What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers • Hacker News Board

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

#541

Post by cleandreams » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 1:23 AM UTC

I am not excited about tech anymore. I dread it to be honest. I was an early engineer at a AI company that got acquired. From that and related stock (golden handcuffs) was able to retire a couple of years ago. There were some tech problems that I wanted to investigate and I took a bunch of classes. Fun.

I loved my career.

Wow have my feelings changed. I'm disgusted. It's a moral disgust. The scene turns me off SO MUCH. Just a recent tidbit: I think it is Anthropic that is buying old (some antique, vintage) books, scanning them, then pulping them.

There is no restraint at this point. Whether it's Meta and their pervert glasses and child exploitation. Or google trashing their own search.

One thing that has turned my stomach is how management has acted after discovering they could trash their skilled workers in the way that so many other industries have been able to do. If you want to know management's true character, remove the moat (that skill used to be) from the workers and watch what happens.

...Okay, I'm editing. There is a bright spot. The other day I was sitting around doing nothing and suddenly out of the blue dreamed up an app that could help build community regarding an activity I care a lot about. With an LLM I could do the whole thing myself. I'm excited about this. I might fit this in among my other projects. It's kind of like taking a hammer and chisel and cutting a piece off of Big Tech. If all of us skilled folks do this we could have an impact and serve community at the same time.

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

#542

Post by jjav » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 1:26 AM UTC

elmer2 wrote: post #277

pixelready wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer to this is always the one we don’t want to talk about: a robust public safety net. This is the balance to “move fast and break shit” technological disruption. It’s great to have an adaptive overall system, but disruption has a human cost. 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. If instead we stick our…

"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…

> A 'robust' healthcare system that the government runs is a pipe dream.

Oh yes, the usual argument of how what most industrializes nations (and many poor nations as well) have achieved, is somehow seen as impossible just because the US can't manage to do it (because it doesn't profit the oligarchs).

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

#543

Post by mahogany » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 1:28 AM UTC

carlosjobim wrote: post #496

IshKebab wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This time it has the potential to be different because it might basically obsolete all white collar jobs, which is waaaay more jobs than even the industrial revolution, and in a much shorter time. Maybe anyway. I think that probably depends on at least a couple of more breakthroughs - at least a solution to the hallucination problem, and probably some kind of true on-line learning, not just writing stuff down and rea…

Information Technology has always had the purpose of obsoleting white collar jobs. Creating some new jobs along the way, but obsoleting more than it creates. "Computer" used to be a job title for a human being.

The difference now is about the scale. What percentage of the labor force do you think were “computers”? It is not comparable to a potential disruption of huge swathes of the workforce in a short time span. That’s what people are worried about.

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

#544

Post by fragmede » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 1:36 AM UTC

jleyank wrote: post #501

Animats wrote: post #222

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…

Look at the disappearance of pink-collar jobs due to computerization and "do it yourself" that it enabled. There's lots of examples of whole career fields disappearing. The trick has always been to see whether and how things reappear.

Travel agents come to mind for that. Bill Gates saw the future with and funded Expedia.com

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

#545

Post by fragmede » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 1:38 AM UTC

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?

"Fired up" as in optimistic about the future and using it to build cool new things with it.

...is my read, but the wonderful thing about text communication is if I'm in a grumpy mood because I didn't sleep well, the other reading is also entirely possible.

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

#546

Post by hbbbcbbcx » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 1:44 AM UTC

bonoboTP wrote: post #457

Aurornis wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 organizati…

I'd guess it just means they failed some moral purity test.

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

#547

Post by dyauspitr » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 1:44 AM UTC

paulorlando wrote: post #528

Rendello wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Farewell, Etaoin Shrdlu documents the last day of hot type at The New York Times before the digital changeover. It's one of my favourite documentaries, everything feels so vivid and alive: https://www.nytimes.com/video/insider/100000004687429/farewe...

Since you mentioned Etaoin Shrdlu and hot type / linotype... There are a lot of industries (at least historically) that have organized labor. In the UK, there was the “Wapping Dispute” in 1986 when computer technology enabled journalists to type in their copy directly, doing away with the need for workers to set type using linotype printing. Linotype was a big improvement on the older letter-by-letter typesetting and…

Collective union Luddite opposition is one part of why there is so much of a plebeian tier pushback against unions, in the very group that should be fighting for unions with their lives. That and right wing propaganda of course.

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

#548

Post by s1artibartfast » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 1:45 AM UTC

fzeroracer wrote: post #454

RivieraKid wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> UBI type system in place to pad the fall, people will bounce back and adapt when industries break down If you mean UBI that would allow anyone to stop working and live a modest life, that just doesn't work. UBI is essentially redistribution from those who work to those who don't work. That's not just a "safety net" because you could decide to stop working forever just because it's more comfortable than working. I w…

> UBI is essentially redistribution from those who work to those who don't work. If you believe this, then surely you also believe pension plans are the devil? If we can't have UBI then we can start by tearing away pension plans for all of the old people my tax money is being wasted on.

There's a difference between a plan someone worked and paid into and one where you never have to work and get to free ride on someone who does

But yes National pensions can have the same problem, as is currently the case in France. The elderly vote themselves higher and benefits, waiting to back breaking taxes on the diminishing number of middle-aged workers

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

#549

Post by bdjdjdjdh » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 1:55 AM UTC

MarkusQ wrote: post #392

geraneum wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember, our misery is some potential investor’s financial prospect. We read these articles with different eyes. There are people who are the real audience and salivate when they read these sentiments.

Who's making money off our misery exactly? I can see it as a foreign adversary psyop (they benefit from us being demoralized) or as a side effect of the attention economy (more clicks is all that matters) or even a hyper-partisanship epiphenomenon (whichever side is currently down wants people to think everything is awful). But "our misery is some potential investor’s financial prospect" sounds like some schlock B-mo…

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

#550

Post by aaron695 » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 1:57 AM UTC

pj_mukh wrote: post #245

Animats wrote: post #222

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…

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.

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