Tech writing had this coming.
For years, the field has been bloated with “content strategists” recycling press releases, passing them off as expertise. Most vendor blogs read like slightly warmed-over datasheets, optimized not for humans but for Google’s crawler. When you optimize for robots, don’t be surprised when robots replace you.
The truth is uncomfortable: much of tech writing stopped being writing. It became production. Style guides, keyword spreadsheets, endless “10 best practices for X” posts. The actual craft — reporting, analysis, calling bullshit — got sidelined because it didn’t scale and didn’t look as good on a quarterly marketing dashboard.
So when generative AI showed up, it wasn’t the assassin. It was the mirror. If a model can crank out your blog in 30 seconds, that says more about your work than it does about the model.
I’ve been around long enough to see both sides. There’s real editorial craft — digging into the politics of a DevOps rollout, exposing where the cloud cost numbers don’t add up. That work takes judgment. It takes scars. Then there’s filler content — the kind AI is already eating alive. And honestly? Let it. No human should be wasting their time writing “Top 5 Benefits of Kubernetes” for the thousandth time.
The real problem is the industry kept rewarding wallpaper. Safe, forgettable content that clogs feeds and pads SEO reports. Generative AI is finally taking a bite out of that. Good. Maybe it’ll clear space for writing that matters — work that provokes, investigates, and actually earns the reader’s trust.
If you’re just regurgitating what the vendor slide says, AI is your replacement. If you’re digging deeper, you’ve still got a future. Tech writing deserves this reckoning.
