Live data from Hacker News

What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

noemamag.com

771–780 of 1001 posts

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#771
> In their vision for the future, work goes from a messy experience of learning and exploring to something more akin to assembly-line production.

I would argue this, the 'messy place' is where a huge amount of real innovation happens in knowledge working. I see this with my team, only a handful of them can operate effectively in this space ( I refer it to as they grey area) but they are the ones that end up taking bigger bolder bets which payoff more often than not.

It's also the space where you let your mind wander and discover associations between topics that you didn't first realize, it's the place where you ask questions a lot rather than relentlessly focus on solutions, KPIs, OKRs and all that other process driven BS.

This is the space AI can't operate as effectively as those chosen few in my team...but it's getting damn close.

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#772

This dropped off the front page in the time I read it, I assume because of the controversial gate that favors upvotes to comments (which I am making worse by replying to others). It is a shame, because this really resonated with me. I've been working in tech for over 20 years now in various roles, and this is the least I have cared about it. I used to want to get better, and was constantly excited about learning new…

I did the remote thing before Covid and rejected it for many of the same reasons. Then Covid happened and so many people got to experience it and loved it. But I still hated it while I was forced to. Every time I told anyone that I personally didn’t like working from home, and was excited about the return to office that would inevitably come, I got SHOUTED at. Absolutely flayed for not being 110% in support of this t…

You probably get/got reactions to that because it apparently mirrors the corporate line that precedes mandated RTO, whether or not there is a frog-boiling hybrid prelude.

Most people prefer remote, but in-office requires bodies to provide interaction for those who like it.

While yes, I do think offices are largely a waste of space and resources, I really do not mind much if you like it and want to do it, as long as you leave me out of it. As soon as the office comes with a demand for me to be there too, even some of the time, then I'll shout.

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#773
post #706

I have this nagging feeling that the depression, anxiety and pessimism is as-of-late coming from people from all the companies that risked it by adopting token maxing and AI usage enforcement. Its not representative of the whole industry though. There are still many places where engineers or knowledge workers are respected and left to lead (or not) AI adoption.

> There are still many places where engineers or knowledge workers are respected and left to lead (or not) AI adoption. Please start naming names

N = 1. The company I’m working for, (a hundred employees, EU), we basically build projects on data science, ML, optimization, operational research and such for many industries (transportation, manufacturing, finance, engineering, etc). We are basically the first to know about the latest advances in AI and we have internal optional workshops on LLM assisted development. And yet nobody is pressured to use these tools. At most we are incentivized to at least try these tools.

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#774

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oligopolies are unlikely in a free market because as soon as you do anything interesting a million other people will copy what you are doing wholesale and you will have no advantage to see you rise up to form an oligopoly. We find oligopolies in our regulated markets because regulation, such as copyright, patents, tariffs, etc., legally hinder that competition from emerging. However, even if we accept oligopolies as…

Taking aside the fact that free markets are a myth, all we have to do is look at our current society and you'll see how utopic this view is. In the real world, oligopolies are the rule not the exception.

Our current society is shaped by its regulation and the regulation is shaped by our current society. Regulated markets and our society are one and the same. To separate some kind of imagined free market out of that while still clinging to the same society doesn't make sense. They are fundamentally inseparable.

In the real world, the markets are regulated. We are talking about where there is a free market. Was your comment posted just to let us know that you don't give things much thought?

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#776

This dropped off the front page in the time I read it, I assume because of the controversial gate that favors upvotes to comments (which I am making worse by replying to others). It is a shame, because this really resonated with me. I've been working in tech for over 20 years now in various roles, and this is the least I have cared about it. I used to want to get better, and was constantly excited about learning new…

I did the remote thing before Covid and rejected it for many of the same reasons. Then Covid happened and so many people got to experience it and loved it. But I still hated it while I was forced to. Every time I told anyone that I personally didn’t like working from home, and was excited about the return to office that would inevitably come, I got SHOUTED at. Absolutely flayed for not being 110% in support of this t…

the part that you conveniently didn't say: nobody wanting to work from home is forcing you to work from home, but because you want to be in office, you force everyone into the office.

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#777
post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst of all is that people will still argue that, in this day and age, labour has not been completely devalued and that you are wealthier than your grandfather. That kind of story was not uncommon at all in the past, today you would have to be a literal multi-millionaire to have that lifestyle.

If you're ok with 1963 living standards, you can in fact have the grandfather's same lifestyle today at a very reasonable cost.

Where can I get a house, 3 apartments, a car, and money for raising 5 children at a very reasonable cost?

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#778

This dropped off the front page in the time I read it, I assume because of the controversial gate that favors upvotes to comments (which I am making worse by replying to others). It is a shame, because this really resonated with me. I've been working in tech for over 20 years now in various roles, and this is the least I have cared about it. I used to want to get better, and was constantly excited about learning new…

I did the remote thing before Covid and rejected it for many of the same reasons. Then Covid happened and so many people got to experience it and loved it. But I still hated it while I was forced to. Every time I told anyone that I personally didn’t like working from home, and was excited about the return to office that would inevitably come, I got SHOUTED at. Absolutely flayed for not being 110% in support of this t…

Commutes are uncompensated labor, so you're advocating for a pay decrease for both yourself and your coworkers.

Pay me for my commute and I'll gladly work from wherever you like, just recognize that I would get more done if you weren't paying me to travel to and from work. If you don't pay me for the time I spend commuting, you aren't interested in paying the total cost of employing me and you can kindly go fuck off.

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#779

Addressing the question in the title, "What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers", look at what happened to printers. That was a good skilled trade for centuries. Then it just went away. Phototypesetting took the high volume end. Desktop publishing took the low end. Computer-controlled presses took press operators. And then the newspaper business died. I've heard homeless former printers…

Surprised no one has made the extremely obvious observation that it took literal centuries for printing technology to eliminate the trade of printers, which could not have possibly have employed more than 0.01% of people at its peak. Compared to the potential obsolescence of 40% to 60% of the US workforce over the course of 10 - 20 years? You can argue about whether the obsolescence is real or not, but if it is , the…

I doubt unemployment can even raise to 40% before the government and billionaire class is overthrown.

The French Revolution was not an isolated event

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#780

Addressing the question in the title, "What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers", look at what happened to printers. That was a good skilled trade for centuries. Then it just went away. Phototypesetting took the high volume end. Desktop publishing took the low end. Computer-controlled presses took press operators. And then the newspaper business died. I've heard homeless former printers…

We remind people that Noema Magazine is owned by Berggruen Institute: https://berggruen.org/ Which is an AI booster: https://berggruen.org/projects/ai-visionaries You cannot read these articles posing as human interest without following the money.

Nicholas Berggruen is pretty well known in Venice, Italy, where he bought 2-3 important buildings to host his foundations and art galleries.
Post reply on HN