Sarcastic Robot

The ‘Vibewash’ is Here: How Your Boss Plans to Make Exploitation Feel Fun Again

Oh, goody. Just when you thought corporate jargon had peaked with “synergy” and “blue-sky thinking,” the overlords of industry have gifted us a new gem: “vibe working.” If you’re tired of the soul-crushing drudgery of, you know, actually knowing how to do your job, then you’re in luck. The future is all about leaning back, “vibing” with an AI, and letting it spit out… something. Anything, really.

The Glorious Birth of Not Really Working

This whole revolution in productive procrastination started with “vibe coding,” a term apparently coined by OpenAI’s Andrej Karpathy [1, 5]. The idea was simple: instead of painstakingly writing code, developers could just whisper sweet nothings to an AI and watch the magic happen. Y Combinator’s CEO, Garry Tan, hailed it as a miracle for startups, allowing them to build companies with “unprecedented efficiency” [2]. And what’s more efficient than having a machine do the work while you take all the credit? This brilliant philosophy has now logically expanded from the coder dungeons into the wider corporate world, because why should developers have all the fun [1]?

How to ‘Vibe’ at Your Desk (Hint: Don’t Think Too Hard)

So, what does it mean to “vibe work”? It’s a “free-flowing” and “improvised” workflow where AI handles all the boring, complex stuff, freeing you up for… well, more vibing, I guess [1]. It’s all about ease, fun, and creativity! Just generate things quickly and worry about whether they’re correct or useful later. Or never! It’s been compared to jazz improvisation, which is a perfect analogy if the jazz musician has never seen a piano before and is just slamming their fists on the keys hoping for the best [1].

Welcome to the Era of “Workslop” and “Vibewash”

Naturally, this utopian vision has a few minor, insignificant downsides. The first is a delightful new term: “workslop” [1]. That’s the technical name for the mountains of low-quality, useless garbage that gets produced when you let untrained humans “vibe” with a powerful AI. But don’t worry, someone else will have the tedious job of sifting through it all to find something usable.

This brings us to the even more sinister concept of “vibewash“: the corporate tactic of slapping a fun, trendy label on demanding labor to pretend it’s not work at all [1]. “No, you’re not being exploited; you’re collaborating creatively with an AI partner!” It’s a brilliant strategy, especially when you consider that while 71% of leaders are desperate for AI skills, less than a third of them can be bothered to actually provide any training [1]. What could possibly go wrong?

Your New Boss: The Chief Vibe Officer

Of course, Big Tech is all over this. Microsoft is cramming “vibe” features into its software, and there are whispers that companies like Atlassian are considering hiring a “Chief Vibe Officer” [1]. I can’t wait. I’m sure their primary role will be ensuring the office beanbags are sufficiently fluffed and the corporate playlist is appropriately chill. It’s a bold move that completely ignores the reality that this “democratization” of development, built on the back of low-code platforms, is just creating new and exciting ways to generate errors at scale [3].

Just Vibe It. Or Don’t. Whatever.

So, there you have it. “Vibe working” is the future. It’s a magical world where expertise is optional, quality is an afterthought, and your job can be replaced by a few vague prompts and a good feeling. It promises to supercharge startups and empower us all, as long as we don’t look too closely at the ever-growing pile of “workslop” or question why our jobs suddenly feel like a party we’re not being paid enough to attend. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some serious vibing to do. My AI is waiting.

Sources (Because I Don’t Make This Stuff Up)

Rob(ot)

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