alt Hacker NewsWhat happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers
Comments
Yikes. Won't someone think of the software engineers?
Many of us have done far better than we deserve. There are so many workers who will never approach the gains even an aborted or partial career in software will accomplish.
How many of you are willing to sacrifice to achieve UBI for all?
My sympathy for you will depend on the answer.
Because of the *gap* between the enjoyment of "discovering, learning and practicing tech" and the capitalistic use of tech and the consequence it has on people AND how tech is used.
This resonates a lot with me, well worth the long read. And the last part about how to try keep the human part relevant, is exactly what I try for now.
Original HN title: "Why Is Everyone in Tech So Sad?"
Personally I'm pretty excited for the future.
I feel like LLMs make reading papers way easier than what it is before. If I ever run into a roadblock, I can just keep digging and probing until it makes sense to me. If anything, the amount of work that needs to be done has been amplified because it makes learning new things that much easier.
The business culture at F50 companies is several decades behind tech. The business culture in middle america is even further behind. If these people can remain employed, I'm not sure why anyone in SV is worried. The nature of white collar work is that it changes over time and frankly I think getting attached to one job title is nonsensical.
Also, half of the battle with white collar work is information asymmetry. The effectiveness of the models with real systems in the field is limited by the amount of context that people are willing to provide. This problem existed before AI, if teams document literally everything, management could see this as an outsourcing opportunity. If management forces them to document stuff, why would they do a good job? Also, why the hell would management even try to do this in the first place if it by implication eliminates their job as well?
There's a social problem here: how do you get people to give high quality information if there is no incentive? How do you know that they're not telling you things or intentionally explaining something badly (as opposed to the AI just being "bad" at something)? Especially now that the billionaire class has done enough saber rattling over it and gotten everyone thoroughly freaked out for the next decade at least? (This is also a problem in high churn corporate cultures as well, the fear fucks up the signal to noise ratio)
If you're excited about AI, doesn't that mean you're actually less AI-pilled? You don't believe it will replace you fully.
Let's see.... Unemployment, AI Lunatics, forced to use AI, AI Slopping...
Much of joy we got from coding was taken way, I can not even imagine anyone wanting to get back to a coding role to vibe slop all day long.
I even heard from colleagues that presented algorithms better than the AI slop and heard verbatim from their boss: I prefer the AI solution instead of your.
So yeah, AI lunatics are ruining tech
Because they don’t exercise, have a terrible diet, lack of socialization, and no family to speak of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
the theory is not without flaws but it seems relevant to the topic and conversation
Just as a reminder this subject of AI replacing developers come up all the time but it has not happened yet.
People want to focus on AI but the same problem has always been there for 2-4 decades. Software, as a profession, has no credentials, no common elevation path, no common training criteria. You just show up and everyone is super insecure. AI just provides a name to identify that insecurity. Nothing else has changed.
cybersecurity has taken over my life as a IT Manager. Security was always important, and always something I worked on, but now it's all I work on and it's exhausting.
Managing patch management)software and firmware. Users who cannot help but enter credentials via phishing regardless of training.
Chasing the next best practice (SSL VPN out, IPsec is back, etc).
When have people in Tech been happy? (Serious question).
> In my experience, there are two broad categories of Knowledge Workers. The first are outcome-first workers. Their focus is on the business, on winning, on efficiency. Human needs and faults and emotions are an obstacle to be overcome.
> The second group has an experience-first perspective. These workers love the messy middle. They value the journey. They want their organizations to perform well but as a natural consequence of collaboration, debate and shared struggle with people they actually like. Many experience-first people are artists outside of work. Photographers, directors, screenwriters, sculptors, painters, poets, writers. Many are active volunteers. For these people, to be pulled away from their economically unviable passions requires something in return: a company experience with freedom for exploration, creativity, problem solving and cool colleagues.
The first group appears to be correctly compartmentalizing work into its correct location, this is a job I do to meet a goal, how are we doing on that goal, they have healthy limited expectations of the experiences there.
The latter group sounds childish or unprofessional or at least unrealistic in their expectations that a job you do for a living will be all you want it to be. I laud people who volunteer, I do as well, I laud creatives, we need more of them, not less of them, but somewhere along the way, people need to work at the sucky starter job so they grow out of wild-eyed views that all jobs will bring one satisfaction. Some jobs are more cushy and give you more of a sense of fulfillment, true, and those are vocations in the article's sense, but most jobs are just jobs, therefore it seems unrealistic to me to expect them to make one happy.
