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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

#401

Post by yoz-y »

nradov wrote: post #260
MichaelZuo wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously there is some latent risk in choosing a career anywhere, that the demand disappears. There can’t literally be zero risk of structural demand changes.

I'm pretty sure there's literally zero risk of structural demand changes for law enforcement. Defunding the police isn't going to happen and there's no plausible path toward automating most of the work. Security cameras and robots can only do a fraction of what will be needed.

A camera with a gun on it can go a long way though.

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

#402

Post by pitched »

com wrote: post #348
greenchair wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe because every time UBI is tried it fails?

Can you provide any links that show that every time it’s tried, it fails? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income_pilots Skimming this list, there seems to be one really marked failure, in Finland, but that’s disputed I read also. Can you list more failures?

This link says very explicitly that it did show people were discouraged from working, making the experiment obviously a failure.

> Among all the people, only two key groups were found to be discouraged from working by the Mincome project – new mothers and teenaged boys, who, instead of entering the workforce at an early age, decided to study until grade 12, increasing the proportion of students who graduate high school.

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

#403

Post by ungovernableCat »

rvz wrote: post #22

Because the free ride and the day-care rest and vest ZIRP tech life style is over. In 2012 - 2023, this lifestyle used to be at Google, and Facebook and everyone outside wanted to join. In 2023 - present The day care lifestyle is at NVIDIA, OpenAI and Anthropic and everyone outside wants to join (they are too late) after getting laid off. It's that simple. There will be a new day care somewhere but it if you are look…

Working culture at OpenAI and Anthropic is quite brutal. But hey, a lot of their employees are on 7+ figure compensations (when counting their paper worth) so it's certainly a motivating factor to work long hours.

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

#404

Post by MDTHLN »

tossitawayplz wrote: post #97

A lot of people truly enjoyed the craft and creativity of building something. That is being stripped away. The building is being outsourced now. In some cases, the design too. Everything they once enjoyed and took pride in is being done by machines now. That is not a good feeling. Imagine you are a master craftsman, a furniture builder. You sourced the wood, designed the furniture, built it by hand, took pride in you…

This is a wonderful comment, and I’m glad I scrolled far enough to see it.

> Some of these crafts people may have never got to the point of being masters yet either, they were working their way towards it, but now it looks like those skills may not be valued by the market, did they waste their most valuable years working towards a goal that no longer exists?

This is the tradeoff that hurts me the most. I spent a significant chunk of my 20’s learning new paradigms, languages, and frameworks. I thought I knew the tradeoff I was making. I thought any sacrifice now would pay off in the future. Instead, it seems like any learning outside of the first few years of my career was completely useless.

I would love to go out on my own terms like you suggest, but unfortunately I have at least 25 more years in this profession before I can retire. If the profession survives that long.

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

#405

Post by pydry »

RealityVoid wrote: post #247
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…

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…

>I sense there is this air around of "demand our jobs keep being relevant"

I sense the inverse: a demand that we make ourselves irrelevant to satisfy interest rate inspired demand for cost savings.

Executives have developed a religion around AI and it is inspiring an orgy of value destruction in software orgs as they try to slash costs and increase efficiency. But theyve done it rather stupidly with this new religion rather than with more prosaic and altogether more boring improvements.

Quality has plummeted everywhere and there aren't even any meaningful cost savings to show for it, just empty promises and more hype.

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

#406

Post by DaSHacka »

messe wrote: post #338
greenchair wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe because every time UBI is tried it fails?

It has never been tried. Remind us what the U stands for?

Then it will never happen regardless, let alone the fact that any attempts to do as such will collapse before reaching "universal" status

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

#407

Post by cousin_it »

The article makes an interesting point. Like, sure, AI slop is nasty; but also maybe the job itself was bullshit all along (making powerpoints, or coding yet another todo app and so on), and you were only making peace with it by adding a human element which wasn't strictly necessary. Now with AI that illusion is stripped away, and you see the job for what it really is: just how little it means.

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

#408

Post by Aurornis »

follow_the_mone wrote: post #270
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…

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.

What does “AI booster” mean? From this comment and username I thought you meant they were funded by AI companies or doing marketing for them, but the most I see is that they filmed some interviews with filmmakers about AI?

The about page says this:

> In the cultural realm, Studio B is networking frontier technologists with Hollywood auteurs and science fiction authors who will shape the next narrative.

The organization was founded in 2010. Asking filmmakers about AI seems pretty on brand for their goal of talking about frontier technologies intersecting with Hollywood, does it not?

Is there some definition of “AI booster” that I’m not aware of? Or does it really just mean anyone who talks about AI in a positive light? I don’t see any smoking gun financial incentive connection here where they’re getting paid to “boost AI”

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

#409

Post by titanomachy »

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…

I understand both types of people, I think. Some of my friends are parents living outside of tech hubs whose lifestyle would be impossible without remote work, so they understandably felt attacked. But the discourse around this was unhinged. Some remote advocates were convinced that RTO was either a C-suite power trip, or a move to stop commercial real estate from imploding.
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