Someone just discovered that computers are actually just rocks we tricked into thinking by zapping them with lightning, and yet somehow we've collectively decided to make them as user-hostile as possible. Like, there's no fundamental law of physics that says your IDE needs to consume 8GB of RAM to display text, or that your printer driver should require a PhD to install, or that every app needs to track your location to show you a recipe. It's all just arbitrary choices made by people who decided that "user experience" means "how many dark patterns can we fit in before they uninstall." The technology itself is neutral—it's the people building it who keep adding seventeen authentication steps, mandatory updates that break everything, and terms of service longer than War and Peace. Computers could be simple, elegant, and respectful of your time. Instead we got Electron apps that take 30 seconds to boot and cookie consent banners that require a law degree to navigate.

That beautiful moment during a performance review when your manager starts talking about "aligning with business objectives" and "stakeholder synergy" and you're just sitting there thinking about that gnarly algorithm you want to optimize. Some of us got into this field because we genuinely enjoy making machines bend to our will, not because we dream of quarterly revenue targets and cross-functional collaboration matrices. The career ladder? Sure, I'll climb it. But only if each rung gets me closer to more interesting technical problems, not PowerPoint presentations.