Amy Santee

For years, I told myself that the biggest mistake of my career was caring too much. Too much about my job, too much about the customer, about creating products with real-world value. Too much about organizational culture and the wellbeing of my coworkers. Over and over, I ended up in a cycle of disappointment, burnout, and resentment. I wasn't wrong, but I was only half right. The mistake was expecting my workplace to care about the same things. The way I think about it now is not to care less, but to care selectively, realistically, and intentionally based on what we’re actually capable of influencing. If I could give some advice to 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2018 Amy, I would tell myself: “your caring isn’t a mistake, but you need to stop giving too much to organizations that have no intention of acting on it. Read my essay in the latest issue of The Jawbreaker.

Thank you to Jenny Shirey for agreeing to take stewardship of the Global UX Compensation Transparency Database. I'm glad to have found someone to run with it as I say goodbye to UX and transition to a new focus in my coaching work. I created this database in 2021 because pay transparency is one of the few tools workers actually have to fight pay inequity and wage suppression. Knowledge is power, if people share it. Quick example - in 2022, data from UX researchers at one of the largest banks in the world helped expose a pattern of lowballing and pressuring candidates, who were also women of color. Public pressure led the org to review its pay ranges and fix its offer process. That outcome only happened because strangers took five minutes to fill out a survey. Countless others have leveraged this information to increase their pay by tens of thousands of dollars. Cumulatively that's a lot more money in the pockets of workers, not bosses. The dataset recently hit 2,000 entries, and now it has a caretaker who's going to take it even further. If you haven't added your data yet, do it now, and go give Jenny a follow to see what's next.

For years after leaving corporate, I told people that my biggest career mistake was caring too much about work. I was wrong, or at least, I was only half right. I said it everywhere: on podcasts, in essays, here on Linkedin. Care less, protect your energy, it's just a job. But the caring was never the mistake. The mistake was expecting organizations to care about the same thing, when they had no intention of doing so to begin with, and then getting frustrated that my work wasn't valued (i.e., I wasn't valued). That's what happens when your work is too tied up in your sense of self. I realized that a more accurate way of putting it is that caring is good, if it’s done selectively, realistically, intentionally, and where it can make a difference. I'll share more about this lesson and what I'd tell 2012 Amy in tomorrow's issue of The Jawbreaker. If this sounds like you, join 1,150+ readers and subscribe here: https://lnkd.in/g2ibGfyh

My fellow workers: We spent our careers building the products, the platforms, the policies. We went in hoping to create something that actually helped people. We fought for the user, the customer, the citizen, our teammates, and even with a few wins here and there, we lost too many times to count. Gradually, we watched it all rot from the inside. We did what we could to keep people honest and accountable, while working harder and faster, hoping we would still have a job tomorrow. This is not the vision we were promised. This rot—this enshittification—ramped up fast, and it isn't an accident. It's a strategic choice enabled by the right economic and political conditions: deregulation, privatization, and political capture. Driven by greed, the people at the very top don't actually care about creating things with a social benefit. Just whatever is profitable, and whatever helps consolidate wealth and power. Real world value eventually gets in the way of infinite growth. If caring less means making more money, that's a sound business decision. Paying workers who do care, who want to use their brains and bodies for good, who are considerate and think about ethics and outcomes, is a cost center. Gutting millions of jobs frees up a lot of money to siphon upward in the form of stock buybacks, executive bonuses, and speculative technology investments. None of this benefits the public. The biggest winners are taking away jobs and hiding behind depersonalized euphemisms like modernizing, right sizing, restructuring, and future proofing. There is no acknowledgement of the real destruction to people's livelihoods faced by millions of workers and their families. All that matters is the message to the shareholders. As things fall apart, I hope that those who previously felt untouchable because of their pay or skill set realize they are workers and embrace this identity. We are not capitalists. We don't own the means (the tech, the platforms, the industries, the land and resources) of production. A disempowered workforce caught between making a living and not being able to afford life doesn't have a say in the matter. Scattered like-minded individuals can't change this. But worker power, when exercised collectively, can stop the rot. We can define what's valuable. We can prevent the enshittification of products, platforms, policies, governments, communities, and whole societies. We can create the kind of economy and society we want and deserve. There are plenty of ways to get organized, and yes, it's risky and scary, but that's how all rights have been won throughout history. Before all that, the most important thing is to drop the old narrative that tech workers are the exception. We are workers, and being a worker is not an insult. The sooner we say it out loud to ourselves and to each other, the sooner we can get to work.

I was just over here minding my own business, working on my bio. Come back in 2066 and I'll consider your suggestion.

Last week the internet lost its shit over Spotify's disco ball app icon as though it was a natural disaster. Instead of having feelings about a green circle, maybe we can direct that outrage toward the real issues with this platform: - Average artist payouts are $0.003–$0.005 per stream; that's $4 for 1,000 plays, or $4,000 for a million plays - Songs with fewer than 1,000 streams get $0 (that's most artists on the platform) - Want some extra algorithmic promotion? You can pay for that. - Billionaire founder Daniel Ek is richer than any artist on the platform - He's also chair of Helsing, a defense tech company building AI weapons systems for military use - The company donated $150,000 to Trump's inauguration (i.e., corruption) - During COVID, it allowed Joe Rogan to spread vaccine misinformation on his podcast and would not "silence him" for his use of racist slurs - Design intern Jewel Ham, a Black woman, was never properly credited for inventing the very popular Spotify Wrapped feature - It's a monopoly, and monopolies are bad for artists, listeners, and the economy as a whole (but we must think of the shareholders!) The good news is that the old icon will be back next week, so everyone can calm down. The bad news is that all of the above have always been true, and will continue as long as graphic design is more offensive than worker exploitation and the systems that enable it.

Newsletters and blogs have been around for ages, but social media convinced us to do all our creating and thinking in one place for "reach". Now that social has shown its true colors, there's a resurgence of homegrown publications, because what we really want is to connect with people on our own terms. We're tired of the broligarch-owned, politically compromised corporate monopolies that decide what we see, exploit our labor, harvest our data, bombard us with ads, and rot democracy from the inside. We're getting the hell off these enshittified platforms and retreating to places where we have more control—newsletters and blogs, decentralized platforms, private communities. Places (not just spaces) that align with our values, where we know who is behind the story and what they're driven by, where we can actually engage as humans, where we feel good about investing time, energy, and resources to achieve our individual and collective goals. Your $12.99 streaming subscription pays an artist fractions of a penny per listen, and forks over $430 for a single share of stock owned by an investor. On the other hand, a $5 or $10 newsletter or podcast subscription directly supports the thinkers, writers, researchers, activists, artists, movers and shakers who inspire you. Your money is a sign of appreciation for their labor. But you're actually supporting something bigger, too: a better future and a movement building real alternatives to the status quo. Doesn't that feel good? Do what you can, even in these lean times. This is a never ending battle. Subscribe to just one and you're part of the resistance. If they don't ask you for money, say thanks and share their work with someone who will value it. If you've got a newsletter, blog, podcast, community, or something else you'd like to share (yours or someone else's!), please drop the link and a brief description in the comments! I'll add some of my fav's too.

No boss, all the cookies, all the dimes. Turns out my entire socioeconomic philosophy was shaped by a visionary, toothless toddler in a diaper. Another world is indeed possible!