Today feels like a good time for a healthy reminder that change and progress are not synonymous. Just because something is new doesn’t mean that it’s better.

When you work in tech, it can be easy to get swept up with shiny new things, and believe that everything moves fast in an inexorable stampede toward a brighter future.

It’s worth it to check in with yourself every now and then, cast a skeptical look at what’s going on, and interrogate where your excitement comes from.

Excitement is a fun feeling, and a valid one. I’m certainly not here to yuck anyone’s yum. I get excited all the time over new font releases, even if the designs aren’t incredibly new, just because that’s my thing.

Most of the people who follow me here work in tech, so I think it’s safe to assume that we all know just how much tech companies invest in promoting and hyping their own products. I think jumping on those bandwagons can feel like a way to stand out, to stake a claim on the future, and to support growth for the tech job market. Maybe even to promote ourselves as good candidates for future work with new technologies and platforms.

But a powerful tech industry that builds “the future” without care, consideration, and healthy skepticism is not really the future we want, and a sure way to build a closed market that feeds primarily on itself.

A handful of big companies and investment firms don’t actually get to write the future for us, we do. It’s up to us to ask ourselves what kind of future we want to support, and get excited for that.