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
Slide 6
Baruch Sadogursky - @jbaru
ch × Head of DevRel at TuxCare × Developer Productivity Nerd × Development -> DevOps -> #DPE
Slide 7
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
On the other hand, if it’s not p rotected, it’s not down!
Slide 17
But maybe running on win 3.1 is not a great idea after all
Slide 18
Let’s add Ai, what can possibly
go wrong
Slide 19
Number of issues…
Slide 20
Just a tiny bit of issues
Slide 21
stagnation No, slapping chatbot on doesn’t count
Slide 22
What’s new in the latest andr oid
and ios
Slide 23
Windows 10 vs windows 11: na me
3 differences
Slide 24
Speed of innovation Can ANYTHING be released in less than two years?
Slide 25
Let’s just slap a chatbot on it
!
Slide 26
Even slapping chatbot on takes
years
Slide 27
A freaking wireless charger
Slide 28
A (not so) new look is coming
(not so) soon
Slide 29
Living on elon’s time
Slide 30
bloat Old man yells at software size
Slide 31
Slide 32
Surface of attack is insane
Slide 33
ARE YOU AFRAID YET?
Slide 34
F*ck it, we’ll do it lite
Slide 35
Chrome nom-noms ram
Slide 36
Chromium nom-noms ram
Slide 37
Electron apps nom-noms ram
Slide 38
Tale of two pdf readers
Slide 39
Tale of two pdf readers
Slide 40
No Ozempic for websites
Slide 41
Feature mismatch Let’s add features no–one needs and remove features people like
Slide 42
Windows 10 -> windows 11
Slide 43
New app at all costs
Slide 44
Slide 45
Remember sonos? Let’s look w hy…
Slide 46
no-code To get new features out, developers should write code. They don’t.
Slide 47
You can’t create product with ou
t writing code
Slide 48
management There are so many ways to screw up when you’re in managmenet
Slide 49
With overconfidence
Slide 50
Bad Org habits can kill produ
ctivity
Slide 51
Artificial rigid deadlines “Because I said so”
Slide 52
The “art” of not letting go
Slide 53
bad code When developers do code, they are drawn in technical dept
Slide 54
You can’t create value fast if you’re drowning
Slide 55
It’s not just sonos
Slide 56
Onboarding time for new devel oper
Slide 57
much more bad code Let’s let AI generate tons of bad code, what can possibly go wrong
Slide 58
Garbage in -> Garbage out
Slide 59
AI gets creative with Technical
debt
Slide 60
Complexity More code, especially bad code makes it impossible to understand tech
Slide 61
Example: Security
Slide 62
Wrong features How do product managers know what we want? They don’t.
Slide 63
Product management is guess work
Slide 64
Copy the trend Let’s just do the current thing
Slide 65
More “shittification”
Slide 66
Ai assistants everywhere
Slide 67
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 68
Productivity How to write more code
Slide 69
Keep loops tight.
Yeah, really.
No manual toil.
Protect deep focus time
Slide 70
Slide 71
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.
Slide 72
Agentic AI is RAD if it does the
right thing
Slide 73
Slide 74
agile (yes, it’s 2025) Not necessarily what you think
Slide 75
Code > meetings
More data = better calls
Make choices that are easy to undo
Done is better than perfect
Slide 76
Slide 77
DevOps (yes, it’s 2025) Probably exactly what you think
Slide 78
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 79
Write good code Well, that sounds actionable
Slide 80
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 81
Write docs, find docs
Slide 82
Think negatively Not in live, just about your code
Slide 83
Don’t feed them
Ensure resilience
Catch and recover
Getting feedback on social is not great
Slide 84
Know what you don’t know But don’t panic
Slide 85
Delegate to pros when needed
Slide 86
Help your business Even regular dev can help
Slide 87
“Faster time-to-market”
Write it down
Be direct, not snarky
Flag issues early
Slide 88
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 89
THANKS! Q&A and Twitter X/Bsky/Mastodon/LinkedIn ads: x @jbaruch x #Javaland x speaking.jbaru.ch