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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

#321

Post by jselysianeagle »

_doctor_love wrote: post #206

Since it's Friday, I'm going to suggest an activity: this evening, invest 30 minutes in watching "The Brain Center at Whipple" from the old Twilight Zone TV series. This conversation is much older than any of us, starting really with the advent of the Industrial Revolution. My read on some of the current melancholy is that the millenial generation is starting to hit their mid-life crisis. Seeing the inherent meaningl…

> When these are found, very often one class of people is put out of work while another class of people gains employment.

I think what's contributing to the sense of dread is that so far at least, it's not at all clear that AI will be similar to past iterations of such "creative destruction". I hope to be wrong but I fear the jobs it does end up creating, if any, will be far lower paid and soul-sucking, and it will likely destroy many more jobs than it creates.

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

#322

Post by pj_mukh »

Muromec wrote: post #300
pj_mukh wrote: post #245

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.

(not a native speaker) fired up as in "optimistic and enthusiastic about the new messiah" or as in "Butlearian jihadi, all AI is haram" way?

>>"optimistic and enthusiastic about the new messiah"

I mean that's you agreeing with Elon Musk, I disagree, I think AI is just normal technology [1], there's a lot of us. Like tech revolutions before, it'll have huge effects on productivity alleviating major scarcities. That's boring to the algorithm, not enough conflict, but it's exciting to a lot of tech workers.

No messiah's and no Jihads, just excited about going to work to make sure we can do more with less tomorrow than we can do today.

[1]: https://knightcolumbia.org/content/ai-as-normal-technology

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

#323

Post by chasd00 »

Tarq0n wrote: post #276
RealityVoid wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sense there is this air around of "demand our jobs keep being relevant" - I personally feel this kind of thing holds the world backwards if it works. I think if our jobs were to become obsolete, embracing it and re-orienting oneself is the one thing that is personally effective and is morally right. But what do I know, I'm just some doofus on the internet. The irony is not lost on me on all those years where people…

That's a fine philosophy on a personal level, but if the labor market is shocked for entire sectors there's not enough slack in the system for all of those people to adapt at once. That's how you end up with lost generations.

i go back to what happened to Journalism when the Internet and especially "web2.0" took off. It was hard on the industry but I don't think we have lost generations of journalists. The software biz has always expected everyone else to adapt to technological shifts at a rapid pace. I'm a dev (more of a lead/mgr these days) so my neck is on the line too but even i have to chuckle at the irony.

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

#324

Post by chasing »

“Tech” is one of the most rapidly-changing disciplines historically. It was very different in 2016. In 2006. In 1996. In 1986. It will be very different in 2036. If this is your career, part of your job is being aware of those changes and being the person who can help others create value from whatever new technologies come around. I’ve always found these changes exciting and fun, but I’ve also been aware my entire career that whatever I’m doing be year could be out-of-date and not of value the next. Tech is exciting. Trepidation is a part of excitement.

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

#325

Post by gustavus »

exogenousdata wrote: post #316
elmer2 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If there’s a robust public healthcare and UBI type system in place to pad the fall, people will bounce back and adapt when industries break down." This would be great, in theory. The reality is that people would live on it and never work, have kids, and the same thing would happen with a new generation. As it expands, you run out of tax payers and the system collapses. A 'robust' healthcare system that the governmen…

“This would be great, in theory. The reality is that people would live on it and never work, have kids, and the same thing would happen with a new generation. As it expands, you run out of tax payers and the system collapses.” Are there historical or contemporary examples of this? I googled but couldn’t find any specifics. The reason I ask is that I in the US, employer-provided health insurance is a large expense for…

I mean we've got multiple generational families that have been living on council estates all their lives and raising the next generation to do the same at the same time the NHS is collapsing all around, so there's that example.

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

#326

Post by Der_Einzige »

arjie wrote: post #288
Der_Einzige wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are socially punished for our extremely cushy jobs SWE has negative social value. Saying you’re a SWE or god forbid anything in AI in a dating/courtship context is basically suicide. We are paid so well as compensation for debasing ourselves socially. A lot of normies intuitively understand the concepts in that book even without reading it and either see you as evil or a grifter, maybe both, when you say you work…

This hasn’t been true for me. Not only are the majority of software engineers I know married but also looking at the marriage rates in high-income in the Bay Area, it’s quite high, so I don’t think it’s specific to my group. There are angry people on the Internet but real life has rarely reflected them.

Can't believe people here try to gaslight me on this topic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtACIFEddhM

"If you're not taken, gay, or furry, the consensus is that dating in SF sucks..."

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

#327

Post by Terr_ »

stego-tech wrote: post #94
ang_cire wrote: post #21

Because 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…

I mean, yeah. I got into IT because I loved working with technology, building communities and game servers and chatrooms and computers and the like. I got lucky that someone found me, my interest in these things, and showed me how it could be a career. Nowadays though, so much of my time isn’t spent building so much as debunking the latest grift, scam, or lie. It’s spent unfucking arbitrary vendor changes that didn’t…

> The technology of today does not enable, or empower

To say much the same things stuff a slightly different framing:

The promise of "personal computers", and then the internet, making your own applications, etc. was that they would democratize and spread certain capabilities so that everyone could have their tool which accomplished their goals to make their life better. One might even call it owning your own "means of [digital] production", although that comes with some political baggage.

The depressing parts come as that autonomy is violated, as your computer becomes not your computer, but something rented to you by a remote authoritarian who demands it executes a process that improves their lives rather than yours.

In other words, I see it less as connecting groups of people than giving individuals agency--although that agency might be to create (and leave) groups.

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

#329

Post by ang_cire »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #246
ang_cire wrote: post #21

Because 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…

>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? And this is different than other industries how? Everything from electricity to the railroad to trucking to finance to environmentalism has had this arc from wild west to establishment.

I agree about what happened, but I think the timescale is different.

Railroads were the tools of robber-barons even in the 1800s. Electricity was captured by the major electric companies before most millennials were born. Finance was a stodgy-suit-wearing-white-guy's game when my dad got into it in the 1970s.

I knew that's what "finance jobs" meant back when I was a kid building fan pages on GeoCities. But GeoCities and Limewire and Napster and Gaia Online never led me to think that's were I'd end up if I worked in tech.

If our boomer parents had warned us about crapitalism as kids, we might have seen it coming before we had already sunk decades into it as an interest and career path.

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

#330

Post by tuesdaynight »

cheschire wrote: post #219
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 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…

It is because RTO people would force WFH people to spend time (hours, in some case) commuting, spend money on lunch, and making the same salary. You are not wrong for that, but you can understand the reaction, at least, because you hated being forced to WFH during COVID
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