So as I’ve been predicting my own demise for awhile on this blog (among others), I recently experienced an unexpected bump on the road to obscurity and obsolescence that necessitated an update here. So what happened? I got a good performance review. This was very unexpected.
For those of you who aren’t regular readers, I’ll summarize earlier posts on the topic by telling you that this is unexpected because I’m no longer aligned with the general direction of the software engineering elite. That includes the elites at my employer as well as the elites everywhere else. The idea of my obsolescence isn’t just something I conjured out of thin air, but rather it’s the idea that the industry has been bending over backwards to force feed through the thick carapace of my ape-like skull. So what does this mean?
Well it means that my lacking use of AI hasn’t been flagged as an issue… yet. Though to be fair every once in awhile I’m spinning up Claude and giving it something to do. Usually a local code review. Not because I really need it or want it, but because management expects it. If you don’t do this, then you’ll end up on “the list”. That list is comprised of people who don’t make use of AI. Those people receive personal meetings in which this is discussed. On the flip side if you overuse it, you also receive a meeting in which that is discussed. In terms of my employer, they really need to pick a lane or least clarify the standards on either side. In any event it’s odd time to work at a tech company.
Apparently my bare minimum attempt to comply is enough… for now anyway. So yes this is good news, especially as my minimal use of this trash tech at work hasn’t become a real moral quandary on a personal level. The review helps to bolster my confidence that I have at least a few years rather than mere months to get my shit together. You know, before I call it a career and attempt to flail my way into an entirely different field.
But this development doesn’t change the baseline reality. Sure I’ve predicted that most of this AI cluster fuck will go up in smoke in relatively short order. My view hasn’t changed. However, AI is not the only thing I’m unaligned with the industry on. I think cloud computing is largely a mistake, at least in terms of how its being used now. I think software engineering in general has jumped the shark in such a way that we’ve begun to substitute complexity for sensibility, practicality and sustainability. I think when it comes to tech and software we have largely stopped trying to solve problems and instead have attempted to start managing them. What’s the difference? Well if I’m in the business of solving problems, at some point I run out of business, assuming I actually solve them. On the other hand if I’m in the business of managing problems, I’ll never run out of business because the problems will always be there. To put it bluntly, regardless of what happens with AI, those diametric oppositional elements aren’t going away.
Edit: As noted in the video version, the managing situation criticism was inspired by a YouTube video that I recently watched and it happened to be an Ed Zitron Better Offline video. Keep fighting the good fight Ed, tech needs more people like you. Please forgive me for the brain fart that led to me not crediting you correctly in the video version of this post!
The good news is that I have been given the gift of additional time, which I think is probably the most valuable gift one can receive, so you know what? I’ll take it. As for my plans, goals and ideas around the future they remain unchanged: Get my shit together and write a book and hope that, by the time my slow plodding ass actually gets it into a state where I can start seriously shopping it around, I’ll still have this income stream to rely on to help bridge the gap. The reality is that I need it to help cushion the impact of me ending my tenure in what is still a relatively decently paying career.
Of course when I tell people I’m writing a book, they may not physically roll their eyes, but I can practically hear them doing just that inside their heads. That’s because a lot of people say things like that and it never comes to anything. Well as it so happens, I’m not actually one of those people. I have published a book before. It was a self-published book, but it is a published work nonetheless. For those interested it was a book of poetry. It can be found on Amazon as an eBook and on Lulu as a Hardcover Book.
Did this book make me any money? Well I did get a check from Amazon for the Kindle sales, but I never cashed it. It was for a few dollars and instead of cashing it, I framed it and hung it on my wall as proof that I was officially a professional writer of some sort, as somebody had technically paid me for my writing. It still hangs on the wall of my office off camera to this day. Despite its relatively small amount of monetary value (that to be clear I never actually claimed), it means a lot to me personally, so on that wall it shall stay. As for the Hardcover version, I’m quite sure that the only person who bought those was myself and I bought a handful of them to give out to various family members who wanted my book on their shelves. To be clear this was and remains a great compliment that I cherish to this day.
