Out of the ‘AI’ Crisis – Premium Newsletter launch and Halloween Sale

Overview

• I’m launching a Premium Newsletter that runs in addition to the regular one. The launch price is €25 EUR for a year’s membership, which is a 50% discount off the annual price and a 70% discount off the monthly price. This Halloween launch sale lasts up to (and including) 1 November 2026.
• I’m also offering a bundle Halloween sale that includes all the ebooks and a year’s membership in the Premium Newsletter at €50 EUR, a 60% Halloween launch discount until 1 November 2026… Or, more than a 70% discount including the value of the annual Premium Newsletter membership.
• If paying annually isn’t your thing monthly subscriptions are available through Patreon, where paid members will be able to access the premium newsletter as posts. Those do not have a launch discount, but there is a trial period.
• I’ve also opened a Liberapay profile for donations. For those of you who want to support the newsletter, podcast, and YouTube channel, but don’t want to buy anything. You’re buying the happy feeling of doing good.

I’ve suddenly become “overqualified” for everything. Employers seem to want cheaper employees who use “AI” for everything. I don’t even mind using “AI” but they still don’t want me.

All the pull quotes I’ve highlighted are genuine comments I’ve found online during my research, usually lightly paraphrased to protect the identities of people complaining about their jobs and their careers.

Out of the ‘AI’ Crisis

Nobody talks to each other any more. We’re just shuffling bullshit back and forth.

Many of us aren’t doing well, even as our bosses tell us things are great.

The “AI” bubble is hitting a lot of industries, and it’s disproportionally affecting those of us who work in these industries over our managers.

Professional educators, people like me who used to help train developers, have seen their businesses evaporate. Teachers, illustrators, voice actors, writers, and translators have all had their careers threatened or even destroyed by “AI” tools offered with predatory subsidies, built using their own work, used without permission by tech companies.

My employer doesn’t want to hire a team, so I’m doing five jobs at once. Bugs keep piling up.

But it isn’t just the creative industries and education that are being hit. Software developers are among the worst affected groups.

Nobody likes this. Everybody is doing the same thing and nobody is thinking any more.

Arguing whether the job losses we’re facing in software are down to “AI” replacement, poor free cash flow, or dysfunctional stock market dynamics is splitting hairs.

No matter which take you favour, it’s all down to the “AI” financial bubble one way or another.

I don’t recognise my job any more. I’m a bot manager now, not a designer. The work isn’t mine any more.

You don’t have to look far online to see that many of us are in the middle of an identity crisis.

• Some of us feel complicit in the destruction being wrought by “AI”. Even if we haven’t directly participated, much of it is built on our shared work and sometimes years of contributions.
• Software development was unique. It has similarities with many jobs, but there really isn’t a job exactly like it.
• Tech jobs were supposed to be safe and, well, lucrative.
• Much like the creative and media industries, software development was a bit of a safe haven for those of us who don’t fit in a normal office job.
• Many of us genuinely thought we were helping build a better world.

I’ve been laid off, but I’m too tired of this industry to even want another job in it.

Even as the noose seems to tighten around software development as an expertise and field of practice, the widespread destruction cause by Large Language Models and image generation models, means we aren’t getting much sympathy, if any.

I like doing it myself. I like the work, but I don’t get to do the work any more. The job is to ask “AI” to do it.

Arguably the worst hit are those of us who worked on the fringes of tech – straddling the border between software and media or education. Both aspects of our job, both of our identities are in crises, and we have colleagues on either side of us that are frustrated and angry.

Very little of what we’re told by the industry itself makes sense.

Much of what the executive class are saying sounds outright bonkers.

My boss is a true believer in “AI” so the deadlines keep getting tighter and tighter, I use “AI” more and more, and it’s all very soul-crushing.

Ebook and Newsletter Bundle Halloween Sale for €50 EUR

Make this make sense.

One worldview shared by many designers and software developers is if I understand it, I can fix it.

If I figure out what makes it tick, what people want from it, how it hangs together as a structure, I’ll see the thing – that one thing – that I can pull out, repair, replace, and everything will be fine again.

Please, let it be just one thing.

There’s no sense of victory in solving a problem now. I didn’t solve it. It isn’t mine.

It’s never just one thing. “AI” isn’t even just one thing, and it didn’t appear out of nowhere. The system that is tech, politics, and the economy together are what led us here.

