Like many, I cared a lot about titles early in my career. Back then, titles felt like validation. They meant experience. They meant respect.

Part of it was because I felt like I wasn’t always taken seriously. I was short, soft-spoken, not the “assertive” type people expected in meetings. I thought: maybe if my title said Senior, people would finally listen.

And for a while, it felt true. “Software Engineer” was one thing, but add the word Senior in front of it, and suddenly people seemed to pay more attention.

My most recent title was Software Architect, something I had wanted for years. I didn’t just want to be “an engineer” anymore. I wanted to shape what we were building and how we were building it. It might have also had something to do with the fact that growing up I wanted to be an Architect, and this felt like the closest thing to it.

Imagine sitting in a performance review and hearing:
“You’re not a great developer.”

It happened to me.

It was raise day. One by one, I watched my coworkers walk into our manager’s office; then it was my turn. I sat down, and my manager handed me a little yellow sticky note with a number on it. My raise. The lowest I had ever gotten.

No conversation. Just: “Do you have any questions?”

I had plenty, but in that moment, I couldn’t find the words. Every 1:1 leading up to this had been positive, or so I thought. So I just said no and walked back to my desk, thoughts racing: What was I doing wrong?

In the last issue, we looked at tech’s big promises and asked whether it delivered. This week, we’re diving into one specific promise and something Kelly Vaughn talks about in her newsletter After Burnout. AI promised efficiency. Instead, it’s making us work harder.

The promise? A productivity revolution. AI would take care of the boring stuff, freeing us to be more creative

But instead, many of us are finding more work to fill the time AI “saves” us. And it’s not necessarily the kind of work we wanted more of.

So where did it go wrong?

Last week I stumbled across a TEDx talk making the rounds on LinkedIn and Bluesky titled Tech Promised Everything. Did It Deliver? by Scott Hanselman.

With humor and a bit of nostalgia, Hanselman revisits the promises tech made us: real connection, more convenience, and boundless creativity.

So… did it deliver?