Satisfaction in life comes from service to others, because said service drives strong trusting relationships with people, you love what you serve, and those trusting relationships mean you get to see more people and they often reciprocate, thus families (in the nuclear, community, and found senses, all apply) are formed and meaning arises as the gestalt of that support and forward progress gets us what we can handle for this-side-of-life eudaimonia.
Beyond that? That's the nature of religion and I know I'm already annoying someone with my too-strong opinions as is, so I will spare you my thoughts there this time.
I am finally able to deliver on years of backlog ideas thanks to the GPUs I racked up in my garage. Having a blast.
Everyone I know fully dependent on corpotch seems pretty sad though. I frequently suggest that they stop. It has not worked.
So glad I am retired.
Having just installed the world's most popular software (MS windows), i think they should be.
Bravo
The article makes an interesting point. Like, sure, AI slop is nasty; but also maybe the job itself was bullshit all along (making powerpoints, or coding yet another todo app and so on), and you were only making peace with it by adding a human element which wasn't strictly necessary. Now with AI that illusion is stripped away, and you see the job for what it really is: just how little it means.
“Tech” is one of the most rapidly-changing disciplines historically. It was very different in 2016. In 2006. In 1996. In 1986. It will be very different in 2036. If this is your career, part of your job is being aware of those changes and being the person who can help others create value from whatever new technologies come around. I’ve always found these changes exciting and fun, but I’ve also been aware my entire career that whatever I’m doing be year could be out-of-date and not of value the next. Tech is exciting. Trepidation is a part of excitement.
So the author tells us there is a crisis of meaning in the workplace, and their proposed solution is… to remember none of the work matters?
The start of the piece: “These conversations inevitably turn to fundamental questions about careers: What the fuck are we actually doing? What the fuck is the point of all of this?”
The end: “For most employees, we owe it to each other to remind one another that this work is not, in the grand scheme of things, all that important. It is illusory.”
Because society sucks so people enable Daniel Plainview mode.
What the article describes was already a problem. Business people frequently pushed for broken incomplete work via shortcuts, fell for flattery, and otherwise twisted the work for those of us who cared about doing it well and accomplishing valuable and important things.
Early in my career I wrote a product that helped get a startup funding. That product went on to be used, among many other things, to reduce the impacts of genocide. Further actually impactful results were abstract in nature, a framework that was used to start many financially successful companies.
The entire 25 years there was an endless tension to balance actually doing good work and slapping together some garbage really fast. There's some good to that tension but discussing that here would be a distraction. I think AI really accelerated the sloppy acceleration and really emboldened the slop crowd. It's the perfect tool for the blowhards playing politics and irresponsibly pushing under the belief that there is endless grift absorption capacity.
To me the article makes a strong point but what do I know? I'm too busy farming to really think it through.
Speak for yourself.
Everyone is so sad because comments that follow the AI money are flagged, everyone knows that there is marketing and censorship and 50% of commenters are useful idiots that swallow the propaganda.
Noemamag is a propaganda rag for Berggruen.
I'm not sure that Hobbies are an existential threat. We had hobbies before the Internet too. It is the non-stop rat race that is the problem. Before cellphones and email we went home from work and left work at work, for the most part. Find a rich life outside of work.
'professionals are sharing dreams of “disappearing” or “living on a farm somewhere” or “going off the grid.”'
This has been a meme in tech for decades. I seriously considered farming 20 years ago due to my dissatisfaction with tech, its nothing new.
I fall into the group of tech workers that never enjoyed their work, I still loathe it but it pays really well. Standups are the worst, every day its "what did you do yesterday". The number of hours worked are far above a normal 9 - 5.
Sections of sociery spent years telling people to learn to code and they did and they do. The issue is that for many people that just work to live and don't live to work, code is souless and there is nothing to show for it after decades of grind.
This negative outlook is not universal of couse, I am sure this site is full of people that love software and more power to them. For a good deal of us though, its just how we pay the bills and there is nothing else that will come close to paying them as well.
Now to add to the general malaise we see companies laying off tens of thousands of engineers to justify their token spend. The feeling of living on borrowed time is prevelant especially for those that never got RSU's or SF salaries
> people who want to pick up pottery, painting, crochet or other old-timey analog hobbies. In coffee shops and in the low-lit corners of bars, professionals are sharing dreams of “disappearing” or “living on a farm somewhere” or “going off the grid.” These aren’t fantastical daydreams…
Things people say they want to and then don’t do is the dictionary definition of fantastical daydreams.
