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.

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)

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.”

“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.

Speak for yourself.

Bravo

Already happened, next

'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.

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.