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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
#582They 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
#583Side 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.
Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers
#584This 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 worked around similar problem just working from coworking space and/or traveling.
For cowork you don’t often have to commute as much (more options around), can arrive late, don’t have to dress to nice. For some you can still change your homebase at least for few months temporarily.
But you can still have physical coworkers (even if you don’t work with them), have chitchat not relate to work, go to lunch together. You can also have routine and separate your professional life from personal one.
Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers
#585Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have been in tech for the tech for over 20 years now, heck over 30 years as a hobbyist. I have lost almost all interest in it these days. It feels increasingly meaningless, and actively harmful. I know it is my own fault for neglecting my health and relationships, but I can't help but feel this career makes the most important things more difficult.
Were you chasing the feeling of successfully solving a problem? Have you replaced problem solving with LLM chats? Maybe instead of engineering, you’ve been subtly shifted into project management and hate that career. But it’s tough to engineer much these days. Instead I find I’m PM’ing the bots more than solving problems.
> But it’s tough to engineer much these days. Instead I find I’m PM’ing the bots more than solving problems.
I’m genuinely curious about your perspective as I have almost the diametrically opposite view. I love chatting with the bots as they can build the thing I want, how I want it, much faster than I could. The output still feels mine. Maybe not line by line, but definitely architecturally. The speed makes me feel, sometimes, almost superhuman.
Do you take emotional ownership in the shape output artifact itself, or merely that it works?
Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers
#586I think what happened is that a lot of the wrong personalities entered technology for all the wrong reasons. Some of us started in the 80s or 90s and got into it with personal projects and treating the PC as a hobby. It is satisfying to be able to command a hunk of metal and get it to do things. And it can do boring stuff really fast and repeatedly. And that alone was exciting. The majority of us would stay up into t…
Oh my god!! You nailed it. I see two categories in tech. One the builder, innovators, tinkerers, those who just wanted to use tech to draw their ideas to life.
Then other is artisan, those who took pride in organizing and craft.
Second one is having miserable time. The former like me are having a blast. I love tech for that reason.
I stopped talking to people who think LLMs are waste. It's because they don't even touch it. They think it's a taboo to touch it.
So anything in tech is exciting because it enables us to do so many random things. Wish more people learnt about it.
Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers
#587Saw a meme on mastodon the other day contrasting people of the '90s going online to escape from offline reality, and people of the '20s going offline to escape from online reality. There's something to that. I think a big part of it is just how incredibly toxic the web has become. If you spend any time online, as most tech workers do, you have exceptional resiliency if you're able to stay sane and level headed. Going…
The fact you say "on mastodon" proves it's effectively centralized, just pointing that out
Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers
#588Earlier quoted context omitted.
> forcing me to go out every day and talk to human beings face to face, even just little things like making sure I was showered and dressed every day This part is strange to me. I've worked from home for about 10 years and I've never once had an issue with twice-daily showering, meeting people face-to-face, going out for coffee, going outdoors, going to the gym, etc. The fact I can just go sit in a park, on a hiking…
The previous poster doesn’t realize he is part of the problem. He wants everyone to go back to the office so that he can see people face to face again and have the social pressure to wash himself. Makes you wonder why no one wants to be his friend? If you are ever in a situation where you are alone and no person works for you, realize you are most likely the problem. It took me a while to figure it out and it’s hard…
> Makes you wonder why no one wants to be his friend?
Wow, what a way to be bitter and defensive.
Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers
#589A 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…
You have channeled a great deal of my anxiety, stress, anger, and sorrow with this comment.
Every day at my job I search for a chance to write some fragment of code by hand, a place where just for a moment I remember the joyous struggle to be a craftsman.
I have the sense that you're right - musicians, writers, illustrators, actors, animators - they largely seem to hate the way the genAI companies vacuumed up everything that was meant for other people to feed the soulless dreck-vomiters.
I wish I knew the way to unite the programmers who were and are craftsmen with the artists who desire well-crafted tools that respect their artistic autonomy and creative freedom.
There could be some good cooperation there, if someone could solve the coordination problem.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts - I empathize strongly and appreciate what you had to say.
I hope your quest goes well.
Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers
#590Addressing 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…
Isn’t it better to find out that a lot of corporate work may not have much intrinsic meaning now, rather than just before you die? At least then you get a chance to do something about it.
It seems to me these changes are much more daunting if you live in a country where no job means no health insurance, and where the pay gap between skilled and unskilled work is huge. That makes an existential question about work into a very material one.