An Essay on Why Tech's Knowledge Workers Are Losing Faith in Their Careers

A scene from the morning commute

An essay published by Noema Magazine on 6 August opens with a scene from its author's train ride to work. Aaron Horwath, who directs AI operations at a creative technology company, watched a commuter in his early thirties spend half an hour explaining EBITDAs, margin expansion opportunities and cost structures on a call, in painfully monotone detail. As the train reached its final stop, the man dug through a leather bag and produced two long knitting needles and a mound of pink yarn: he was making a winter hat for his niece. It was the first time that morning, Horwath writes, that he noticed a glint of pride and excitement in the man's eyes.

Horwath says he hears such stories increasingly often from his peers: professionals who want to take up pottery, painting or crochet, and who share dreams of „disappearing“, „living on a farm somewhere“ or „going off the grid“. These are not fantastical daydreams, he argues, but visions of escape that betray an underlying existential angst — a sense that knowledge work is pointless, and perhaps always has been.

Workism and its unwinding

The essay leans on the idea of „workism“, described by Derek Thompson in The Atlantic in 2019: the tendency of the best-educated and highest-earning workers to seek from their jobs the meaning, community and fulfilment earlier generations found in religion. It also recalls David Graeber's book „Bullshit Jobs“, which catalogued people who admitted their work served no meaningful function.

Knowledge work's one saving grace, the author writes, was that it was still executed by humans. Now AI agents increasingly formulate complete business strategies, generate marketing campaigns and build entire websites. Horwath asks whether that additional level of abstraction pulls people so far from their work that the illusion becomes visible.

What is at stake

Drawing on Guy Debord's „The Society of the Spectacle“ (1967), Horwath argues that the messy middle of work — collaboration, debate, shared struggle — is a feature rather than a bug. He points to research by Teresa Amabile of Harvard Business School on intrinsic motivation, which found that people produce their most creative work when driven by interest and challenge rather than by metrics.

He divides knowledge workers into two broad groups: outcome-first workers and experience-first workers. For the former, the change brought by AI is a victory; for the latter, it undermines the foundation of work. He notes that companies are on a layoff spree and often blame AI, even though, in his account, automation is not yet delivering the efficiency gains that would justify the cuts.

Escape from the spectacle is difficult, he concludes, but he suggests small counter-moves: calling a colleague instead of querying an agent, executing some work the old-fashioned, exploratory way, and remembering that no one has ever died over a spreadsheet.