Friction by Design: Mainstream Software Jobs… from the Dark Side
Warning: May cause existential dread for tech workers
Ever tried to cancel a subscription and found yourself in a maze of pop-ups, guilt trips, and mysterious delays? Congratulations—you’ve met the real architects of the modern web. Ever wondered who goes into the office every day to program your frustration? Read on.
Tech adores its euphemisms. “User Experience.” “Behavioural Design.” “Personalisation.” “Friction Management.” Polished terms that decorate PowerPoint decks and LinkedIn profiles, all suggesting care, refinement, and customer focus—while quietly plotting your next headache.
In practice, there’s a whole sub-sector of skilled, well-paid software roles dedicated to engineering hesitation, fatigue, and eventual surrender. These jobs serve an internet designed not just to sell or inform, but to handle the user—managing behavior, extracting more time, more data, and more money, while leaving you with the nagging sense that everything is just a little bit harder than it should be. Spoiler: it is.
This isn’t an accident. Online platforms worship at the altar of clicks and “time spent.” So teams of engineers, product managers, designers, and behavioral scientists are hired to push, delay, confuse, or quietly entangle users—all while offering the illusion of choice and control. It’s not illegal, and it’s not hidden. It’s just described in a language that flatters everyone involved.
Meet the Masters of Modern Friction
Director of User Retention
Builds systems that make leaving harder than a family group chat. Cancellation flows, reactivation prompts, policy reminders—anything to keep you inside the system through attrition, not affection.
Growth Product Manager – Lifecycle Optimisation
Responsible for converting activity into revenue, and optimism into regret. Oversees onboarding processes that are easy to enter and nearly impossible to escape. Ensures trials default to paid, and designs progress bars that sprint to the finish line—right before your credit card gets charged.
UX Designer – Friction Management
Removes obstacles from high-value actions (read: spending), and adds them wherever revenue is at risk. Makes sure that leaving, opting out, or changing settings always costs just a little more sanity than you expected.
Behavioural Insights Lead
Applies cognitive biases to interface elements with the precision of a casino architect. Develops time-limited offers, auto-suggested actions, and default settings that gently nudge you off a cliff—always framed as “helpful.”
Consent Experience Architect
Delivers legal compliance with minimal user interference—if by “minimal” you mean “barely detectable.” Engineers checkbox placement, button contrast, and menu design to ensure you have the appearance of choice with the outcome of surrender.
Personalisation Strategist
Builds engagement profiles to determine exactly what keeps you scrolling. Uses your browsing, purchasing, and attention history to generate recommended distractions. “Relevance” is defined as “whatever keeps you here longest.”
Revenue Optimisation Analyst
Studies payment timing, user fatigue, and emotional triggers. Determines the best moment to introduce a charge, trial expiry, or upgrade prompt—calculating just how much interruption you’ll tolerate before rage-quitting.
Dark Pattern Engineer (Unofficial)
Exists across roles. Designs misleading buttons, recursive loops, unclear choices, and false urgency—all intended to steer you toward a “decision” you didn’t know you were making.
Engagement Algorithm Designer
Selects and sequences content to maximize compulsive use. Optimizes feed ranking, alert cadence, and feedback frequency to delay your exit. Measures attention as a resource—and you as the product.
Ethics Advisor (Advisory Only)
Participates in documentation and governance. Drafts position statements, audit language, and ethical frameworks. Rarely has sign-off power. Functions primarily as a decorative plant for regulators and investors.
Such roles are now central to how the modern internet operates. The skill is real. So is the pay. These are high-status jobs with measurable outcomes and direct impact on revenue. They attract bright, capable people who, in another decade, might have been solving very different problems. What’s changed is the direction of that talent—not toward service, but toward friction.
Of course, not every tech job is a ticket to the Dark Side. But the next time you click “Accept All,” remember: somewhere, someone’s quarterly bonus depends on it.