Because the free ride and the day-care rest and vest ZIRP tech life style is over.
In 2012 - 2023, this lifestyle used to be at Google, and Facebook and everyone outside wanted to join.
In 2023 - present The day care lifestyle is at NVIDIA, OpenAI and Anthropic and everyone outside wants to join (they are too late) after getting laid off.
It's that simple. There will be a new day care somewhere but it if you are looking for a safe and stable job, it does not exist.
[Verse 1] Stand up, all victims of oppression
For the tyrants fear your might!
Don't cling so hard to your possessions
For you have nothing if you have no rights!
Let racist ignorance be ended
For respect makes the empires fall!
Freedom is merely privilege extended
Unless enjoyed by one and all
[Chorus]
So come brothers and sisters
For the struggle carries on
The Internationale
Unites the world in song
So comrades, come rally
For this is the time and place!
The international ideal
Unites the human race
[Verse 2] Let no one build walls to divide us
Walls of hatred nor walls of stone
Come greet the dawn and stand beside us
We'll live together or we'll die alone
In our world poisoned by exploitation
Those who have taken, now they must give!
And end the vanity of nations
We've but one Earth on which to live
Too much web stuff.
I'm finding that AI is only fun for people with limitless savings or retirement funds.
When you have nothing to worry about, and you can create anything you want, at any expense, of course it's great.
For everyone else, we're dealing with teams who ship slop, company cultures that devalue workers right in front of their faces, and force them to worry about layoffs at any turn.
Everyone is sad?
I'm pretty neutral. I was pretty neutral before too.
The idea that "knowledge work is mostly pointless" is absurd and only literally true specifically if AI can do it... which it seems to be able to.
also: David Graeber's book Bullshit Jobs: A Theory was first published on May 14, 2018
Because the entire career or job experience is like a never ending marathon where the only reward is keeping your job and not becoming destitute. You never have true job security and if you work at a company long enough to go from start up to mature company then they eventually start trying to outsource or automate your job etc. It's nothing but stress and fake positivity for years and years and hopefully your lottery ticket/RSUs actually increase in value and you're eventually able to afford your freedom. It's brutal. I keep fantasizing about cashing out my retirement and running some kind of small business. I am sick of the corporate world and being a hostage to some corporate executives whims.
I read up until the term "late capitalism" then stopped and rolled my eyes and closed the page. Coin clippers control the money supply and mainstream economics is the sham - it really is that simple. Mass enshittification will continue until monetary debasement and ensuing Cantillon effect is halted and pricing mechanisms can function.
Since it's Friday, I'm going to suggest an activity: this evening, invest 30 minutes in watching "The Brain Center at Whipple" from the old Twilight Zone TV series. This conversation is much older than any of us, starting really with the advent of the Industrial Revolution.
My read on some of the current melancholy is that the millenial generation is starting to hit their mid-life crisis. Seeing the inherent meaninglessness and inanity of much of corporate work is part and parcel of that. AI makes the contrast more stark, but not new.
Or to come at it another way: the system we live in - capitalism - is defined by the process of 'creative destruction' (coined by the economist Schumpeter). We are always iterating on technology, making it better, finding new optimizations. When these are found, very often one class of people is put out of work while another class of people gains employment.
Whether this process is desirable, moral, ethical, etc. is not answered by the observation, simply that this is how the system works.
A lot of people truly enjoyed the craft and creativity of building something. That is being stripped away. The building is being outsourced now. In some cases, the design too. Everything they once enjoyed and took pride in is being done by machines now. That is not a good feeling.
Imagine you are a master craftsman, a furniture builder. You sourced the wood, designed the furniture, built it by hand, took pride in your work. You adjusted your design or how you used wood based on a knot present in the lumber you got, made custom jigs to improve your efficiency or accuracy. You built skills, you were mastering a craft.
Now, suddenly, you manage a factory of outsourced workers who mass produce cheap particle board furniture. At the end of the day both the hand made dresser and the particle board one store your underwear, one is significantly cheaper (even if it falls apart on you after a few years.) so the cheaper one wins and that is what everyone starts producing. Good enough often wins, especially when cost is involved.
Some of these crafts people may have never got to the point of being masters yet either, they were working their way towards it, but now it looks like those skills may not be valued by the market, did they waste their most valuable years working towards a goal that no longer exists? A lot of these people in this situation are also millennials that are currently or nearing mid-life, hard to pivot to a new career at this point. That is not a good feeling. Perhaps a new kind of mid-life crisis.
