orca

A meme that shows an image of Jordan Peterson on the left, and Henry Rollins on the right. The title at the top reads:

Why listen to glorified motivational speaker Jordan Peterson when you can just listen to Henry Rollins

The left column below Peterson reads:

• Thinks there is a "crisis in masculinity"
• Insists that the "hero's journey" is a long, strenuous process
• Never collaborated with Tool
• Zero scene cred
• Writes self-help books

The right column below Rollins reads:

• Never belittles or puts you down for your inner turmoil
• "Hero time starts. Right. Now."
• Provided a visceral monologue on Tool's debut album
• Well respected in the music scene
• Writes about his travels and interacting with foreign cultures

Alt text: Screenshot from the Pause menu of the video game “Barony”. The selected menu item reads “end life”.

This is a rough thought I've had bouncing around in my head for quite a long time now as a developer. I wasn't sure exactly where to put it, so here we are.

Why you will never be fast enough

With the ongoing, endless growth and enshittification of tech and the internet as a collective, speed has always been a primary focus of programming. It's why things like Tailwind exist. Tools like this are a byproduct of a society that is constantly being driven further into the ground by capitalist ghouls and tech moguls.

"We've got to iterate faster!", "Move fast and break things!"

If you're in tech, chances are high that you've heard variations of these phrases. While moving quickly and iterating are completely valid focuses, the driving factors of late capitalism start to make things burst at the seams. Capitalism has no ceiling or end to its satisfaction. It is a beast that constantly requires infinite growth in an increasingly finite world. We see it with the neverending erosion of workers' rights, and we see it every day with the further destruction of our own planet. Capitalism and all of the ghoulish figures involved, will take until there is absolutely nothing left.

This includes your own sanity as a programmer.

Gone are the days of writing thoughtful, sane CSS for projects. Gone are the days of writing and delivering basic HTML. These things have been replaced by massive SPAs that contain everything but the kitchen sink, or CSS utility class libraries that make code maintenance an absolute nightmare. The creators of these tools will use the excuse that they were made to solve problems, but they fail to identify that the core problem they are focused on is speed. How fast can something "go to market"? How quickly can we get this feature out before our competitor?

Enshittification is coming for absolutely everything and it will not stop even when all resources have been completely depleted. The reality though is that "enshittification" is interchangeable with "capitalism" here. Let's be honest. So many of these initiatives are rooted in being as fast as humanly possible. When you try to couple that with the fact that capitalism is a hoarder of infinite wealth and resources in a finite world, it just doesn't work. Tailwind will never be fast enough, just like you will never iterate fast enough. It's impossible to match the speed of a monster that will burnout absolutely every member of the working class, while also actively trying to replace a good chunk of them with AI.

AI, burnout and other not great words

The primary reasons for replacing workers with AI are pretty easy to suss out: money and speed. If the system requires an infinite amount of money, it will also require an infinite increase in the speed with which to gain that money. That means that even if you listen to your boomer dad droning on and on about working hard and you push yourself to be faster, you will inevitably have deja vu when a tech bro says that the team has to "iterate faster". All of those long work days you pulled that seem to become more and more commonplace, are now reduced to ash. That thing you were proud you cranked out in 2 weeks? 6 months from now, you'll be expected to carry out the same task in 1 week. Sure, you can push back and we all have at some point, but tech is about throwing yourself completely upon the gears of capitalism. If you don't buy into it wholesale, you might as well find a new career elsewhere.

It is mathematically impossible to ever be fast enough for any capitalist venture. If you keep holding yourself hostage to this magic undisclosed number that capitalism dictates, you will end up in a world of hurt (otherwise known as burnout).

Be kind to yourself. You will never be fast enough and that's okay. Expectations are unrealistic right now and they are just going to get worse as the enshittification plague crawls across everything in sight.