Disappointed Optimists
Opinion essay ties designer burnout in a tech worker survey to AI tooling and unresolvable conflicts between craft and shareholder value.
The essay cites the second annual tech worker survey by Lenny Rachitsky and Noam Segal, in which designers reported the highest exhaustion of any role, the worst-rated managers, and the least willingness to recommend their career path. The author, a design educator, frames all design as behavior change in service of organizational goals and calls the design career a 'cursed problem'. It argues AI lowered the floor of what anyone can produce without raising the ceiling of what is good.