Work always comes with bullshit. Its the nature of the thing. I don't think anyone was really getting code golf-style experiences at work, but they likely had enough positives that they outweighed the negatives, which resulted in net "enjoying" work. For a lot of people, AI removed a lot of the positives and left a lot of negatives, and some are still coping with that in one way or another.

if you're code-golfing on a prod repo, i do not want you as my coworker. please add comments. make things readable.