Most of the people in tech I know that have interpersonal relationships and go out and look at a tree every once in a while are not often sad.
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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
#52[dead]
Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers
#53You used your most prized mental faculties to build software: logical intelligence, creativity, etc to make someone else rich
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Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers
#54Saw a meme on mastodon the other day contrasting people of the '90s going online to escape from offline reality, and people of the '20s going offline to escape from online reality. There's something to that.
I think a big part of it is just how incredibly toxic the web has become. If you spend any time online, as most tech workers do, you have exceptional resiliency if you're able to stay sane and level headed.
Going online it's like everyone is really angry and tired and sad all the time, and it's getting worse every year. This really took a nosedive during the pandemic, but looking back this had been going on for several years before. Every election cycle makes things worse too.
It's just been spiraling in a very dark direction for a long time. You have these blackpill depression cirklejerks everywhere. Astroturfing is getting worse every year. Like what Bannon did with gamer gate is an amateurish precursor to what everyone with is doing everywhere now. With AI you can even run these campaigns with a very small budget.
All the news is just outrage porn and non-stop predictions of impending doom. Used to be more tabloid territory but now I don't know if anywhere is spared. A lot of the focus now is on AI, but when it isn't the world is burning in some other fashion. Reading the news, we've been in a permanent state of crisis for years now.
This information diet just isn't good for your mental health. It isn't just tech workers, but they're probably more exposed than most.
Candide's closing remarks spring to mind. Tend your garden.
Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers
#55Because we see what's coming? Because we watched our careers go from being in service of an industry of tinkerers and designers, to being in service of the worst people attempting to maximize wealth extraction no matter the human cost? Because Snow Crash wasn't supposed to be the goal? Because our daily complicity in what's happening is also a daily reminder that we're not brave enough to be a Mangione? Take your pic…
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Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers
#56Side note: a half an hour call on a commute train (or in public spaces) is considered extremely rude in many parts of the world.
From my experience, (outside of the quiet car), "extremely rude" - only South Korea and Japan?
Having lived in both Australia and Japan and visited SK, for me it seems like it’s rude in all those places but only in some places do almost all the people care what strangers think enough to modify their behaviour. Which is not as judgmental a statement as it sounds like, because that care, or some might call it pressure to conform, has upsides and downsides.
Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers
#57https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs the theory is not without flaws but it seems relevant to the topic and conversation
The glaring flaw in the theory is that it hypothesizes that jobs are pointless, but in fact they do have a point: Companionship. There are always exceptions, but overwhelmingly those with resources don't like being alone and without social standing and so they use their resources to buy friends, so to speak.
Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers
#58You used your most prized mental faculties to build software: logical intelligence, creativity, etc to make someone else rich
> logical intelligence
it's this that AI is stripping. the work is becoming systems thinking. not bad per se, but removing the small scale puzzle aspect of the job
Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers
#59"It's good to be in something from the ground floor. I came too late for that and I know. But lately, I'm getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over."
I feel like this can be applied to a lot of things, but this is pretty much how I've felt working in tech for the last 2ish years.
Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers
#60Because we see what's coming? Because we watched our careers go from being in service of an industry of tinkerers and designers, to being in service of the worst people attempting to maximize wealth extraction no matter the human cost? Because Snow Crash wasn't supposed to be the goal? Because our daily complicity in what's happening is also a daily reminder that we're not brave enough to be a Mangione? Take your pic…
In some cases being told "just treat it like you are a manager", when we've always done our level best to avoid anything vaguely like management because we like doing things particularly the nitty gritty details.