Years ago, I became an Emergency Medical Technician. I ultimately chose a career in technology, and though I've forgotten nearly everything I learned, there is one thing I remember and still apply to this day.
My instructor, Mr. King, said we'd meet three kinds of patients. First, there were those that would live no matter what you do: you'll make mistakes with them, but they turn out just fine. Second, there are those that will die no matter what you do: you'll provide the best care at the right time, but they are too far gone. But the third group is the one where the quality of your work makes the difference. That's where you should focus.
I've long applied this lesson in both my personal and professional life. I've always had too long a queue, and too few hours, to get everything done. So I triage: will this release still add value for users if I don't ship this feature? Are the failure modes all on my providers and out of my control? Or will my time and attention actually make a difference for the people who rely on my work product?
We're all seeing the tsunami of code coming out of agents. This is starting to wash through all the downstream stages, including things like code review, automated tests, and deployment infrastructure. I personally do not have time to review every single line of code coming at me, and I know I'm not the only one.
So I triage. I practice mostly in golang, which is somewhat verbose and boilerplate. CRUD operations are idiomatic. Agents excel at idiomatic. I don't have to review that.
More pointedly: time is finite, and hours I spend on code that is fine anyway are hours I cannot spend on code that benefits from my attention.
But critical things, like data integrity, tenant isolation, or uptime, are often complex and subject to a balance between stakeholder interests--is it worth it to add that extra 9? The issues are often subtle and unique to your operating environment. This is where I can make a difference. This is where I spend my limited time.
So if like me you are faced with an oncoming wall of work, remember the advice of Mr. King: ignore the things that you can't influence, and focus on the places where you can make a difference.