Why a former OpenAI engineer traded coding for filmmaking

Kyanzadeh’s departure highlights a growing sentiment among developers who find that AI-driven workflows prioritize speed over collaboration. While he praised the talent at OpenAI, he noted that the shift toward one-person projects—where an individual manages a fleet of agents to write code—has eroded the communal problem-solving that once defined the profession. According to Kyanzadeh, human bonding is forged through shared stress, a dynamic that disappears when engineers operate in silos.

The technical experience itself proved equally taxing. Kyanzadeh described struggling to reach a flow state, as tasks became fragmented into small, repetitive chunks that required constant oversight. Instead of deep architectural work, his day shifted toward managing threads and auditing AI-generated code. This sentiment is echoed by others in the industry, including Anthropic engineering leader Fiona Fung, who has noted that AI tools can inadvertently isolate programmers. For Kyanzadeh, the transition to filmmaking represents a move away from an increasingly automated commercial software landscape where he no longer felt his best work was possible.