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Jobs and Software Is Fucked

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Re: Jobs and Software Is Fucked

#161
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a car guy, and a computer guy. I wanted a nice car, so instead of racking up mega debt on a $70,000 mustang I bought an old classic car and learned everything. After 5 years I fully restored it on the cheap (less than $10k) and now I've pivoted my career to that.

A long-ago colleague got a junk classic car and took night classes at the local community college to learn how to fix/restore everything. He finished the degree and quit the tech job. Anyone currently with a tech job can pay for it out of pocket and barely notice. If it’s something someone thinks they may want to do, they should just do it. Nobody says you have to switch jobs at the end.

100%

And tools have never been cheaper. The knock off chinese clones are used by professionals too. I have tons of automotive friends and they all vary in their level of access to things. I have friends who built their cars on the public road infront of their house, and some friends who took a year long college course.

We all ended up in the same place.

Re: Jobs and Software Is Fucked

#162
If you don't have a full time job for a year, why don't you start a software business on your own? It's hard to succeed, but, successful or now, you will have something to show people and something that you are passionate to talk about. It will give you a new way to connect to people, and quite likely will help you to get hired. And who knows, maybe you will succeed.

Re: Jobs and Software Is Fucked

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to +1 the sentiment here; AI in the gaming industry is absolutely a culture war front. Especially in the indie space, you will lose advertising deals with many sponsors & influencers, for example, if you appear to endorse AI. Probably won't be that way forever, but it's a hotbed right now.

Meanwhile, Asian studios are much more open to experimenting with AI workflows, and will eventually build the next generation of Niantics and AppLovins if this neo-ludditism continues. Heck, 50% of all Japanese game studios [0] along with all of China's largest studios [1] now use AI within their development pipeline - often with explicit state backing. You may not like Blizzard or Ubisoft but Tencent, Sony, miHoYo,…

I dunno, maybe OpenAI and Anthromorphic should learn from Chinese companies how to not act in ridiculously off-putting ways?

Maybe Chines sell tools for artists pitching them as useful rather then "haha this will make you obsolete you looser look at slop I made" middle finger pitch?

Re: Jobs and Software Is Fucked

#164

I am currently quitting a company of 10 years of employment. And I keep hearing how everything's shit. Btw. I'm located in Tokyo where it isn't as bad, apparently, but... Let's see. My plan: - Have my own company and start looking for customers. (Rust consulting) - Keep looking for job opportunities, but don't succumb for shit jobs. It might be that I'm too hopeful, but you can't know unless you try. Anyway, I may jo…

Don't leave unless you have something lined up lol

That might be a truism that's generally applicable, but some people have enough of a safety net to last them several years while building a business. We don't know OP's circumstances.

Re: Jobs and Software Is Fucked

#165
post #17

It's not like the job market was that much better before AI infested every single corner of the market, but it supercharged all of the worst aspects of everything. I've seen people supposedly smarter than I advocate for just giving in, conceding to AI coding as it's the future. But doing so means tossing out my friends who make art or the people who work their asses off to properly test and review code or the writers…

This may seem all well and good, but let's consider some basic logical mileposts and outcomes:

There will continue to be a glut of available software engineers and techies. Some will, maybe, transition to an AI field; some will get disgusted; some just won't be able to get work.

Jobs of some sort in tech might possibly be available, but wages for the majority of them will go further and further down until they become roughly equivalent to the average minimum wage, if they are not outsourced entirely. Many people will attempt to transition to a non-tech field if the number of available jobs and the wages are not commensurate (especially considering the cost of education). The most desirable of those jobs will also have an upper limit of positions available, and that is of course not paying attention to how many of those will be offloaded onto automation and/or AI. Little things wind up mattering (like the lowering crime rate in California towns suddenly putting auto and window glass repairers out of business) and people who leave tech for other jobs will be fighting for the same dwindling work, with people who are often less difficult to find or work with. Rent won't really go down, and the price of other things will likely continue to rise or stagnate (like many tech salaries; a small percentage of salaries went way up, and the majority went down or are stagnant also). Not saying AI will push everyone out of every field, but it feels like people are thinking in too little of a macro sense.

