Sad state of tech.
this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2026
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Programming
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This is not a good article
A lot of people seem to be realizing that knowledge work is mostly pointless
From wikipedia
Examples of such professionals include ICT professionals, physicians, pharmacists, architects, engineers, mathematicians, scientists, designers, public accountants, lawyers, librarians, archivists, editors, and academics
Are they genuinely claiming ~~all~~ most of this work is pointless?
The article continues
What’s different about this moment is that the questions are not just economic but existential, the kind of questions that cause high-earning technical professionals to contemplate throwing it all away to start a goat farm in Washington or become a surf instructor in Costa Rica.
I'm sure I'd seen memes about software engineers wanting become woodworkers before the AI deluge.
The writing continues with needlessly crass language. I stopped reading.
I also gave up reading it, but from a few paragraphs below, when they said knowledge work they mean stuff like marketing, finances and other relatively high paying jobs that most people aren't passionate about but choose to do for money. I think it's a weakness of the article that it isn't upfront about what it means, so you're not wrong for looking it up, but yeah, they meant that.
The article itself seems to be on alienation and stress, but as I said I didn't finish it, as it's quite long and not engaging enough, at least to me.
I did suspect as much, but if you're going to put something in the title, perhaps don't use limited definitions?
Yeah it's just very poorly written, I was trying to be too charitable in my previous comment but I think the article deserves a lot more criticism, like about the random change of tone (ex: professional to swearing for no reason to professional again), missing explanations, and taking several paragraphs to explain that sometimes people do shit they don't like for money, like, we're human, we know that lmao
Fuck, I have been seriously researching that goat farm though.
I find this kind of navel-gazing so cringey, because this literally happens every 5-10 years. I remember when “hipsters” became a big thing, and that was at least two “tech workers are moving to farms” cycles ago.
This is an awful article.
Among my Knowledge Worker peers, I am hearing this more and more often: people who want to pick up pottery, painting, crochet or other old-timey analog hobbies
I wonder why he thinks this is such a big, revolutionary thing?
Aaron Horwath is the director of AI operations at a creative technology company where he is focused on implementing AI in a way that supports both humans and business.
Sure, Jan.
I literally know someone who quit to teach surfing in Argentina. Also know ex tech woodworkers.
Because they got suckered into wasting their hard-earned skills on making the world a worse place.
Being a sellout has its costs.
I really needed more AI propaganda, thanks!