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

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

#841

Post by wongarsu »

estearum wrote: post #730
Animats wrote: post #222

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…

If printing technology took centuries to eliminate the trade of printers, by the same logic computers took about 80 years to eliminate a large chunk of knowledge workers (and that's just counting until today, we might still be a couple years off)

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

#843

Post by adrianN »

estearum wrote: post #787
bushbaba wrote: post #780

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Well somebody is still making things and presumably selling them. So you could tax them and redistribute the money

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

#844

Post by dec0dedab0de »

Dusseldorf wrote: post #351
cheschire wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think the reason people get angry about it is that it feels like an asymmetric ask. It feels a bit like saying "everyone needs to come I to the office because I like there to be people in the office, regardless of whether that's what they want." (not saying that's what you're saying here, just trying to shine some light on how it may be perceived)

Oh I get it, I was an early adopter and advocate for working from home. Hell, it was my job to write code to help tens of thousands of people work from home when the pandemic started. I gladly did it, assuming they would all enjoy it as much as I did at the time. But I was only 6 years into it at that point, it was barely a walk in the park.

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

#845

Post by dec0dedab0de »

ang_cire wrote: post #281
cheschire wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 problem isn't that WFO-preferenced people don't exist, it's that it aligns with the narratives of the extroverted management (who approve their own PTO) that it's better, and people who aren't extroverts dread being forced back. No one who prefers WFH is actually against people who prefer offices being allowed to go there, they're opposed to people publicly claiming they prefer that- unqualified- because they see…

I prefer WFO. I just think it has hurt me physically and mentally over the last 12 years.

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

#846

Post by wongarsu »

estearum wrote: post #787
bushbaba wrote: post #780

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If for that many people there truly is no way left to provide some economic value (that is rewarded enough to pay for shelter, bread and Netflix), that might mean the end of capitalism. Even living in a slum is not free

I'm not sure what would replace it. A welfare state doesn't work if the state doesn't have the money. State-run economies don't have the best track record either

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

#847

Post by purplemoonx »

bushbaba wrote: post #780
estearum wrote: post #730

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

164 million people employed in 2025 divided by 320 million people means 49% were not employed.

Raw figures.

The actual “unemployment” figure you hear is not raw figures, since you must exclude the 75 million children and elderly.

But still, 33% in that case.

The official figure you see excludes far more people from the counting to make it seem like only a tiny fraction of people are unemployed. They’ll say 4% or something. But in fact, about half of all people are not employed in the US.

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

#848

Post by dec0dedab0de »

titanomachy wrote: post #410
cheschire wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I understand both types of people, I think. Some of my friends are parents living outside of tech hubs whose lifestyle would be impossible without remote work, so they understandably felt attacked. But the discourse around this was unhinged. Some remote advocates were convinced that RTO was either a C-suite power trip, or a move to stop commercial real estate from imploding.

This is the kind of thinking that makes hn the best place on the internet. It is a shame that it is not the most upvoted.

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

#849

Post by InfinityByTen »

I went through the whole article, agreeing to most of it and I was baffled by how skeptical people were in the comments here, with remarks of "follow the money". I didn't read all of it in one shot, but in breaks over the course of 2 days and when I finally got to the last paragraph I understood what people in the comments were on about.

I grew up in a culture where hustle and work was the way out of a terrible life. I've spent several years unlearning that work is not everything while living in Europe. But then, work is not everything and not all that important because some AI agents can do all* of it...

Nice try, but work is still a lot of what I derive meaning from and taking meaning from a person might not have a positive outcome: for the person and for the society.

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