As AI 'knowledge' is populated by more and more countries with different languages and priorities, English- and some other language speakers will be squeezed out. Probably moreso if and when brain-machine interfaces become de rigeur. Countries with populations of a billion and large families will simply cancel out some people in places like America because social networks will merely favour different people. If my name sounds like yours ethnically, I am possibly far more likely to favour you in a queue. Especially if I am from the same country. This works against people all the time now in the opposite direction. Yes, AI models do use data like this, just as people do.

It is not just tech, of course, and that is the kicker. Tech writing, sure, but also movie and fiction writing, fields dealing large data models, accounting and pharmaceutical research will be largely automated and researched with AI models. Will we need forensic accounting once a model exists?

To the commenters who wrote about how, yes, sure, there will need to be people overseeing things, how do you propose to police that when the lower level AIs skills are so far beyond even the current most senior intermediate or advanced/senior people, and they ramp up so fast, but lack any error correcting? Maybe the AI won't want you involved. Maybe you cannot tell if it chose a good solution or not.

Many... well, no, most good (not even talking godly) tech people only get good by experience, hard work, repetition and the ability to see patterns in their debugging, crashes, program execution, the way their data farms 'feel' (how else do I put this? if you know it feels not right, and sure enough something breaks), and lord knows, even human-computer interaction.

At some point, looking for work is something AIs will discourage us from doing, if they don't already, just for feeling like maybe we won't choose the same solution (would we know?).

Not paranoia. Mere logic. We are attempting to create models but we lack the solutions ourselves. Are we not, like, pricing ourselves out of our own careers (and planet?)?

It is more than hubris.

Re: Jobs and Software Is Fucked

#167

> I've seen people supposedly smarter than I advocate for just giving in, conceding to AI coding as it's the future. But doing so means tossing out my friends who make art or the people who work their asses off to properly test and review code or the writers pouring all of their energy into even mundane dialogue. It means throwing out my dignity Conflating things in this inflammatory way is a big mistake. Using a tec…

>Using a technology employers want you to use is not betraying your friends.

If it means helping the employers erase their jobs and their dreams for a career in the industry, then it is.

Re: Jobs and Software Is Fucked

#168

I am currently quitting a company of 10 years of employment. And I keep hearing how everything's shit. Btw. I'm located in Tokyo where it isn't as bad, apparently, but... Let's see. My plan: - Have my own company and start looking for customers. (Rust consulting) - Keep looking for job opportunities, but don't succumb for shit jobs. It might be that I'm too hopeful, but you can't know unless you try. Anyway, I may jo…

why not start looking for customers before quitting?

I suspect the reason is highly personal to their particular situation, but also most likely justified.

Re: Jobs and Software Is Fucked

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author is coming from the games industry. As an arts based industry, AI is EXTREMELY divisive. The author really will lose friends over even so much as touching AI in certain ways, because the artists that built the games industry were already badly abused, and now, they're being squeezed out entirely. For business developers, AI is somewhat less existentially terrifying, as it can be seen to be really empowering…

> Why pay a pixel artist if AI can generate 100's of unique little people pixels in seconds Because someone who knows something about pixels needs to make a judgement. It is rare to see a machine-generated artifact (picture, video, text or code) that's good on the first try. And not always a non-specialist can see the issue. Same thing why we still need human software engineers, even though a machine can generate cod…

>Because someone who knows something about pixels needs to make a judgement. It is rare to see a machine-generated artifact (picture, video, text or code) that's good on the first try.

Not if nobody cares for the end product that finely.

And even if it was true, one person can make the judgement, while automation erasing 5 others that would have worked in both the judgement and the graphics wrok.

Re: Jobs and Software Is Fucked

#170

Two weeks ago, I got 100/100 of a test from a big company for a first screening without using AI. I was pretty confident that I would pass the first round, even hinted few of my friends, but ended up being rejected with an automated mail… The job market is insane at this point and I am not sure what the recruiters are actually looking for. If the candidate uses AI they’re eliminated, if not they’re eliminated. I gues…

Nowadays more than half of job postings are fake. It's either process to show activity or they already have one to hire but need to follow established process.
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