This week’s question comes to us from Tony:

How do you keep doing a thing you love, that you’ve done for decades, when you hate what the industry for it has become (and your continued health insurance and ability to sleep indoors depends on it?)

Find somewhere else to do what you love.

Look, I don’t mean to sound glib. I could write a couple of pages about how hard it is to move into another industry, and that would of course be true. Starting over sucks, especially when you’ve dedicated decades of your life to something. I could write a couple of pages about how we need to be pragmatic in making decisions, and that would also be mostly true, especially in America where your health insurance is currently tied to your employment and you might be carrying around substantial educational debt. I could write a couple of pages about how complicated the situation actually is, and that would also be pretty much true (although more likely than not when people tell you something is complicated, they’re just not wanting to accept the fallout for what they know the right decision is).

(Let’s take a moment here, pull up a chair, and just think about the phrase “educational debt” for a bit.)

I could tell you to be patient, but in all honesty, this industry has exhausted our patience. And second chances. And all benefits of doubt. Also, I’m assuming you’re talking about the tech industry here because my inbox is half-full of similar emails from folks like you. People who’ve been working in this industry for decades, who’ve put in the blood and the sweat and the tears. But it’s also half-full of people who just started in this industry, having taken on the debt needed to walk through the front door only to realize they were walking into the Willy Wonka Experience, if the Willy Wonka Experience was run by Nazis. And of course all of these emails are about the tech industry. And a million think pieces have already been written about the tech industry’s heel turn that I don’t feel like I need to add to that, or have anything to add to that. And I don’t think your email is asking me to do that, thankfully.

Your email is about doing the thing that you love, and I like to think there is always room to do the thing that we love. Somewhere.

Very early in my career I was lucky enough to have a boss who gave me the gift of telling me I was a terrible employee. They didn’t mean it as a gift, of course, and to be honest, I didn’t recognize it as a gift at the moment. But it stuck with me, and in time I had to acknowledge that it was a correct assessment. I am a terrible employee. I don’t like being told what to do. I have a very hard time not calling out bullshit coming out of someone’s mouth. I don’t like having my time monitored. But the thing that really made me a terrible employee is that I like to work. Honestly, I love working. I love doing things. Making things. Solving problems. I fold socks for fun, man! And working for other people was more about the appearance of work, and making sure certain people saw you putting on the appearance of work. And being put in situations where I was kept from working. None of this is meant to disparage people who enjoy being good employees. This is just how my brain works.

But I needed money for things like rent and food and records, so I had to figure out a way to earn that money without getting a job. So Erika and I built ourselves a little design company that worked the way we wanted to work. And while I’m not saying that was easy, it meant that we were in charge of our own decisions, both good and bad ones. And whenever we tried to blame management for something, well it was just a Super-Man meme. The first decade of our existence was tethered to tech, because that’s not only where the work was, but the work was good. We were working for people who were at least attempting to do something positive. But we’d go in, we’d do the work, and we’d get out. It was basically a series of heists, except we left something beneficial behind. And while client services is mostly about relationships, and absolutely gets you involved in the inner entanglements of your client, there was something about coming in as an outsider, for a limited time, that works for me. I can get along with anyone for a few months.

As tech changed, so did our relationship with it. But we’ve never stopped doing the thing we love doing. We’re a design shop. And while we may not have the same relationship with the industry as we once did, our hearts will always be with helping other designers. Some of whom still have a relationship with the industry. Some of whom believe they can still change things from the inside (although that number is dropping hard), some of whom are stuck in the industry because of debt, or visa issues. Some of whom are still clinging to hope that the industry will go back to what they hoped it would be. Some of whom have convinced themselves “it’s complicated.” And some of whom are beginning to look for lifeboats.

My love was never for an industry. My love was always for design, those who practice it, and the people whose lives we can improve with it.

What I’m saying is that there is the thing you love, and no one can take that away. And there’s the place where you were once able to do the thing you love, and that place is gone. And while it may be time to find a new place to practice that craft—which I acknowledge is hard as fuck—that place you’re leaving was never yours, and there is nothing you could’ve done to keep that place from dying.

I can’t stress this enough: there is nothing you can do to save the tech industry, and that is not your job.

The cruelest thing the tech industry ever did was to tell you that they cared about you. They built you nice campuses, they called you family, they gave you clothes with their name on it. They fed you, they washed your clothes, they got you to ride in their Pride floats. They made you feel like you had not just a job, but a community. And yes, they paid you well. The stupidest thing we ever did—and I say this with nothing but love for you in my heart—but the stupidest thing we ever did was to believe it. IT was neither true, nor never-ending.

