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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

#571

Post by godwinson__4-8 »

aobdev wrote: post #558
godwinson__4-8 wrote: post #554

Yikes. Won't someone think of the software engineers? Many of us have done far better than we deserve. There are so many workers who will never approach the gains even an aborted or partial career in software will accomplish. How many of you are willing to sacrifice to achieve UBI for all? My sympathy for you will depend on the answer.

The author is pretty unsympathetic towards those who give their lives to “Workism” in exchange for money, no?

Maybe so. Yet a "career" is not charity. I think it's important for engineers to remember a career in software is still (as it long has been) a luxury.

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

#572

Post by tjr225 »

bonoboTP wrote: post #449
RealityVoid wrote: post #247

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…

You have to do something that is truly effective and productive, otherwise you live a fake life, you live in a zoo, you live a performance. If nobody actually needs your work's output and you are simply allowed to do it out of some kind of state benevolence because it's some quaint tradition, you're laughing stock. We should not put up with being that.

[dead]

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

#573

Post by jimt1234 »

For me it's not just AI. The industry just doesn't feel the same anymore. Maybe I'm just an old curmudgeon - I've been in this industry since the 80s, but things really seemed to change, or I finally noticed it, around 2010 or so. It seemed like everything we were building wasn't to help people, it was to extract data from people and generally just harass people into buying shit.

We transformed society through email, the web, mobile, and so on. But now we're recording everything your car does and delivering ads on refrigerators. It just doesn't feel the same anymore.

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

#574

Post by Karrot_Kream »

JohnMakin wrote: post #539
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many folks have talked about optimizing for engagement and while I do think this is a factor, I don't think this is the cause. HN has a pretty simple set of algorithms and yet it's largely followed the same trend of negativity and despair. I'm partial to what I call the "doomer effect". If you feel sad or disenfranchised you're just much more likely to spend time online talking. A person with a fulfilling social life…

I’m sorry if I am being uncharitable, but are you saying the solution to depression is that people’s friends groups (which the depressed person may not have access to to begin with) is to just like, bully them out of it? lol? Tell me you’ve never had a depressive episode without telling me. hint: the people with support groups in the first place are less vulnerable and bullying depression doesn’t really help, I could…

You are being uncharitable. In fact, you're demonstrating the dynamics I spoke of in my post.

I could give you a detailed response but, given your tone, instead I'll say: assume the best and don't make everything about yourself. Several people I know have struggled with negative mental health effects of finding themselves in a caretaker role for a mentally ill friend or partner. In my experience offline groups (not individual relationships) have pretty good immune systems for this. They also often do band together to support or help a struggling friend.

In the same way that you expect a depressed person to receive charity, please offer it in your responses.

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

#575

Post by skhameneh »

laichzeit0 wrote: post #565
pydry wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>For people I know who are in tech for the tech nothing changed. Yeah it did. The environments became a lot more toxic and the decisions became a lot more stupid. I also miss working with people who actually cared about the craft. They exist on the IC level but they're burned out and on the executive level it's mostly just insecure morons these days.

It’s great to care about the craft as long as someone else is paying for it. I think most software developers are waking up to the reality that they were always just holding business at ransom with their craft. Software is a grudge purchase for businesses. No one has ever cared about the craft except the craftsmen.

The parent comment’s take resonates with me and your response is exactly, what I assume, frustrates us both.

I’ve been at companies that were founded on sales of physical goods that literally had vendors pick them for vended goods because they found the software made purchasing more convenient - as in they literally had customers tell them they bought their physical goods because of their software. They didn’t need the software. The software wasn’t critical to acquiring goods. They could have purchased goods elsewhere of similar quality and often potentially lower cost. The customers cared about the software, the software (that was not part of their core business) drove the core business.

Edit: I originally had a lot more typed about how craft matters and not being strictly about perfection. It wasn’t necessary to drive the point, so I removed it. People do buy craft and many pay a hefty premium for better craft (in all aspects, both producer COGS and customer needs/desires).

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

#576

Post by lelanthran »

pj_mukh wrote: post #242
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…

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.

> I know a class of tech workers absolutely fired up about the new Industrial Revolution,

That's because they're thinking that they're still going to get paid $200k/y for typing in "Duh, Claude, make me an app, here the specs from the client, doh!"

They aren't seeing that there is very little value to add when all they are, is an interface to a magic software-making machine.

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

#577

Post by pzo »

MarkusQ wrote: post #380
geraneum wrote: post #251

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…

Short sellers earn the most when company they bet against is crashing.

On the other hand investors benefit when they competitors are crashing.

For many labor is just expensive cost running company - I can see how some people salivate

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

#579

Post by anovikov »

They always have been. As an outsourcer, i observed, for decades, organisations with lots of American tech workers who did almost nothing except nodding on meetings, most being utterly incapable. All actual work was done by outsourcers - bulk by Indians, complex parts by Russians and Poles.

Now AI does it instead, with outsourcers out of work.

With the productivity growth since late 19th century, vast majority of employees only exist by tradition, for political and social purposes. It's not "work", it's "service" (not as in "held in service or labor" but as in "public service"). They exist to make organisations they work for, look big and respectable. They exist to make their boss feel like a real boss. They are cheap - famously real compensations have been stagnant since early 1970s while productivity skyrocketed - so keeping them as essentially, pets, wasn't too expensive for business and keeps getting cheaper. They do bullshit work (Cory Doctorow).

This is why i am not at all worried for those workplaces. There is no AI can replace what was useless from the beginning.

Oh well, one thing will change. RTO will be mandatory nearly everywhere.

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

#580

Post by ed_mercer »

mattcantstop wrote: post #139
agys wrote: post #5

Side note: a half an hour call on a commute train (or in public spaces) is considered extremely rude in many parts of the world.

It's rude to me as well. But I think we are wrong about this. I was in the doctor's office and a person was on the phone talking in the waiting room. I thought it was weird. But then I thought "if a person was sitting in the seat next to them and they were talking, would that be weird?" I don't think we'd see two people talking as being weird. Why is it weird if someone is by themself speaking to someone that isn't a…

> I don't think we'd see two people talking as being weird.

We do, it's known as the halfalogue and has been found to be more distracting/annoying. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20817912/

It's also why calls/online meetings are banned in many coffeeshops in Japan.

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