But, because the whole is large, it contains multiple systems, each containing its own diversities. There are corners of the software or media industries that are less affected and might even offer ideas for how to go forward.

“AI” is not all encompassing. There are places to go.

But we do need to go out and look for our place in the big picture.

The industry’s culture is dying. And it wasn’t that great to begin with. I don’t believe in the future any more.

Premium Newsletter for €25 EUR/year

Finding a future to believe in

I can’t fix this. We can’t fix this. The world is too large to be “fixed” by individuals or even communities. Otherwise, the globe would be filled with harmoniously competing utopias.

We might not be able to fix everything, but we can make some things better, and those improvements can accumulate.

Damaged doesn’t mean worthless or doomed.

It’s just… not as good as it used to be, which is a feeling we can all relate to.

Our skills may feel useless where we are now, but that doesn’t mean they are useless.

We can act and mitigate, but we need to do it with understanding.

The skills I’ve been building my entire life are being taken away from me.

Academic understanding is useful, but we need people understanding – we need our problems seen and understood from our perspective.

And we need honesty.

None of this will work if we just pretend everything is fine, that nothing’s wrong. Avoidance works for temporary problems, but honesty is the only blade sharp enough for persistent wrongs.

We’re not expected to write any code ourselves, and it makes me feel so replaceable.

Out of the ‘AI’ Crisis – Premium Newsletter

I’m trying to figure out where I stand in the world, how my career and job has been affected. So, I began to research what others in my position are experiencing.

We are not doing okay, and many of us are feeling lost.

As I wrote above, I can’t fix things, but I can play a small part in helping us feel a little less lost, because that’s what I’ve been doing for myself – with my writing and my research – my entire life.

Even though there is never just that one thing to fix, figuring out how things work and how they connect does help us navigate them.

Sometimes it even lets us make things a little less awful.

That’s why I write the essays I write. That’s why I make the podcast and YouTube videos. That’s why I read and research. Understanding might not fix things completely, but it can partially mend them – make damaged things a little bit less damaged.

The entire team feels depressed. We aren’t shipping faster. Management is on our backs. We’re using “AI” for everything but nothing’s improved.

This work has always had to be subsidised by other paid work, whether through the sale of my ebooks or my freelance work.

But times are hard for us all at the moment. These days, the more I look for freelance work to pay the bills, the less time I have to for the newsletter or podcast.

“AI” is ripping my identity as a software developer away from me.

What the newsletter offers

This is why I’m launching Out of the ‘AI’ Crisis – Premium Newsletter. It’s a paid weekly (at least) exclusive newsletter that collects commentary and suggested reading that adds depth and detail to the regular newsletter and video commentary I do.

• It collects suggested reading culled from the links I’ve posted on social media that week.
• I’ll provide additional commentary and analysis on that reading.
• Semiregular extra essays or columns.

The money it earns directly funds my writing and videos.

I also want to offer a fair deal, which is why I’m launching this as a Halloween sale with substantial discounts. This discounted launch offer lasts until 1 November 2026.

The flow of coding was almost spiritual. I miss that feeling so much.

There are three ways you can join:

1. Premium Newsletter
   A year’s prepaid membership in the Premium Newsletter. The regular price will €50 EUR for a year of updates, but I’m offering a 50% discount at launch until 1 November 2026, so €25 EUR single payment (non-recurring) for twelve months membership.
   Premium Newsletter for €25 EUR/year
2. Halloween bundle
   You can also get that same year’s membership as a part of a Halloween bundle sale that also includes all the ebooks at €50 EUR single payment (non-recurring), which is almost an 70% discount until 1 November 2026, if you include the value of the Premium Newsletter membership.
   Halloween Ebook and Newsletter Bundle for €50 EUR
3. Monthly Patreon
   But if you want automatic monthly payments instead then monthly subscriptions are available through Patreon for €7 EUR a month, and members of the paid Patreon tiers will be able to access the premium newsletter as posts.
   Patreon Supporter Tier €7 EUR/month

The amount of work I can put into my writing is directly proportional to how well the premium newsletter sells. So, the better it does, the more I can add to the newsletter, podcast, and YouTube.

I really do need your support, so I would appreciate it a lot if you spread the word, and let people who might be interested know.