The same industry that once called you family is now using the fruits of your labor to commit war crimes. The same industry whose leaders once posted front-page missives to their sites about doing a better job in terms of diversity and inclusion are now selling their technology to fascists who use it to bomb schools.

The industry has decided what it wants to be.

At one point we all gravitated towards this industry because we wanted to be useful. And for a while we got to be useful. We got to design useful things. We got to build useful things. And it was amazing. We can, and should take a moment to mourn that time because it was great! But that time appears to be over.

The good news—the very good news—is that our dismay, our frustration, comes from a desire to continue being useful. That desire to continue being useful is a feeling to hold onto, and to cherish, and to honor. That desire to continue being useful is what makes us human, and it’s incompatible with an industry that wants to exploit and murder other humans to maximize profit. And despite the savage way in which the tech industry is casting its workers aside, I’ve found that the percentage of those workers that want to continue being useful is high. Which begs the question, where can we be useful now?

There are still people out there building useful things. There are still people out there designing useful things. And, there are still companies out there making useful things. They may be small, they may be unglamorous, there may be less amenities, and they may not pay as well, but there is always a premium for doing abattoir work for butchers who didn’t look too closely at where the meat was coming from.

The work we need to do, and want to do, hasn’t gone away, it’s still there. And the need for useful people certainly hasn’t gone away. There’s plenty of misery in the world that useful people certainly have their work cut out for them. Your town still needs you. Your city still needs you. Your neighbors still need you. Your kids’ school still needs you.

I don’t know what those needs are because those needs are very specific to where you are, and how you want to interact with those around you. But I think it starts with talking to people, because it always starts with talking to people. And let people know you want to continue being useful. Ask your neighbors what help they might need. Ask your developer friends what they’ve always wanted to build. Ask your designer friends what they’ve always wanted to make. Find out what’s missing in people’s lives. (By the way: I’ll give you a freebie here, from my own conversations in our local dogpark. What people want most is the shit they used to find useful, before it all got enshittified. They want Google to work again. They want to watch TV without having to upgrade devices. They want a news source they can trust. They want a security camera that’s not an ICE agent. Kids are listening to vinyl, for fuck sake. That’s an amazing repudiation of the future the tech industry laid out for us. Vinyl!)

I am trying beyond all hope to end this newsletter on a positive note. But fuck. You brought up healthcare and housing costs. Healthcare has been a problem in this country forever. Housing costs have been a problem in this country for a long time. And the only way to fix either of those issues is to understand that we have more in common with our neighbors than we ever had with the assholes running the tech industry. And to work hand in hand with our neighbors to demand that those things improve for all. And we need to be useful enough to do this work with the understanding that it will be hard, it will take time, and we may never benefit from it ourselves. Because every time we decide that we’re willing to stay at the abattoir, no matter how bad it gets, we end up punting that problem further into a future which may no longer be there.

Fuck I want to end this on a happy note. I will try.

I’m sorry this industry took a heel turn. The shittiest of heel turns. It absolutely sucks. But you should take solace in the fact that whatever it might have done to you, it didn’t take away your desire to be useful. It didn’t kill your desire to help others.

You get to keep doing the thing you love.

Now do it for people who will love you back. This is the work.

❤️ At the very bottom of last week’s newsletter I told people I’d had a shit week and asked them to say hi. I got so many emails! And EVERY 👏 SINGLE 👏 ONE 👏 OF 👏 THEM 👏MEANT 👏 THE 👏 WORLD. Thank you. This week was much better, btw.

🙋 Got a question? Ask it. And please send me some questions about donuts or Saturday morning cartoons.

📚 I am beyond excited about this announcement: On May 11, Annalee Newitz, one of my very favorite writers, has agreed to chat about my new book at one of my favorite local bookstores. Space is limited, so please RSVP. And if you don’t live in SF I very much expect you to fly in.

📓 Speaking of my new book, you can now buy it from your book monger of choice. And if you’re not in the US (congrats) that means you can prolly find it locally and not pay heinous international shipping.

📣 If you need whistles hit me up.

🍉 Please donate to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund. Israel is insane.

🏳️‍⚧️ Please donate to Trans Lifeline, and for fuck sake if there is a trans person in your life please let them know they are loved.