I don't want to be like Sideshow Bob, so I place my rakes carefully.

When I prototype infrastructures, it's historically been akin to me carefully placing rakes all over my shed. I know where I placed them, and I usually can then avoid stepping on them. But I forgive myself - most of my career, 80/20 was the right way to go. We always needed to ship ASAP, to hell with all but most crucial consequences. And I'm not blaming anyone - that's the startup way, and it's how it's always ben.

But that's not very productive in the age of AI. It's a lot better to build hooks and shelves in the shed, so I can place all my rakes there, so when it's dark, nobody accidentally steps on them. And AI is more than happy to design and build amazing rake storage systems for my shed. Heck, at some point, it's Claude's shed, and I'm just a needy rake overseer.

These days, I'm faced with the need to hand over keys to my sheds more and more. Because most engineers can now DevOps too, with the help of AI. And I keep feeling anxious about it. My instant reactions are to warn about the rakes, and then to prescribe rake storage designs. Because I want to clean up the shed, I've always wanted to clean it up, but it just didn't come up yet, and now someone needs to enter it, because AI empowement. And the humbling part is that it usually goes well - AI is smart, engineers are too. So what am I griping about then?

I suppose this is more of the same of what's been haunting me in the year 2026 - loss of control. I've learned to deal with this feeling a lot better lately, but it's still affecting me. People cleaning up my sheds literally eats away at my job security. I am well aware it's not good to feel like my job is secure through being irreplaceable, and a part of me is happy I'm much more replaceable now. Alongside that, this year I've gained a lot more intrinsic confidence in my skills, and generally myself as a person, so becoming more replaceable hits less hard. But apparently - it still does hit a bit.

On the other hand - a lot of my sheds hold some critical rake infrastructure. And while handing over the keys effectively shares my responsibility, I'm still effectively seen as the primary caretaker of the shed, to a bigger or lesser extent. And if someone breaks their nose in my shed, my ass is still probably on the line. So far, it's been so good, but I can't help but feel a little uneasy...