Software engineering as an apathy factory
This is a shower thought and may be reductive but I feel there are 3 things that can keep someone in a job, even if not completely happy. These are motivational beliefs that extend beyond pay and keep people from becoming entirely apathetic to the consequences of their work. I have seen many people be unable to continue in their career even with high salaries if these conditions are not met. I am thinking about how they relate to software engineering in 2026. Those are:
- Care for craft.
Someone working at a restaurant, even if they hate their boss, even if their customers are jerks, might feel motivated to stay if they truly, genuinely care about their craft. They are honing their skills and building expertise.
Today, AI development and mandates have removed a lot of the care for craft in engineering. Even if AI coding is “productive” (defined by generating an ungodly amount of code regardless of whether or not anything of value is produced), it’s hard for engineers to care about the profession as a craft at all these days.
- Care for end consumer.
If you work in healthcare, you might feel motivated in your career because you are more directly helping people. Conditions are harsh but you’re really there for people and you care.
It seems more and more tech companies in 2026 care only about their .1% of users who use AI features extensively, even if those features anger their core users, because:
- Their shareholders (deeply invested in AI) demand it
- those users spend a lot of money despite being so few, and they want their money
- they think all their other users are idiots who are just slow to adopting AI
Many engineers with integrity do not want to be building for these users. Many want to help their core users (even potentially, in the valid and very specific situations, with AI!) but are unable to devote time to anything other than the most brainless of AI features. And many of these AI and agent-focused features are truly features for fraudsters, con artists, and scammers. So much of agent use or generative AI use is saying “my time is more important than your time”.
- Care for your management chain.
It’s long been said that people don’t leave jobs, they leave managers. Many of the problems listed above are results of spineless managers who lack the willingness to defend their reports, their users, and argue their convictions effectively to those above and below them (if they have any convictions at all). They are poor communicators, poor motivators, and fail to inspire their teams. It is apparent they are just mouthpieces for anyone with power above them, and thus fail to convince their reports that they themselves are worthy of their paygrade.
I have seen many managers blame individual contributors for becoming complacent on ZIRP benefits. Actually, from my perspective it is the managers who grew complacent. Many never learned proper skills to motivate and inspire because they didn’t have to. And now they use their positions to pull the ladder up behind them.
I understand that even when engineers have it bad, they have it pretty good, but something that can damage a company just as much as actively angry employees, is totally apathetic ones. A workforce that doesn’t care either way. This jeopardizes your company, its products, services, and security. Unhappy and apathetic workers are liabilities and they are entirely produced downstream from management. And tech has become an apathy factory exacerbated by AI - the ultimate “I don’t give a damn” technology.