I don't want another job. I do, however, want to watch an AI fix a website bug at midnight like it's the final boss of a video game. There is a difference.
The unemployed-at-heart developer with a full weekend backlog
Imagine announcing, “I hate working,” and immediately spending your evening planning websites, small games and automated projects. Nobody assigned a ticket. Nobody set a deadline. There is barely any revenue. Yet the person keeps returning because planning, building, testing and improving the thing is fun.
Then a page returns a 404 error. The instruction to the AI is simple: fix it. Instead of doom-scrolling, the human starts watching the progress. Did it find the cause? Is the new page working? One more check. One more update. Suddenly it's very late. To an outsider this looks like an unpaid overnight shift. To the person on the sofa, it feels like waiting for the boss fight to end.
The twist: the AI is doing most of the shift
The human isn't necessarily typing for six hours. The AI edits files, tests a possible fix and reports back. The human decides what matters, sets boundaries, checks the outcome and goes to bed when sleepy. In the morning, the fix may be ready to verify. It's the closest thing to waking up and discovering your game character leveled up overnight.
There's still a responsibility to inspect the actual result: load the page, reproduce the bug and make sure an unrelated feature wasn't broken. “Done” in a chat window isn't the same thing as a working website. But doing the quality check does not require performing every mechanical step yourself.
Why does this feel more like play than labor?
Three ingredients stand out: choosing the goal, getting a sense of mastery when a fix works, and having room for people and relationships outside the project. Self-determination theory calls these autonomy, competence and relatedness. Its central idea is that the quality of motivation matters, not just the number of hours spent.
A meta-analysis of workplace studies also found that leaders who support people's choice and input tend to have employees with more self-directed motivation and better well-being. That is population-level evidence, not a diagnosis of any one person staying up with an AI coding tool.
The most exhausting task may be the one you're forbidden to improve
Compare two scenarios. In one, you spot a tedious repeatable job and create an automated solution. In the other, you're told to be proactive, then every suggested improvement is treated as a challenge to authority. Same brain, same problem-solving instinct, wildly different experience.
Good collaboration doesn't mean every idea gets approved. A clear explanation—security, safety, cost, timing—can turn a constraint into something people can work around. What drains the joy is when even discussing a better route becomes a personal battle.
Results matter, but the process pays too
More visitors are exciting. Flat traffic is a reason to investigate, not an automatic reason to give up. If there's a promising experiment, run it. If the upside disappears, build a different game or tool. Linking projects can be a practical way to help visitors discover more useful pages, rather than an artistic obsession with making one giant system.
That's the funny part: the project may not pay much money, but the person is already getting paid in curiosity, visible progress and the pleasure of solving problems.
The real retirement plan is having options
The dream isn't necessarily a silent life of doing nothing. It might be traveling, opening a laptop somewhere new, pitching an idea to AI, exploring a city while it works, then checking the build later. Financial freedom matters because it lets someone reject a bad arrangement while keeping an enjoyable one.
The sensible stop signal is familiar to any gamer: if watching the next update repeatedly crowds out sleep or time with loved ones, the entertainment is eating another freedom. Let the AI take the night shift. The human can collect the loot in the morning.
So yes, this person hates work. Apparently they just love inventing work, delegating it to a machine, and spectating the whole operation for fun.
References (4)
- Ryan & Deci (2000), self-determination theory: https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68
- Slemp et al. (2018), workplace autonomy-support meta-analysis: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-018-9698-y
- Vallerand et al. (2010), passion and work-life conflict: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2009.00616.x
- CDC, sleep basics: https://www.cdc.gov/sleep/about/
