Technical Enshittification: Why Everything in IT is Horrible Right Now and How to Fix It

A presentation at JCON 2025 in May 2025 in Cologne, Germany by Baruch Sadogursky

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Technical Enshittification: Why Everything in IT is Horrible Right Now and How to Fix It

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Enshittification: “when platform… starts to exploit [its] user base… at the expense of user experience” Cory Doctorow

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Socio-economic enshittificatio n Platform gathers users by providing value Critical mass locks users in Platform stops providing value, sells the users

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Ttechnical enshittification A purely technical (albeit reductionist) view

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Baruch Sadogursky - @jbaru ch × Head of DevRel at TuxCare (I am hiring!) × Developer Productivity Nerd × Development -> DevOps -> #DPE

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shownotes × × × × speaking.jbaru.ch Slides Video All the links!

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It’s a vein diagram Software I like Software I know really well

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  1. Everything is getting worse Bugs… bugs are everywhere

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You had one job, operating sy stem

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Privacy. That’s apple. Kinda.

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Twitter/x Ux: It’s not (only) el on’s fault

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Move fast and break things

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you had one job, Secure vault

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If it’s down, no one can hack it

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On the other hand, if it’s not p rotected, it’s not down!

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But maybe running on win 3.1 is not a great idea after all

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Let’s add Ai, what can possibly go wrong

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Number of issues…

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Just a tiny bit of issues

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  1. stagnation No, slapping chatbot on doesn’t count

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What’s new in the latest andr oid and ios

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Windows 10 vs windows 11: na me 3 differences

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  1. Speed of innovation Can ANYTHING be released in less than two years?

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Let’s just slap a chatbot on it !

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Even slapping chatbot on takes years

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A freaking wireless charger

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A (not so) new look is coming (not so) soon

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Living on elon’s time

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  1. bloat Old man yells at software size

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Surface of attack is insane

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ARE YOU AFRAID YET?

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F*ck it, we’ll do it lite

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The elephant in the room (by m emory consumption)

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Chrome nom-noms ram

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Chromium nom-noms ram

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Electron apps nom-noms ram

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Tale of two pdf readers

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Tale of two pdf readers

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No Ozempic for websites

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  1. Feature mismatch Let’s add features no–one needs and remove features people like

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Windows 10 -> windows 11

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New app at all costs

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Remember sonos? Let’s look w hy…

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  1. no-code To get new features out, developers should write code. They don’t.

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You can’t create product with ou t writing code

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  1. management There are so many ways to screw up when you’re in managmenet

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With overconfidence

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Bad Org habits can kill produ ctivity

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  1. Artificial rigid deadlines “Because I said so”

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The “art” of not letting go

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  1. bad code When developers do code, they are drawn in technical dept

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You can’t create value fast if you’re drowning

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It’s not just sonos

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Onboarding time for new devel oper

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  1. much more bad code Let’s let AI generate tons of bad code, what can possibly go wrong

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Garbage in -> Garbage out

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AI gets creative with Technical debt

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  1. Complexity More code, especially bad code makes it impossible to understand tech

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Example: Security

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  1. Wrong features How do product managers know what we want? They don’t.

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Product management is guess work

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  1. Copy the trend Let’s just do the current thing

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More “shittification”

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Ai assistants everywhere

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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.

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  1. Productivity How to write more code

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Keep loops tight. Yeah, really. No manual toil. Protect deep focus time

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Use AI smartly! Right tool – right job Not all tools are created equal. Go deep, not wide ATM specialized beats generalized Local ai = control Better control and privacy.

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Agentic AI is RAD if it does the right thing

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  1. agile (yes, it’s 2025) Not necessarily what you think

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Code > meetings More data = better calls Make choices that are easy to undo Done is better than perfect

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  1. DevOps (yes, it’s 2025) Probably exactly what you think

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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

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  1. Write good code Well, that sounds actionable

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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

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Write docs, find docs

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  1. Think negatively Not in live, just about your code

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Don’t feed them Ensure resilience Catch and recover Getting feedback on social is not great

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  1. Know what you don’t know But don’t panic

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Delegate to pros when needed

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  1. Help your business Even regular dev can help

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“Faster time-to-market” Write it down Be direct, not snarky Flag issues early

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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!

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THANKS! Q&A and Twitter X/Bsky/Mastodon/LinkedIn ads: x @jbaruch x #JCON x speaking.jbaru.ch