”
Steve Wozniak, iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon (with Gina Smith, W. W. Norton, 2006), closing advice chapter