Elliot Morris

There's this foundational assumption when you work inside market systems. Good things will perform better than bad things.

It's the essence of competition right, it's difficult to define good, but there's something there? Some sort of quality that creates a differentiating selecting force, causing, eventually, only the cream to float to the top.

I no longer believe this is the case.

Does it seem to you that revenue matters anymore? Is anyone acting as if they care about profit, let alone providing a good and useful service to another human?

What seems to have happened is that, in the most amazing upwards shift of wealth ever seen, we have reached a tipping point. It used to be that the path to success, especially in software where manufacturing costs are zero, was to convince a lot of people to use your product. This, thought of in the broadest possible terms, was a good thing in the utilitarian tradition. It was a market that optimized for the greatest possible value being delivered to the greatest possible number of people. Huzah!

No. Not Huzah. Even putting aside all the obvious distribution problems of market economies, it doesn't work like that anymore. We are now back to what, thinking historically, was the norm for the vast majority of human history. Wealth exists primarily in the hands of the ultra-elite, and they don't really have much incentive to use it in ways us regular folk would consider rational.

I presume these people are humans, and thus want human things. For the ultra-rich, the only human thing they don't already have is self-actualization. They are trying to buy it.

Therefore, there is no longer any need to make a product that is valuable to lots of people, all you need to do is appeal to one specific person. You want to make them feel special and excited and invigorated and important, then maybe then they'll throw some money at you. You made them feel good, and now they want to own you.

Investor cash is ruining societies, it's fucking with the fundamental forces that drive the creation of value for the vast majority of people. Why is AI being shoved into every software product you interact with? It’s because some ultra-rich person thinks it will change the world, and thus make them feel important for having been the one who changed the world.

It's also fucking with my life personally because I have no idea how to operate as an engineer in a system where there is no foundational source of value outside of one specific persons predilections.

Don't misunderstand me. Obviously Jeff Bezos isn't personally choosing which acquisitions to make, the people under him are. The Lieutenants, the Royal Viziers. These are the people you need to manage. It's their job to make him happy, and it's your job to convince them that you can do that, even if it means completely abandoning your mission and focusing exclusively on the one thing some high level executive at Meta found “cute” during your product demo. There is simply too much irrational cash on the table not to do this.

I could make predictions, about how mass-market software will continue to be enshittified. About how the ultra-wealthy and their sycophants will be served by boutique software and hardware customized for their specific use. That software won't crash all the time, it won't force AI into their faces, it won't try to upsell them with dark patterns, but don't worry, it'll basically be the same thing the common man gets. 🙄

I expect the craft of software engineering will eventually have to contend with this. Maybe Agile will finally become appropriate in the majority case, given that we'll be working exclusively for capricious children with no idea what they actually want.

After I post this, I'm going to go back to trying to manifest real value in the common good, because I do not know how to operate in any other way. Be under no delusions however, we are entering a new age of Kings.

I am still hopeful there may be ways to reverse this. If there’s one thing I believe, it’s that there are more people willing to consider radical remediations to this shift than is commonly believed, if someone could just give them a push.