What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers • Hacker News Board

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

#781

Post by mancerayder » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 3:10 PM UTC

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #162

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 and my cohorts are forced back in the office four days a week.

It's a miserable grind. Routine includes alarm, after a poor night of sleep, getting ready, commuting in, loud, bright offices where while you enjoy the convivial nature of joking and commiserating with colleagues, it's so distracting and noisy and visually distracting that you can't be productive technically.

Next you go home at 6, 630, sleepy, go to the gym or do your shopping, home, sleep, rinse repeat.

Suddenly six months has gone by. Then a year.

I cannot sympathize with the work from home complainers. You folks are like people who came across a lot of money, retired early and are depressed due to boredom.

If WFH is misery, is it possible it's the town you live in that's causing the misery?

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

#782

Post by rr808 » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 3:10 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #748

rr808 wrote: post #734

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think 15 years of asset boom has made enormous fortunes not just for billionaires but for regular middle class folks and especially anything tech or finance related. When your investments make much more than your wages, its hard to care about your career but this is the norm now for lots of people around me.

This is inevitable in any system where the old want to maintain purchasing power over the young and the proportions of old are increasing relative to the young.

I'd say its more like about time we had a correction to make people realize markets dont always go up, money doesn't come easily and we all have to get back to working.

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

#783

Post by socketcluster » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 3:12 PM UTC

I lost faith in my career long before AI.

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

#784

Post by whstl » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 3:14 PM UTC

zulban wrote: post #765

Havoc wrote: post #444

I'm not even a programmer (by profession, though hobby) and I must say I find the gleefulness in the article off-putting. That said I do think it is useful from a societal perspective that programmers are both doing this and getting hit. I'm not going to celebrate someone's job being threatened but in this particular case I think that symmetry is a major societal win for surfacing the question as to how are we collec…

> See translator jobs getting wiped out. Nobody even blinked an eye, it didn't spark any discussion, no deep thoughts were had. Whenever someone writes something like this "nobody talks about it, nobody cared" I always think that just tells you more about the media sources and community of the author (you) than anything else. Of course people talked about it. They are still talking about it. Of course they cared. The…

I think translators will predict what will happen with developers.

So far, what I see:

I have a few friends making a proper living translating AAA games from when I worked in the area. So far there's been a lot of talking but AI hasn't been able to replace them. Whether it's "yet" or not, I won't speculate.

I also know a few people doing freelance translation online, mainly through marketplaces. Those were mainly done in bulk, for websites/apps they never heard about, probably the websites/apps I worked for.

The second group is getting very very few jobs after AI.

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

#785

Post by swat535 » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 3:15 PM UTC

lelanthran wrote: post #578

pj_mukh wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the headline is about tech workers but the article is about Knowledge workers. I know a class of tech workers absolutely fired up about the new Industrial Revolution, they're just not on this forum or featured in lengthy navel-gazing articles like this one.

> I know a class of tech workers absolutely fired up about the new Industrial Revolution, That's because they're thinking that they're still going to get paid $200k/y for typing in "Duh, Claude, make me an app, here the specs from the client, doh!" They aren't seeing that there is very little value to add when all they are, is an interface to a magic software-making machine.

> That's because they're thinking that they're still going to get paid $200k/y for typing in "Duh, Claude, make me an app, here the specs from the client, doh!"

If software genuinely becomes a solved problem, everyone is going to working in AI labs (or its verticals).

If AI is also going to maintain itself, then there is no need for AI labs either, at which point we've reached singularity and no one is safe.

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

#786

Post by estearum » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 3:16 PM UTC

bushbaba wrote: post #779

estearum wrote: post #729

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And then what?

Suddenly everyone gets paid for doing nothing of added value?

We ban AI and similar ultra-high leverage technologies?

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

#787

Post by jongjong » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 3:19 PM UTC

I think the part that's hard to absorb is that software engineering was a brutal path. You had to restructure your entire identity, ego, personality, social relationships around that career choice. People didn't expect their career to last forever, but they thought it was a ticket out to gain autonomy.

Back in 2010-ish, many developers thought that, in the future, they'd all be running their own systems and servicing their own customers and making a good living like that (there would be enough customers for every dev). They didn't expect that the entire industry would be monopolized by a tiny number of companies, everyone using the exact same product, no alternatives or competition, and that the value of our labor would be artificially suppressed down to $0... This happened long before AI. AI is just the latest assault.

It's impossible for a solo developer to find their own customers nowadays. You could literally offer the same product or a better product for cheaper, but you won't be able to find a single customer because it's too centralized. The trust barriers are massive. Nobody has money to try anything except large corporations and they never try any product based on what it offers; it's all business networking.

It's like; the same conditioning which caused business people to pretend that Linux didn't exist for the first few decades has now spread to all non-VC-funded software.

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

#788

Post by mancerayder » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 3:26 PM UTC

Any finance tech workers? I spoke to someone from a Mag 7 recently, and he said, isn't it true that you guys are treated like second class citizens?

Yes, it's true. It's been true for a long time.

It's a bifurcated world where the people that made it big in finance /tech ended up climbing the corporate hierarchy. Even a "distinguished engineer" in an investment bank is a politically savvy project manager who goes home after work to code.

How people have lives outside of work, when work is meetings, is a mystery to me.

Are the rest of you joining the misery since 2023? We've been in this boat for a decade already.

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

#789

Post by a2ff6eeb0 » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 3:30 PM UTC

xlii wrote: post #85

Long long time ago people in tech were in tech because of the tech. Then, at some point, being in tech became a gilded profession and everyone: salesmen, artists, clerks etc. joined in. Not because they wanted to be in tech. They wanted gold. For years it was working, but right now things shifted. You can no longer just do the thing you learned for a job and continue doing so, because landscape shifted. So they're mi…

That seems backwards. I'm here for the money, and AI has turned the work into largely unskilled labor. I don't care if all I do is copy and paste between tickets, logs, and the prompt (and, that is really all I do). I'm expecting the gravy train to end, but right now things only suck if you care about doing good work.

Management is quite happy with the resulting output, and I'm fine with matching their energy. I can do things that I care about on my own time.

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

#790

Post by LogicFailsMe » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 3:32 PM UTC

tonyhart7 wrote: post #600

lelanthran wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know a class of tech workers absolutely fired up about the new Industrial Revolution, That's because they're thinking that they're still going to get paid $200k/y for typing in "Duh, Claude, make me an app, here the specs from the client, doh!" They aren't seeing that there is very little value to add when all they are, is an interface to a magic software-making machine.

You will get downvoted for saying the truth replacement would not happen overnight but they would decrease the amount of jobs required back then we need a team of 4 - 10 engineer for an project/app, now maybe we need 2-3 max

And yet the most unproductive work at FAANNG arises from huge bureaucratic turfy fiefdoms whose leadership games the productivity metrics to look busy. Broadly, workfare for ass kissers. And heaven forbid you work on anything that remotely resembles their dominions.

Counterpoint: reducing most of these metastatic organizations to 2-pizza level teams with AI would be positive across the board.

Countercounterpoint: But since the overlords of these fiefdoms are not stupid, just malevolent, they'll use AI to tighten their grip and terrorize anyone who dare oppose them. Basically, organizational Ponzi.