Programming is notoriously lonely, but AI agents seem to be exacerbating this problem. According to Fiona Fung, who leads the Claude Code and Claude Cowork engineering teams at Anthropic, her team has noticed a disturbing trend: the more engineers rely on AI agents, the more isolated they become.
Programming is notoriously lonely, but AI agents seem to be exacerbating this problem. According to Fiona Fung, who leads the Claude Code and Claude Cowork engineering teams at Anthropic, her team has noticed a disturbing trend: the more engineers rely on AI agents, the more isolated they become.
"We noticed on the Claude Code team that after a while it started to feel like it was becoming a pretty lonely experience. We were all just working too much with our AI agents," Fung said in a recent episode of Lenny's Podcast, Business Insider reports .
To remedy the situation, Fiona’s team tried to restore the elements of interaction that AI coding had erased. They launched the practice of coding lunches, hackathons, and team “maker time” sessions — all to bring engineers together in the same space and share life hacks about how each of them is customizing their processes with AI.
Fung also noted that her team focused on creating an environment where engineers can work side by side, even if each of them uses AI in their own way.
“Every time I observe someone else’s work, I learn something new myself,” she added.
