Key Takeaways

  • Universal Reluctance: Tech professionals across all roles—from engineers to designers to founders—are overwhelmingly hesitant to recommend their current careers to friends or family entering the industry.
  • Negative NPS Scores: The sentiment is not just lukewarm; Net Promoter Scores (NPS) for recommending their own roles are consistently in the negative across the board.
  • Designers and Researchers Hit Hardest: While the trend is widespread, designers and researchers express the strongest reluctance, indicating a deep unease about their future in tech.
  • Even Founders Hesitate: Founders, typically the most optimistic group, show surprising hesitation to endorse their own path, suggesting a systemic uncertainty rather than just role-specific issues.
  • "Ladder Rungs Disappearing": The underlying fear is that AI and rapid technological advancement are removing traditional career progression paths for newcomers, making entry feel like a dead end.

Your Dream Tech Job? Current Pros Say "Hard Pass."

If you're an ambitious builder in your 20s or 30s eyeing a career in tech, prepare for a cold shower. A recent survey from Lenny Rachitsky and Noam Segal reveals a counterintuitive truth: the people already in tech don't want you to join them. This isn't just about dissatisfaction; it's an active discouragement, with Net Promoter Scores for recommending their own roles consistently dipping into negative territory.

Noam Segal, co-author of the second annual tech worker sentiment survey, described the findings as "shocking." He and Rachitsky were curious what seasoned pros would tell a new entrant. "The answer was shocking," Segal admitted. “What you're seeing here is that no one is a promoter of their role in tech right now.” Not even founders, typically the “happy go-lucky people in tech,” would recommend their own paths to others. This wasn't some niche complaint; it spanned every role from Product Managers to operations and engineering.

But the deepest unease came from a specific corner: designers and researchers. These communities were “the least likely to recommend their role to other people coming into tech,” according to Segal. It paints a picture of professionals who might be doing fine themselves, but see a landscape fundamentally shifting for anyone trying to follow in their footsteps.

The Ladder Rungs Are Disappearing for Newcomers

The reluctance isn't just about current workload or stress; it's a forward-looking anxiety. The core of the issue, Segal explained, is a widespread feeling that technology, specifically AI, is pulling the rug out from under early-career individuals. “We are all watching this technology climb the rungs of this ladder and advance,” Segal observed, “and we feel like the technology is pulling those rungs from under us.” It’s not that their jobs are gone today, but the clear, predictable paths that once existed for growth are becoming blurry or nonexistent.

Lenny Rachitsky clarified that this sentiment doesn't mean these roles are disappearing entirely. “This doesn't mean design is going away or research is going away,” he said. Instead, it reflects a powerful internal "narrative" among those in the trenches: don't do this. They've seen enough to believe that the traditional entry points and career ladders are broken, and they’re projecting that uncertainty onto newcomers.

For a founder, this means the talent market for traditional roles is fractured. New hires aren't just looking for a job; they're looking for a future that current professionals believe is unstable. This creates a significant challenge for attracting and retaining talent, and a mandate to build career paths that are resilient to rapid technological shifts.

What to Do With This

As a founder, stop hiring for static job titles. Instead, redefine roles around dynamic skill sets and continuous learning, explicitly outlining how your company fosters adaptability and growth in an AI-driven world. For example, if you're hiring a designer, clarify how their role will evolve into prompt engineering or AI tool mastery, showing clear future value rather than a traditional, potentially obsolescent ladder.