'token anxiety'; or, a slot machine by any other name

Source: Hacker News

16 Feb 2026

Discussion

I realize it’s gauche to blog about something I saw on Bluesky, but yesterday I saw a post that encapsulated so much of what has been bumming me out about the rise of coding agents over the last year. This dread had been slowly rising from seeing blogs about using Claude Code from your phone while getting ready for work, while commuting, while waiting to pick your kids up from school… and now it’s come to a head.

— Tim Kellogg (@timkellogg.me)
February 15 2026 at 6:44 AM

Now obviously the opinions of founder‑brained SF social‑bubble weirdos should be immediately discounted; they are the spiders‑georg of this industry. But at the same time they are playing into the dreams of management—the worker who never stops working, who’s always online, infinitely productive, always shipping, always wants to get back to work. I imagine this archetype exists in other industries, but my experience is limited to tech, so I will stick to that.

My fear is that this will become the norm. Anecdotal evidence¹ tells me that more and more companies are adopting AI for their engineers to use, encouraging (and in some cases requiring) its use in an effort to boost productivity—despite no actual evidence pointing to these improvements² and Anthropic‑funded research indicating that AI usage reduces skill retention³.

So where does this lead us? We know that some US tech companies are starting to embrace the “996” schedule popularized in China’s tech industry⁴. Enforced usage of coding agents makes that push even easier—is it really work if all you’re doing is telling the computer what to do, then reviewing it to make sure it didn’t do anything wrong and babysitting it all day?

Many have already observed that working with coding agents, which require constant attention and often generate low‑quality code with (by design) random results, is a slot‑machine. They are loot boxes. They are gambling. You are constantly pulling the lever and hoping you get the SSR SaaS Passive‑Income product. You will not get this, but maybe you will. Just one more prompt, one more pull, one more revision, one more go at being Absolutely Right⁵.

If you suffer from token anxiety, you have a gambling addiction. I’m sorry that it isn’t being formally treated as such, but you can take some solace in the fact that novel forms of gambling often take time to be recognized⁶.

Now we can put our thinking caps on and follow a pretty easy chain of events:

1. Coding agents trigger our gambling instincts with slot‑machine‑like behavior.
2. Tech companies push engineers to work more and encourage (or enforce) the use of coding agents to get there.
3. Gambling is addictive.
4. Heavy users of coding agents self‑report symptoms of gambling addiction.

You see where this is going, right? By enforcing the use of inherently addictive technology in the workplace, employers are (whether intentionally or not) making their workers addicted to work. This seems bad!

One has to wonder how common this will become. Will this become the norm? Obviously there will be companies with a shred of ethics and empathy for their workers that choose to buck this trend, but if they become the minority there will be fewer and fewer jobs for those who value free time. We’ve already reached a point where trying to get a job in this industry requires a gradual erosion of ethics and standards—how much worse does that get?

All I know is that if we keep down this road, I’m going to bail out, get HVAC‑certified, and make YouTube videos about fucked‑up commercial systems. I can’t do this shit forever.

Addendum: recommended reading / viewing that I couldn’t figure out how to directly talk about

• I can’t sleep gud anymore – A Practical Guide to Agentic Computing
• On Stepping Back
• Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas

If you have something quantitative, hmu so I can read and link it⁷.

Becker, J., Rush, N., Barnes, E., & Rein, D. (2025). Measuring the Impact of Early‑2025 AI on Experienced Open‑Source Developer Productivity. https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.09089[^8]

Shen, J. H., & Tamkin, A. (2026). How AI Impacts Skill Formation. https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.20245[^9]

If your answer isn’t “yes, obviously,” I’m going to assume you’re an engineering manager that takes pride in making your reports’ lives miserable⁸.

You could argue that by building a slot machine OpenAI and Anthropic have managed to run wildly unprofitable casinos—a remarkable feat normally reserved for the sort of fascist dipshit that gets to be president⁹.

I will not apologize for linking a piece my wife wrote¹⁰.

Footnotes

Tags: #agents #ai #blogposts

[looking for work](https://jkap.io/blog/?q=blog%20posts%20that%20i%20really%20shouldn%27t%20be%20writing%20and%20publishing%20while%20actively%20looking%20for%20work)

Footnotes

1. Anecdotal evidence. ↩

2. No solid evidence of productivity gains. ↩

3. Anthropic‑funded research indicating AI usage reduces skill retention. ↩

4. US tech companies embracing the “996” schedule. ↩

5. “Absolutely Right” reference. ↩

6. Novel forms of gambling often take time to be recognized. ↩

7. Request for quantitative sources. ↩

8. “If your answer isn’t ‘yes, obviously’ …” ↩

9. Slot‑machine analogy for OpenAI/Anthropic. ↩

10. Personal link to a piece written by the author’s wife. ↩