Technical Enshittification: Why Everything in IT is Horrible Right Now and How to Fix It
Slide 2
Slide 3
Enshittification: “when platform… starts to exploit [its] user base… at the expense of user experience” Cory Doctorow
Slide 4
Socio-economic enshittificatio n
Platform gathers users by providing value
Critical mass locks users in
Platform stops providing value, sells the users
Slide 5
Ttechnical enshittification A purely technical (albeit reductionist) view
shownotes
× × × ×
speaking.jbaru.ch Slides Video All the links!
Slide 8
It’s a vein diagram
Software I like
Software I know really well
Slide 9
Everything is getting worse Bugs… bugs are everywhere
Slide 10
You had one job, operating sy stem
Slide 11
Privacy. That’s apple. Kinda.
Slide 12
Twitter/x Ux: It’s not (only) el on’s fault
Slide 13
Move fast and break things
Slide 14
you had one job, Secure vault
Slide 15
If it’s down, no one can hack it
Slide 16
Let’s add Ai, what can possibly
go wrong
Slide 17
Number of issues…
Slide 18
Just a tiny bit of issues
Slide 19
stagnation No, slapping chatbot on doesn’t count
Slide 20
What’s new in the latest andr oid
and ios
Slide 21
Windows 10 vs windows 11: na me
3 differences
Slide 22
Speed of innovation Can ANYTHING be released in less than two years?
Slide 23
Even slapping chatbot on takes
years
Slide 24
A freaking wireless charger
Slide 25
A (not so) new look is coming
(not so) soon
Slide 26
Living on elon’s time
Slide 27
bloat Old man yells at software size
Slide 28
quantity has quality of its own Joseph stalin
28
Slide 29
Surface of attack is insane
Slide 30
F*ck it, we’ll do it lite
Slide 31
Chrome nom-noms ram
Slide 32
Chromium nom-noms ram
Slide 33
Electron apps nom-noms ram
Slide 34
Tale of two pdf readers
Slide 35
Tale of two pdf readers
Slide 36
No Ozempic for websites
Slide 37
Feature mismatch Let’s add features no–one needs and remove features people like
Slide 38
Windows 10 -> windows 11
Slide 39
New app at all costs
Slide 40
Slide 41
Remember sonos? Let’s look w hy…
Slide 42
no-code To get new features out, developers should write code. They don’t.
Slide 43
You can’t create product with ou
t writing code
Slide 44
management There are so many ways to screw up when you’re in managmenet
Slide 45
With overconfidence
Slide 46
Bad Org habits can kill produ
ctivity
Slide 47
Artificial rigid deadlines “Because I said so”
Slide 48
The “art” of not letting go
Slide 49
bad code When developers do code, they are drawn in technical dept
Slide 50
You can’t create value fast if you’re drowning
Slide 51
It’s not just sonos
Slide 52
Onboarding time for new devel oper
Slide 53
much more bad code Let’s let AI generate tons of bad code, what can possibly go wrong
Slide 54
Garbage in -> Garbage out
Slide 55
AI gets creative with Technical
debt
Slide 56
Wrong features How do product managers know what we want? They don’t.
Slide 57
Product management is guess work
Slide 58
Copy the trend Let’s just do the current thing
Slide 59
More “shittification”
Slide 60
Ai assistants everywhere
Slide 61
We can fix God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Slide 62
Productivity How to write more code
Slide 63
Keep loops tight.
Yeah, really.
No manual toil.
Protect deep focus time
Slide 64
Slide 65
Right tool – right job
Go deep, not wide
Not all tools are created equal.
ATM specialized beats generalized
Local ai = control Better control and privacy.
Slide 66
Slide 67
agile (yes, it’s 2025) Not necessarily what you think
Slide 68
Code > meetings
More data = better calls
Make choices that are easy to undo
Done is better than perfect
Slide 69
DevOps (yes, it’s 2025) Probably exactly what you think
Slide 70
DevOps Engineers do not exist, DevOps Team is just a silo. Do DevOps right
Automate all the things
It it’s painful, you’re doing it wrong
You test in production anyway. Make it less painful
Slide 71
Write good code Well, that sounds actionable
Slide 72
What idiot wrote this?!
Bad code never gets better on its own.
If it calls for comment, rewrite it
Kill it before it kills you
Slide 73
Write docs, find docs
Slide 74
Think negatively Not in live, just about your code
Slide 75
Don’t feed them
Ensure resilience
Catch and recover
Getting feedback on social is not great
Slide 76
Help your business Even regular dev can help
Slide 77
“Faster time-to-market”
Write it down
Be direct, not snarky
Flag issues early
Slide 78
Everything is terrible, but it d
oesn’t have to be
× It’s not just you, enshittification is real × Developer productivity and managerial decisions to blame × You, the developer, can help!
Slide 79
THANKS! Q&A and Twitter X/Bsky/Mastodon/LinkedIn ads: x @jbaruch x #DevNexus x speaking.jbaru.ch