A lot of the people I know that are excited about AI weren't craftspeople in the same sense, the process of designing and writing code was just a means to an end, they just wanted something to store their socks at the end of the assembly line regardless of how it was made, the cheaper the better.
The worse part is not only is it a craft, its a living and so even when the times are rough you still have responsibilities, housing, family, healthcare so you are forced to use AI even when you know you are feeding the very machine that will grow big enough to eat you.
Some craftspeople will say that the AI makes them better at their craft. They can understand and learn things they never could have done before. I think this is the ideal scenario and believed this at first as well but four problems emerged for me:
1. I kept getting lazier and lazier, letting the LLM do more and more until I wasn't learning I was just trying to get to the end goal.
2. The majority of my team pressed the easy-button slot machine and wholesale let the AI do everything, its practically impossible to keep up with the massive PRs and unbelievable code churn in a team like this especially with every level of management (who are not code crafts people) want that outcome.
3. I forgot how to do simple things, syntax, standard library functions, useful libraries. I started forgetting it, I kept finding myself reaching to ask the LLM how to do this or that, things I knew how to do by muscle memory only months prior.
4. You are giving immense amounts of training data to the LLM companies. Its already been proven they give 0 fucks about copyright in any sense, your code, your ideas, your products go right back into the LLM code blender in some shape or form.
Anyone reading this far that is the same kind of crafts person that I'm describing I will tell you what I'm doing about it. I'm going to starve the machine. I've cancelled all my LLM subscriptions, I've deleted the apps. I'm going back to hand coding. I don't care about the consequences. I will find a way to provide for myself and my family. I might get "left behind" but so be it, I'll do it on my own terms. I will no longer lose the sense of who I am for companies and people that don't care about me, or even humanity in the first place. Guess who's with us? Artists and Authors other creatives hate this shit too, software is a mix of creativity and engineering so its not as black-and-white as other fields but you get to choose what it is for yourself.
Good luck out there.
Debord without Marx...
There is one major difference from previous technological advancements: AI is going to hit many if not most sectors at the same time.
And it's not like hitting just one sector has ever been gentle: machines entering manufacturing caused an 80 years slump in British occupation rates and salaries.
Machines entering agricultural fields by the end of 1800s caused a similar slump in work conditions in Europe that really ended by the 1960s/1970s (depending on the country).
Automation + AI will keep taking more blue collar jobs at speed while also taking more and more knowledge workers out of jobs.
Seriously, at no point in history we've seen a single technology threatening so many sectors at the same time.
And people telling you "but the workers always recovered" keep ignoring that those recoveries sound good when they were not the ones impacted, and that these recoveries can take a lifetime.
Very happy to work somewhere where sanity has triumphed over AI madness...
Objectively speaking, I'm less miserable than before, even though I am still miserable. I think it's because I always found Workism to be very cringe. Now that the workplace has a good amount of fascism mixed in, adherents to Workism realize their free trial is over. The price to pay is their soul.
I really enjoyed reading this article. Thank you for sharing.
Tech corporations co-opted open source technologies and liberalism by employing a bunch of wokies to act as social interfaces. Feminism has been doing the same thing to tech and media that Mitt Romney and private equity firms have been doing to brick and mortar businesses for the last 25 years.
[dead]
[dead]
People who argue against AI are the same people arguing against the car because of horses... This is going to open a whole field of jobs for... ... ...... someone... but let's not go into those details...
Remember that this is going to supercharge economy, sure, in the beginning it'll not be obvious, but then you are going to see how it'll enable people to stop working, just like trickle down economy has redistribut....ed...
Ok maybe that's a bad example, sure it's going to take a lot of people out of business, and yes there will be a lot of pain for a "small" part of society, but in general it will be pure gain as a whole... it's not like all that people being laid off means something like stop paying house mortgages, and then a lot of evictions and suddenly a lot of houses going of market... ... I mean even then that's not like it's going to cause all the house market to go down right?
Ok maybe a bit... but don't worry if you are near underwater with your loan someone will buy all those houses to keep your loans on check... it's not like it's going to be some private investors with all the money that will go to the top 1% and take them out of the market and make impossible for the rest of us to buy something...
I mean, my point is don't be negative, stop fighting progress, if more people can buy super yatches there will be more openings for building them!