Do I Belong in Tech Anymore?
Ky Decker
The author feels burned out and uncertain about staying in tech due to overuse of AI and loss of meaningful work. They miss the industry's earlier values of care and creativity. Now, they are taking time to recover and rethink their future.
4 May 2026
Do I voice concerns over unread code entering the codebase, and the consequences of that pattern for institutional knowledge-building? Do I ask others on the design team to delay prototyping until later in the design process? Is it already too late to ask? Has the team already shipped the code, already designed the feature, already moved onto the next task? If someone requests my review on a pull request that was clearly vibe coded, do I review the code and write comments as usual, or send it back to them for self-review? Would initiating these discussions result in interpersonal stress? Should I just let things slide? Would I become known as a “difficult” coworker for pushing back on AI use? Does any of it really matter? Does anyone really care?
I love designing and building things for the web, but I’m mourning an industry that does not share the ideals I once thought it did.
I understand why people use AI. Life can be difficult and confusing. Prompting the machine is so alluring—it answers with such certainty! How could it be wrong? (And even if it is a little wrong, well… hasn’t it saved time? Does it need to be perfect?) The temptation is real.
No matter how rapidly technology changes, I am coalescing around some core beliefs:
- Things that are worth doing are worth doing well.
- Things that are done well require time and effort.
- You make meaning through the doing.
- Ideas are common; effort is not.
- There are no shortcuts.