I’ve been coding for 15 years. Last month, I shipped a side project in a weekend that would have taken me three months. I felt like a god. And then I couldn’t sleep for three days because I was terrified I’d just automated my own job.
If you’re a tech worker right now, you know this feeling. You’re simultaneously flying high and drowning in dread. You love your job because you can work 5x faster. You hate your job because you know, know, that the company isn’t going to share those gains with you.
Righteous anger is a healthy and natural response. Those who admonish others to ‘be curious’ often have an agenda.
That’s not a conspiracy theory — it’s a structural observation. When Meta’s executives talk about AI productivity gains, they don’t whisper about employee bonuses. They talk about margin expansion. The narrative that you should suppress your anger and ‘stay curious’ is not neutral guidance. It’s a weapon. It’s the ruling class’s oldest trick: make the peasants feel irrational for noticing the knife at their throat.
But here’s the part nobody wants to say out loud: Your anxiety is not a bug in your psychology. It’s a rational response to a system that is extracting value from your fear.
I’ve read the comments on Armin Ronacher’s piece. One person wrote: ‘I can’t get myself to stop finding it terrifying. When I think about my future I am scared. Not uncertain. Not merely anxious. Definitely not excited. I’m quite frightened.’
That’s not a cry for help. That’s a diagnosis. Of the system, not the person.
Another reader put it even more bluntly: ‘Telling the peasants to suppress anger is the primary means of the ruling classes to induce inaction.’
So stop being curious. Start being angry. Then do something with it.
What does ‘doing something’ look like? It’s not quitting your job. It’s not going full Luddite. It’s recognizing that the only way to turn your anxiety into agency is to stop pretending this is a technology problem. It’s a power problem. The AI isn’t coming for your job. The person who owns the AI is coming for your share of the value you create.
This is why the ‘excited’ camp frustrates me so much. Yes, AI is incredible. Yes, I can now outsource electronic drudgery for $100/month. But who gets to decide what counts as drudgery? Who gets to keep the surplus? Right now, the answer is: the same people who always have.
You can love your tools and hate the system that controls them. Those are not contradictions. They are the defining tension of our era.
So here’s my advice: Feel the anger. Let it sit. Don’t let anyone gaslight you into thinking you’re being irrational. Then channel that anger into organizing — with your coworkers, your industry, your community. The only way to guarantee that AI’s productivity gains benefit you is to build structures that force that outcome. Unions. Cooperatives. Open-source alternatives. Regulation that favors labor over capital.
Or you can keep staying curious. Up to you.
FAQ
Q: Isn't anger just an unproductive emotion? Shouldn't we focus on solutions instead?
A: Anger is a signal, not a strategy. But dismissing it as 'unproductive' is exactly how the system keeps you compliant. You can be angry and strategic. The goal isn't to stay angry — it's to use that anger as fuel to build structures that protect your agency. Ignoring the anger means ignoring the problem.
Q: What's the practical takeaway for a developer who loves AI but fears for their job?
A: Stop thinking like an individual. Your anxiety is shared by thousands of engineers. Organize with them. Support open-source AI that can't be locked behind a corporate API. Join or form a union. Negotiate for productivity-sharing clauses. The most practical thing you can do is stop treating AI as a personal productivity hack and start treating it as a collective bargaining issue.
Q: Isn't this just fear-mongering? AI could create more jobs than it destroys.
A: Maybe. But history shows that productivity gains from automation overwhelmingly benefit capital, not labor — unless workers organize to claim their share. The 'AI creates jobs' argument is a deflection. The real question is: who gets to decide what those jobs are, who fills them, and what they're paid? If you're not angry about the power imbalance, you're not paying attention.