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Posted by RickJWagner 19 hours ago

What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers(www.noemamag.com)
572 points | 659 commentspage 6
namuol 9 hours ago|
With or without AI, if I had to talk about EBITDAs for my job, I too would have to take up knitting to feel like I’m doing something real. I’m sure Charlie Munger would agree.
bonoboTP 9 hours ago||
Things are going to change once again. It's been a long time ago since things really changed. In the 70s, probably. And before that maybe in the 1920s. It will be a generational change. Life went from quaint 19th century stuff to airplanes and medicine and plate tectonics and knowledge of galaxies and washing machines and the contraceptive pill and antibiotics in one or two generations. Then there was a bit of breathing room and things are picking up once again. Life is never constant. It is something you prepare for and deal with. For reference, people in Europe over the last hundred years lived through extreme ups and downs. Cities flattened to the ground. Entire families exterminated. Properties expropriated. All streets renamed multiple times. Entire ideologies swapped out multiple times. The US has enjoyed relative constancy. But now the entire world will change once more. It's not the first time. But history is back. Whether you prepare or put your head in the sand.
raiyanr 3 hours ago||
I dont think it will happen
1vuio0pswjnm7 12 hours ago||
Original HN title: "Why Is Everyone in Tech So Sad?"
eddyzh 11 hours ago||
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.
mariopt 18 hours ago||
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

pixl97 18 hours ago|
>So yeah, AI lunatics are ruining tech

Eh, this is just the latest rendition. Before that we were still complaining about tech bros ruining tech.

With all this said, the demand for ever increasing profits squeezing everything that exists till it bleeds out will eventually ruin anything so even without AI tech would have reached that point.

tehnub 11 hours ago||
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.
Eridrus 10 hours ago|
I am a fundamental believer that technological efficiency is the reason life is better now than it was hundreds of years ago, and will be the reason that life in hundreds of years is better than it is now.

There may be disruption to me as a producer, but I think the results for people as consumers will be great.

There will be change, there is already change in our careers here, but I do not fear the need to change and do something different.

On net for humanity, I am certain the change will be positive even if some people including myself will experience disruption.

ieie3366 18 hours ago||
Because they don’t exercise, have a terrible diet, lack of socialization, and no family to speak of
swasheck 18 hours ago||
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

the theory is not without flaws but it seems relevant to the topic and conversation

win311fwg 18 hours ago|
The glaring flaw in the theory is that it hypothesizes that jobs are pointless, but in fact they do have a point: Companionship. There are always exceptions, but overwhelmingly those with resources don't like being alone and without social standing and so they use their resources to buy friends, so to speak.
okwhateverdude 15 hours ago|||
A company I used to work at has a CEO/Founder just like that. He's a sad sack of shit. Got up on stage at the company christmas party drunk to sing karaoke and noticed not enough people were paying attention to him, so he "joked" about firing people. Same dude some years later would bribe employees to work over the christmas holidays with him and was bragging about it on LinkedIn. He's rich. Could do any number of things. But its obvious he's got no friends and clings to the company as his identity; likely having been self-sabotaging the IPO that was always right around the corner he was working on.
pseudalopex 12 hours ago|||
Graeber's test of a bullshit job was it could be eliminated without harm to society. Jobs to make people above feel important was 1 type he identified.
win311fwg 1 hour ago||
We're talking about the link. It refers to pointless work.

- "over half of societal work is pointless"

- "workers are required to pretend their role is not as pointless or harmful as they know it to be"

Companionship isn't pointless. Nobody in a companionship role is pretending that they are at work for any other reason unless they are so out to lunch as to not notice what the job is. And if one is that far out to lunch, why would they see their job as being pointless rather than believing it useful in some other way?

austin-cheney 10 hours ago|
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.

aetherspawn 8 hours ago|
I want to open with: I have 20 years exp as a hacker and deep tech software engineer. LLVM and such.

I shared your opinion until just last week, when I started using Fable on Autocode and passing it huge requirement specs I had written for desktop apps.

$500 in -> 5 days -> an app that would take me a year to write, and the code quality was fine. I just left it running in /loop… I did nothing.

Now I, unfortunately, believe the propaganda, and I too am worried.

Can the economy support the burn rate of AI companies though? My mission now is to create all the apps and products that are stuck in my head while I still can, before Fable is inaccessible due to bankruptcy or they hike the price or some other thing.

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