There is no doubt that AI can help a lot when writing documents. There is also no doubt that it can be detrimental to both quality and the writing process if the AI-powered tool doesn’t have a user experience tailored to the task at hand.

Generated Text and Its Downsides

We live in a world of AI overload, and many tools promise to take the “pain” of writing away by generating tons of text at the press of a button. If that’s what you want to have, great. If that’s what the world needs—lots of similar-sounding text advocating products in an almost sincere and clever-sounding voice—doubtful. Unless you’re a spammer, then the world of AI text generators is a wet dream come true. Hey, you can even create tons of comments with genuinely looking users that bait interaction or suggest quality that isn’t there.

When using chat systems to help me work on my writing tasks, I quickly got frustrated that there is no granular change. You can create posts with a prompt. When you tell the machine to change only a few structural things, it keeps creating totally new texts with other annoyances. And you have to wait for the whole text to change.

“AI-ding” the Writer

I’m a writer, and I love writing. I don’t feel that writing is a chore. To me, it feels like painting with letters and words. I love keeping my texts simple and to the point. I don’t want to impress with overly elaborate voice and vocabulary. And I don’t want to be “excited” and “amazed” by things all the time. Unless you put almost as much effort into writing the prompt as into writing the post, the voice of chat systems out there is a terribly excitable salesperson.

Writing Gets Better with Reviews

As a professional writer, I learned about the power of a good editor. When I wrote my books, I had both technical editors, making sure that what I wrote made sense, and grammar and voice editors, keeping me in check when I made mistakes or when my sentences became overly elaborate. Like this last one. Lately, I’ve started using EditGPT as a tool to aid my writing. Instead of being an AI text generator, it’s a writing and reviewing tool, which allows you to change, edit, and refine what you wrote. The interface is pretty straightforward, and if you’ve collaboratively edited in Word with reviewers in the past, it’s utterly familiar. The only difference is that there is no delay of a few days that you get with a human reviewer.

The other bit that I really like about EditGPT is that it’s keyboard-driven, and it allows me to alter parts of the text rather than recreate full texts over and over again.

So, if you also feel like writing and keeping your own voice and style but want an instant reviewer to keep you in check, why not try EditGPT , too? It represents to me what AI should be: a helper to hone your craft and challenge you to do better rather than giving you something to publish as if it’s your own work.

I just came across a post on X that stated “nothing makes me want to hire someone less than this”, with a picture of the “open to work” badge LinkedIn offers job seekers.

This being X, I thought I answer using appropriate voice:

This, albeit succinct, is not very enlightening, so let me elaborate…

Like any other developer, I have a complicated relationship with LinkedIn. I do get about 10 job offers a month and 25 connection requests a week. During my peak time in Microsoft or during my tenure at Mozilla attending 35 conferences a year this was upped by a factor of 3. I’m also frustrated with tons of bots, growth hackers and professional connectors.

But, as X circles the drain and attracts only bots, engagement baiters and the worst of society, LinkedIn has become an alternative where you can have professional conversations and keep connections. I’m a LinkedIn trainer and have done some courses for them. Many of the people I source for my company events and podcasts start with a LinkedIn message.

Now, to the matter at hand: the open to work badge. Lord Coolentrepreneur of 10xdevistan on X and his inanely clapping choir see it as a sign of desperation and blatant begging for a job. I see it differently…

The reason might be that I do use LinkedIn professionally and that I’ve been both recruiting and being hired by large corporations. I’ve also been part of reorganisations, companies going bust and was on the wrong spreadsheet when mass layoffs happened. So I know how it feels to not have a job even when your performance was great.

And guess what? It sucks. You still feel like shit and you don’t want to look around and call in favours. So maybe telling the world that you are open to a new challenge is a way to be able to take a breather and let things come to you.

I also have a lot of friends who are incredibly talented freelancers whose services I like to use. As they are great at what they do, they are also booked out. And those people use the badge to show the world when they are available, thus saving me a frustrating back and forth via email.

LinkedIn is noisy. This badge helps me find potential people and discard others. I don’t see this as a sign of desperation, I see it as a sign of clear communication. Poaching someone from a current job is always messy and takes time – especially in Europe. When I see this badge, I know the person is immediately available, which often is a need people who hire have.

Nobody should feel desperate using this badge, and people who flat out discard people who have them as desperate are very likely to be really shit bosses anyway. So, keep showing the world what you want it to offer you. There’s no shame in that.

Join me in Gdansk in Poland on the 27th of May for Infoshare to present what I already covered in print in the German AI magazine and on the WeAreDevelopers Magazzine:

Vibe coding, creativity, craft and professionalism… are we making ourselves redundant?