Happy Hump Day {{first_name | Toaster}} 🐪 ,

Products are getting sh*ttier these days. Apps we used to love are becoming more complicated, prices are higher, experiences are clunkier, customer support is a maze, subscriptions multiply, and updates remove features you actually liked.

Enshittification (a term coined by Cory Doctorow) captures the slow betrayal we’ve all felt scrolling apps that used to feel fun, useful, and human. This is what happens when businesses follow a very specific arc. They start by making something genuinely great for customers. Then they quietly shift their loyalty to B2B buyers. Eventually, they squeeze everyone in the room to keep shareholders happy.

Doctorow uses Uber as an example. When Uber launched, rides were cheap and plentiful. It undercut taxis and made getting around feel effortless. Then it made driving wildly profitable. Enough to pull thousands of people onto the platform and hollow out alternatives. Once drivers had committed and cities had lost other options, the math changed. Driver pay dropped and fees increased making trips more expensive. Riders had fewer choices and drivers had less leverage. The experience got worse for everyone except the balance sheet.

If you work in tech, you’ve probably watched this happen from the inside. Roadmaps stop being about users and start being about revenue optimization. Metrics replace judgment. Product decisions feel misaligned but inevitable.

Companies that enshittify their products usually enshittify their culture too. Hiring shifts from building thoughtful teams to filling seats fast. Then pay bands tighten, autonomy shrinks, and decisions get centralized. The people closest to the work lose their voice.

Enshittification isn’t inevitable, it happens when growth is prioritized over trust and speed is valued more than sustainability. Which means it can also be stopped by changing what we reward.

We can build businesses that grow without hollowing themselves out. Ones that price fairly, pay people properly, and design with real humans in mind. We can push back on dark patterns, extractive metrics, and “industry standard” practices that quietly make everything worse.

For workers, it starts with discernment. Choosing companies with aligned incentives, asking harder questions in interviews, and paying attention when things start to decay instead of gaslighting ourselves into loyalty. If a product feels worse, it’s worth asking what it’s like to work behind it. You don’t have to participate in systems that are actively getting worse.

For leaders, it means listening before churn forces your hand. Better work environments create better products that don’t require screwing anyone over to succeed.

Team Toast 🥂

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