# osmani-three-joys-engineering-agents-2026-10-09

## Veille

LinkedIn post by **Addy Osmani** (title shown: *Member of Technical Staff* at **Anthropic**), published on **October 9, 2026**; ~450 words plus a diagram. He proposes reading engineers' reactions to agents (enthusiasm for some, grief over the profession for others) through **three sources of joy** at work: **making** (flow), **knowing** (the mental model), and **mattering** (being the expert everything depends on).

## Titre Article

The three joys of engineering: liberation or loss depends on which joy you lean on most

## Date

2026-10-09

## URL

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/addyosmani_ai-programming-softwareengineering-share-7514192061563252736-i9mn/

## Keywords

joy of making, joy of knowing, joy of mattering, making, knowing, mattering, flow, coding agents, engineering profession, grief for the profession, mental model, code comprehension, judgment, taste, ownership, choosing versus designing, Venn diagram, skill erosion

## Authors

Addy Osmani — Member of Technical Staff chez Anthropic (fonction affichée) ; post LinkedIn.

## Ton

Profile: a practitioner's personal reflection, addressed to software engineers, in an empathetic and non-polemical tone. The text rejects the two-camp division (joy of coding, joy of shipping), lays out three categories, addresses the effect of agents on each, then ends with a consolation (grief is natural) and an instruction ("lean on what makes the work one's own"). No figures or sources; the argument rests on the author's experience.

## Pense-betes

- **Thesis**: agents = liberation or loss depending on which joy one holds onto most; both camps speak of different losses.
- **Making**: preserved, moves up a level (shaping the system); one can still code it oneself.
- **Knowing**: the most at risk; *pick ≠ conjure*: always choosing, never designing, and the capacity to design erodes.
- **Mattering**: expertise shifts toward judgment: choosing the problems, owning what ships.
- **Formula**: without understanding of one's codebase, it is the agent that directs the engineer.
- **Diagram**: three-circle Venn (making / knowing dotted / mattering), "you" at the center; labels *easy to keep*, *most at risk*, *shifts to judgment*; two notes (*pick ≠ conjure*, *who's directing?*).
- **Remedies from the comments**: friction before coding (a skill/mod that assesses complexity and tracks what's learned); writing where one expects the change before reading the diff, a measurable gap for mental-model erosion.
- ⚠️ **Scope**: opinion without measurement; the loss of *knowing* is asserted, not demonstrated.

## RésuméDe400mots

In this post from October 9, 2026, Addy Osmani, who works daily with agents, observes opposite reactions among engineers: some finally feel part of an all-star team, others mourn the death of their profession and feel empty. Rather than choosing a side, he rejects the usual division between those who love coding and those who love shipping, which he considers too simplistic, and invites everyone to identify what, in their work, nourishes them the most.

He distinguishes three sources of joy, intertwined in varying ways. The first is the joy of making, or flow: shaping things with one's own hands and feeling the moment everything clicks into place. The second is the joy of knowing: possessing a mental model of the system solid enough to guess where a bug lies by scanning through files. The third is the joy of mattering: knowing that one is the expert everything depended on. Agents affect each one differently, which explains why the debate is confused: people mourn different losses and argue from different places.

The joy of making is the easiest to preserve: it moves up a level. One no longer shapes each line but the system, or the factory, within a loop fast enough for flow to remain possible, and nothing prevents writing the code oneself when the old flow is missing. The joy of knowing is the most threatened. It happens that one looks for a design one should be able to produce outright and finds nothing. Choosing among an agent's proposals is a different skill from designing an idea: if one always chooses without ever designing, the capacity to design erodes. One cannot direct what one does not understand, even vaguely; without understanding of one's codebase, it is not the engineer who directs the agent but the reverse.

What remains is the joy of mattering. Obsolescence concerns the engineer, but their judgment, and the need for judgment, have never mattered more: they decide which problems to solve, bring their taste, and take ownership of everything that ships. Osmani adds that sadness is not a failure to adapt: grief reflects an attachment, and it is natural when work changes shape. He concludes by inviting readers to lean on what makes the work personally theirs.

The diagram accompanying the text is a three-circle Venn diagram, in which the knowing circle is dotted. It links each joy to an effect of agents (to preserve, most at risk, shifted toward judgment), places "you" at the center as a blend of the three, and adds two notes: choosing is not designing, and who's directing. Its caption says that grief is how one feels about what one cares about, and that one must then find what is specifically one's own and reinforce it.

## GrapheDeConnaissance

- Addy Osmani —travaille_chez→ Anthropic (ORGANISATION, 0.9)
- Addy Osmani —a_créé→ Three joys of engineering (CONCEPT, 0.9)
- Joy of making —fait_partie_de→ Three joys of engineering (CONCEPT, 0.97)
- Joy of knowing —fait_partie_de→ Three joys of engineering (CONCEPT, 0.97)
- Joy of mattering —fait_partie_de→ Three joys of engineering (CONCEPT, 0.97)
- Addy Osmani —affirme_que→ la joie de faire se conserve en montant d'un niveau (AFFIRMATION, 0.92)
- Addy Osmani —affirme_que→ la joie de savoir est la plus exposée à l'érosion avec les agents (AFFIRMATION, 0.95)
- Addy Osmani —affirme_que→ sans comprendre sa base de code, l'agent dirige l'ingénieur (AFFIRMATION, 0.93)
- Addy Osmani —affirme_que→ la joie de compter se déplace vers le jugement (AFFIRMATION, 0.92)
- Agents de codage —réduit→ joie de savoir (CONCEPT, 0.85)
- Agents de codage —s_applique_à→ Joy of making (CONCEPT, 0.8)
- Pick versus conjure —fait_partie_de→ Joy of knowing (CONCEPT, 0.88)
- Addy Osmani —recommande→ de s'appuyer sur ce qui rend le travail personnel (AFFIRMATION, 0.9)
- Ben Simpson —recommande→ une skill qui ajoute de la friction avant de coder (AFFIRMATION, 0.8)
- Ben Simpson —travaille_chez→ Grafana Labs (ORGANISATION, 0.9)

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Canonical: https://www.thekb.eu/en/fiches/osmani-three-joys-engineering-agents-2026-10-09/