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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

#961

Post by tonyedgecombe »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #803
miyoji wrote: post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Commutes can also be forced meditation, exercise, and exposure to sunlight and fresh air. If you don't naturally prioritize those things, the impact of missing them will sneak up on you.

But they mostly aren't.

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

#962

Post by johnnyanmac »

flaburgan wrote: post #959
johnnyanmac wrote: post #922

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see why AI changed anything. Impacting millions of jobs under the illusion that it can change something, maybe, kind of, one day, is still changing a lot for people. Those who don't understand this haven't been impacted by a layoff (yet).

It for sure is changing a lot in term of revenue etc., my "AI did not change anything" was about people suddenly feeling empty about what they do at work. If they were doing something that was fulfilling them, then the fact that they are now doing it with AI should not change anything regarding their motivation to accomplish that task. Of course if they get fired that has a big impact, but that is unrelated to how th…

>Of course if they get fired that has a big impact, but that is unrelated to how they feel about their job.

I see. I guess in my case it's semi - related. I still have larger goals (goals AI can't really make obsolete that easily), but the past few years did make me feel a bit aimless about how to achieve it. It's no longer just "gain skills in industry, toil at my creation on the side, prepare to transition into being my own boss" anymore. Now the act of getting a job feels impossible and I don't know when (or if) it's going to let up.

Which impacts my overall path because my "on the side" time is now spent job hunting and hustling with gigs to stay on top of bills. I feel stuck in quite a few ways, the rugged pulled from under me. Merit doesn't matter anymore. My experience doesn't feel like it matters. Its all just one big disillusionment.

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

#963

Post by zelphirkalt »

RobinL wrote: post #282
bjt12345 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question though - how are they going with that? In reality, I see a lot of the current unhappiness in the Tech industry is being triggered by their pointy haired bosses wasting millions on their failed AI strategies only to embark on more failing AI strategies.

One example: I've been working for a couple years (not full time) on a high performance FOSS address matcher: https://github.com/moj-analytical-services/uk_address_matche... Until recently LLMs have been really bad at this task. I always knew it was coming, but with GPT 5.6 they've suddenly become good. It's pretty clear to me that it won't be long before most of my work on this is rendered pointless because the LLM…

If your tool is deterministic, I would rather rely on it, than on LLMs for the task. So I don't think your work will have been pointless, when comparing against an LLM classifying things. Also there is value in something that is battle-tested compared to something just generated on the run, and there is value in something already existing and not needing to be generated or developed anew.

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

#964

Post by __rito__ »

pc86 wrote: post #75
lostaccount wrote: post #32

This is basically office space but for the modern era. Peter found happiness in construction work, but when something physical like that is your job… I don’t know. A lot of those guys have back pain, inflexible schedules, working in extreme weather, and the pay isn’t even that good. Is tech so bad? Or is the world of work broken?

> A lot of those guys have back pain, inflexible schedules, working in extreme weather, And a lot of them don't? A lot of people who work on a computer all day also have back pain and inflexible schedules. Hell, I'm sure a lot of knowledge workers in other countries work in places with no air conditioning, for example - not exactly "extreme" but not climate-controlled, either.

Dude...

It's totally, completely, fully different.

Have you ever worked as an electrician/plumber, etc.?

The amount of physical stress, sweat, exposure to bad weather, etc. are orders of magnitude higher than what you get as a tech worker, even in 38°C heat even without an AC.

Your comment reads like it's coming from someone who never ever worked physically even as a volunteer/for fun.

Any non-trivial amount of physical work will tell you that it’s many orders of magnitude tougher than working with computers.

The worst part is you gotta show up and work your ass off even when you have flu, or something like that, or you lose a day's wages.

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

#965

Post by flaburgan »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #962
flaburgan wrote: post #959

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It for sure is changing a lot in term of revenue etc., my "AI did not change anything" was about people suddenly feeling empty about what they do at work. If they were doing something that was fulfilling them, then the fact that they are now doing it with AI should not change anything regarding their motivation to accomplish that task. Of course if they get fired that has a big impact, but that is unrelated to how th…

>Of course if they get fired that has a big impact, but that is unrelated to how they feel about their job. I see. I guess in my case it's semi - related. I still have larger goals (goals AI can't really make obsolete that easily), but the past few years did make me feel a bit aimless about how to achieve it. It's no longer just "gain skills in industry, toil at my creation on the side, prepare to transition into bei…

I understand what you mean. Sorry to hear that. Virtual hug if you'd like one. Maybe that's an opportunity to put in the center of our work what is beneficial for us and society as a whole instead of what is profitable, but yeah before the current system collapses we still have to pay the bills. We can also build an alternate system on the side, but that is easier said than done.

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

#968

Post by smolder »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #887
josh_p wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mention the election cycle and things getting worse. I live in the US and I’ve watched in real time every sad, terrible decision made by the current administration and every sad terrible decision by what’s supposed to be the opposition party. It all makes me want to scream. And then I’m offline and my life carries on because none it has really affected my white privileged middle class tech worker butt. It all fee…

Just gotta stay safe and count your blessings. S178 probably did a good part in driving tech to be the canary in the coalmine of the new "forever layoff" model. That was a political decision that affected a lot of us. even if that wasn't, I'm sure you were hit by higher prices for everything We're all being hit, it just depends on a bit of luck and how financially ready we are to buffer the storm. Most people unfortu…

Can you be more specific about what S178 you're referring to? There were several results.

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

#969

Post by evan_a_a »

Havoc wrote: post #445

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…

Translator jobs aren't really getting wiped out according to the stats (in the US). Growth is still projected at 2% in the next 10 years.

They also have this to say about AI:

>Computer tools, including artificial intelligence (AI), are making the work of translators and localization specialists more efficient. However, many of these jobs cannot be entirely automated because computers cannot yet produce work comparable to what human translators do in most cases.

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/media-and-communication/interpreters...

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

#970

Post by wnolens »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #813
DeluluDon wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to daydream about homelessness until I did it for 6 years. You're surrounded by threats and your limbic system is in overdrive, deindividuation kicks in and takes a year of being rehoused before you're back to being the same person. Those daydreams generally stop after taking a hike or twenty over the weekends.

This is more than a fair response, and I apologize for using the term, because I really daydream about going on an extended backpacking trip with money in the bank, or living in a van and traveling around. Which is significantly different than the normal definition of homelessness.

I did what you dream of. It's fun for 3-6 months. But it's only fun - not an existential cure. That could only be found in friends/loved ones.
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