Let’s get back to the our main thread here: A good friend of mine also recently asked me if this development will result in a “decrease in tension / anxiety rub[bing] off on those closest to you” and to that I say, “Yes but also not really.” The reality is that I’m not hemming and hawing over this topic each and every waking moment of my life, so its not generating a lot of tension in general. My day to day existence is far more consumed with more pressing issues that demand more of my immediate attention. Examples of this include my 94 year old Grandmother being moved to a nursing home, a constant litany of small improvements that I’ve been making to my Twitch and YouTube workflows and just generally trying to figure out what is going on with the characters in my as of yet untitled anti-corporate sci-fi novel.
AI and my hatred for it (which I think is a fair term to use) is not consuming my life, but rather it’s inspiring me to double down on the idea of personal ingenuity and creativity. If my primary aversion to the growing slop assembly line is that human beings can in fact do better, than the mission that I have implicitly assigned myself is to prove that by putting my money where my mouth is. To put it even more simply: Put or shut up.
In this particular case though, the way out is through. To me AI represents the opportunity that deep down I have always longed for: A reason to leave a high paying career where I was once, and sometimes still am, considered to be a capable practitioner. This oddity of circumstance apparently continues in spite of the fact that each and every passing day my toils within its confines make me just a little bit more miserable than the day before.
I can pin some of that blame on the industry of course. This blog (and others) are replete with posts where I attempt to do exactly that. But there is a more overarching issue that has emerged: This work no longer brings me the same kind of joy that it used to. That’s not the fault of anybody or anything in particular. I believe its just an inconvenient facet of human nature that insists on rearing its head from time to time. I’ve been doing this kind of work for over 25 years now (professionally, its 40 years if you include personal coding). It’s only natural to yearn for something a bit different. That yearning is part of the reason I’m in the position that I’m in.
How each of us choose to individually grapple with that urge is really, at the end of the day, one of the many ways in which our differences keep things interesting. Is this my mid-life crisis? Probably. Does giving it that label somehow neutralize its impact and overwhelming reach in my life? Absolutely not. My father was a software engineer before he retired and truth be told, I don’t know if he ever felt the way that I do now. I’ve never bothered to ask him. But I do know that his opinion is that I should ride this train for as long as possible because any other choice will result in an overall reduction for me and mine in terms of financial stability.
He’s not wrong, but then again: The heart wants what the heart wants. This heart, as it turns out, doesn’t really want this anymore. I enjoy the salary and the benefits. I enjoy being able to feel the rush of excitement that comes with finally figuring out how to resolve an especially vexing problem. The high that I feel during those moments will always be something I crave. But is it something I truly need? I don’t think so. Perhaps the excitement has been curtailed by the growing realization that a lot of the problems we now solve are merely consequences birthed from previous solutions whose narrow scopes proved to be their Achilles heel.
Whatever the case may be, the long and short of this post is that like any truly entrenched relic, excommunicating me is harder than expected. That is both true from the perspective of the industry as well as from my own perspective, that of the proverbial cockroach. This however is not an entirely bad thing and is why I titled this blog post the way that I did. For the time being, I’m effectively spinlocked on the road to nowhere at least in terms of my current career. I can’t leave but I’m only putting in the minimum of effort required to stay. Thank goodness for legacy software stacks, eh?
To wrap this post up I would like to address anybody else out there contemplating making a serious change, whether you are in the tech industry or not. I encourage you to give your ambition enough time, energy and exposure to allow it the opportunity to thrive in new and unexpected ways. The dynamic nature of life and unending presentation of unique scenarios (no two lives are alike after all, regardless of how similar they appear to be on the surface) is what makes life great and ultimately what makes it worth living. Don’t give up on yourself, regardless of what others might say. If push comes to shove with the naysayers just remember: Misery loves company.
At the end of the day, your perspective is the one that matters most. Use that to your advantage.