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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 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

#323

Post by ang_cire »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #243
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

#324

Post by tuesdaynight »

cheschire wrote: post #218
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

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

#325

Post by neetle »

epistasis wrote: post #305
follow_the_mone wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We remind people that Noema Magazine is owned by Berggruen Institute: https://berggruen.org/ Which is an AI booster: https://berggruen.org/projects/ai-visionaries You cannot read these articles posing as human interest without following the money.

Ah yes, any funding source invalidates all the arguments.... Does this article seem like an AI boosting article? Perhaps exactly the opposite? I dislike this article intensely, and disagree with it, but its lot because somehow the Berggruen Institute is shadow pushing AI here

Counterpoint - “look at how effective AI is, it’s made everyone realise their career is for nothing!”

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

#326

Post by chasd00 »

jknoepfler wrote: post #220
marginalia_nu wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an experiment, completely stop consuming news and social media for a few weeks. People have lived their entire lives without these information streams, you'll survive unplugging a bit. Now I can't tell you what you will experience if you go through with this, but I can promise it's very enlightening.

No thank you. I had ICE flood the streets where I live with poorly trained thugs with assault rifles recruited from the ranks of neonazis illegally assaulting, detaining and abusing citizens of my country because they had brown skin. They shot dead two citizens (Renee Good and Alex Pretti) doing what I was also doing - relentlessly recording and documenting their behavior and addition to protesting. I don't think you…

> Tough shit if you don't like it.

narrator: actually, it's you who is the problem.

"I'm only happy when I'm in my misery" - Offspring

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

#327

Post by luke5441 »

RobinL wrote: post #281
bjt12345 wrote: post #256

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…

Given it is being trained on your project, the latter isn't that surprising. For the former, you could use LLMs yourself for the probabilistic matching as alternative method? Probably you don't because the trade-offs (like performance) are not worth it...

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

#328

Post by IncreasePosts »

Animats wrote: post #221

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…

The author "is the director of AI operations at a creative technology company".

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

#329

Post by gamblor956 »

notsmarthuh2 wrote: post #287
soperj wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what were you doing in 2012?

[flagged]

The job market doesn't want employees, or business owners, it wants slaves.

I know plenty of people who went into contracting (aka self-employment) and later found full-time jobs (frequently with clients) across multiple white collar industries, including programming. They were all in their 30s and 40s. In many cases, going the self-employment route actually made them more valuable to future employers. I also know plenty of people without a degree who went into programming.

Over the years I've built my own Linux distro from scratch, developed a heavily customized version of the Chromium web browser, and other interesting stuff.

If this were true you'd be gainfully employed by now. Coming out of COVID, companies were hiring people just because they knew what an IDE was.

Based on your comments though, it's easy to understand why you haven't been able to find a job. I wouldn't want to work with someone as negative as you and I can't imagine anyone would want to work with someone so emotionally draining.

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