Why Is Everyone In Tech So Sad?
This essay closely examines the existential crisis high-income knowledge workers are experiencing amid the rapid development of AI technology, and the collapse of traditional “Workism.”
Knowledge workers’ existential crisis and desire to escape
Among highly paid IT and knowledge workers, there is a growing tendency to dream of analog hobbies or forms of escape such as pottery, knitting, and farming. This is not simple fatigue, but comes from a fundamental sense of meaninglessness and existential anxiety about their work.
The collapse of “Workism”
In the past, knowledge workers treated work almost like a religious calling, finding self-realization and meaning in it. But with the spread of “Bullshit Jobs,” as David Graeber described them, occupational belief and trust have been deeply shaken.
The double abstraction of labor through AI adoption
As AI agents automate strategic planning, marketing, coding, and more, workers are pushed one step further away from actual production and value creation. Opportunity and efficiency have increased, but the immersion and agency people once felt while working directly have been lost.
The loss of human process and the “messy middle”
As messy but human processes such as collaboration, debate, and trial and error with colleagues are streamlined and automated by AI, experience-first workers are losing the enjoyment and motivation they once found in work.
The outlook for a post-Workism era
As companies use AI to maximize efficiency and reduce headcount, the human value of work and the sense of communal connection are rapidly weakening, accelerating the flight of capable people from organizations in search of new ways of living.
