I had a few days off work last week. My daughter was visiting, and in the evening we sat and watched episodes of Being Gordon Ramsey, a documentary series following the chef as he opens a huge restaurant project in London. It’s an interesting watch, but the thing that comes across through every word and action of Ramsey is how much he cares. He cares about the food, the experience, his family, the young chefs he mentors, and the friends he has made during his long career. The tiny things matter as much as the big ones, and fixing them is important. His high standards apply to himself and everyone around him, because it all deeply matters to him.
Yesterday I saw the following post on Bluesky, and my mind immediately linked it to my thoughts around Ramsey’s documentary.
Claude Design unlocks the project manager’s dream of making the button bigger without pushback. Half of your design team will be fired in a month, the design system and branding guidelines thrown in the trash, and the App Store ratings down one or two points in a few months time.— Jae (@jaehanley.social) April 20, 2026 at 5:12 AM
Before generative AI became a thing, many of the roles that support software engineering could be described as things engineers don’t like doing. There are, of course, plenty of engineers who recognise the skill and craft of people like technical writers and designers, however I’ve also met a large number who see us as people who do the lower value work. Work that engineers absolutely could do, but it’s not worth their time. I’ve seen this very clearly in the way I’m treated as a writer, over how I was treated as a developer.
Now we have generative AI, which can also do this work. To a person who doesn’t care about the craft, some generated documentation or design elements are exactly the same as those handed over by a writer or designer. Someone, or something, else has done the work. However, machines don’t care.
Design systems and editorial style guides need people who care. They need people who care about the small details, who obsess over consistency. They need people who are willing to push back, and who are happy to say no to the endless requests to ignore the guidelines just this one time. Yes, we’re sometimes very annoying to people who just want to ship the app or publish their blog post, but we know that consistency matters. The problem for us is that it’s very difficult to demonstrate the impact of it until it’s gone. Even then, people may not connect the fact that support requests have gone up with poor quality documentation, or poor reviews with an unintuitive UI.
I don’t think this problem is exclusive to these roles. Tech is full of people who care deeply about their area of chosen specialism, and we’re all struggling in a world where doing lots of stuff really fast has become the most important thing.
It’s unlikely that our industry can close the door on generative AI, and I think there is a place for tooling of all kinds in helping to speed up and remove toil from production. However, if those tools aren’t under the control of experts who care deeply about the end result, what you end up with is slop. It’s why I believe strongly that AI-led content operations must be owned by writers. There has to be someone who cares enough to push back, with the experience and organisational power to argue for quality over speed when it matters.
Returning to Gordon Ramsey, the other thing I noted from watching his documentary was how his approach and deep level of care was replicated by his entire team. You might think that perhaps it’s because they are afraid of him, given his sweary Kitchen Nightmares persona. However, the lifelong friendships with people who have worked for him seem to show otherwise. Leaders who care build teams who care, they nurture people who are willing to go the extra mile. Leaders who care develop people who have the confidence to tell others that we need to slow down, fix the issues, comply with the design system or style guide, nail the details, for the benefit of the product and the users.