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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

#661

Post by thaumasiotes »

Lerc wrote: post #558
lovich wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are sizeable camps for both those opinions.

I mostly agree, except for the Messiah part. I think the optimistic excited people are thinking more 'What a time to be alive' than 'All praise be, for they have come' Which is not to say there won't be people deifying AI, I just don't think there are many of those yet. The cynical side of me thinks it will happen, but right now I feel like most of those who seem susceptible to that kind of thinking are tending towar…

> I mostly agree, except for the Messiah part.

What do you think people are talking about when they refer to "the singularity"?

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

#662

Post by testerius »

Currently, I have 3 main issues with AI, LLMs and so on. Generally speaking I am happy that I can use Claude Code and Codex to help building, fixing and maintaining software in my job. To be honest it is so helpful, I am less stressed bacause most of the time I can "find out" solution without asking collegues for help or I do not have spend a lot of time struggling myself. Yeah, if you understand what feeling it is that you know you can't solve problem then you will know what I am writing about.

But...

There are exceptions which make me bad feeling about AI, LLMs and so on:

1. Paid, subscribtion based payment model - you have to pay for tokens.

2. Local models are not "ready yet". You still have to own decent hardware and it will not be the same level of frontier models. I am big fan of local first, offline and "unlimited usage" compared to paid solutions. But probably I have to wait few or several years to get to that point.

3. Feeling "I did not do it myself". This is the most what could make bad feel. You "cheated". You did not write this great app or solve problem alone. You just did modern "copy and paste". You did not write or design this class, function alone by hand. And you know you probably could not do it without help of AI, LLM.

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

#663

Post by CodeCompost »

testerius wrote: post #662

Currently, I have 3 main issues with AI, LLMs and so on. Generally speaking I am happy that I can use Claude Code and Codex to help building, fixing and maintaining software in my job. To be honest it is so helpful, I am less stressed bacause most of the time I can "find out" solution without asking collegues for help or I do not have spend a lot of time struggling myself. Yeah, if you understand what feeling it is t…

  2. Local models are not "ready yet". You still have to own decent hardware and it will not be the same level of frontier models. I am big fan of local first, offline and "unlimited usage" compared to paid solutions. But probably I have to wait few or several years to get to that point.
This is why tech companies are working hard to make sure you can never build your own computer again.

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

#664

Post by thaumasiotes »

ben_w wrote: post #390
pj_mukh wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>"optimistic and enthusiastic about the new messiah" I mean that's you agreeing with Elon Musk, I disagree, I think AI is just normal technology [1], there's a lot of us. Like tech revolutions before, it'll have huge effects on productivity alleviating major scarcities. That's boring to the algorithm, not enough conflict , but it's exciting to a lot of tech workers. No messiah's and no Jihads, just excited about goi…

"Normal tech" puts people out of careers every so often, and kinda randomly. Society has benefited as everyone who isn't put out of a job significantly outnumbers those who are. I was expecting AI to put me, a software developer, out of a job after everyone else , because I thought coders would be needed to write the AI for everyone else, one job task at a time. Right now, it's looking like LLMs can translate not onl…

> But even the first agricultural revolution had a lot of people moving out of the country and to the cities because they could no longer work on the land.

The first agricultural revolution would have been one guy planting seeds with the expectation that edible crops would grow. That led to a huge population boom, but not to cities.

The industrial revolution didn't have the mechanics you're imagining. People left the country for cities because work was available in cities, not because it wasn't available at home. Peasants were always in a constant state of having more labor available than the land they worked required, but that push factor never meant the surplus labor could leave. You can't leave without somewhere to go to.

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

#665

Post by lelanthran »

mac-mc wrote: post #641
lelanthran wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's very similar to being an EM, and if you think EMs are useless, the vast majority EMs have decided it's not worth their time to educate you, and the few who have tried to gently probably went over your head.

> It's very similar to being an EM, and if you think EMs are useless,

I don't think EMs are useless, I just think that you are naive if you think that LLMs can't do the EM work as well.

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

#666

Post by tediousgraffit1 »

maybe I'm missing something, I'll admit I haven't made it through the whole smug article, but critiquing knowledge work, especially IT work, just a few years after that field yielded it's...what, fourth?... major contribution to society in the last say 40 years is pretty funny imho.

I'm counting:

1. the pc (80's) 2. the web (90's-early 2000's) 3. the cloud (early 2010s) 4. the computers that speak natural langage (early 2020s)

a big chunk of gdp in the most prosperus nation on earth is dedicated to knowledge work but sure, it's abstract so I guess it doesn't feel as useful.

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

#667

Post by lelanthran »

J_Shelby_J wrote: post #639
lelanthran wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

[flagged]

> Lmao, any one else in favor of adding a coding test to be able to post in the subreddit to keep these non-hackers out

You think I'm a non-hacker?

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

#668

Post by Toutouxc »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #120
ComputerPerson wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a well-known book that labels programmers as a specific type of pointless job. "Duct tapers" is the category. Also task masters, who would have a foot under the software development umbrella, have space in the book. "Bullshit Jobs" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

We are socially punished for our extremely cushy jobs SWE has negative social value. Saying you’re a SWE or god forbid anything in AI in a dating/courtship context is basically suicide. We are paid so well as compensation for debasing ourselves socially. A lot of normies intuitively understand the concepts in that book even without reading it and either see you as evil or a grifter, maybe both, when you say you work…

There isn’t a word in the comment that I can relate to. Might be a US thing, I’m in Europe.

My [very normal although otherworldly beautiful] wife thinks my job is interesting and talks about me with pride.

When I tell people that I work in IT, they almost never think of FAANG, because these companies aren’t really considered that interesting or important over here. I think it’s uniquely a US thing to conflate “IT” with “SV sociopaths”.

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

#669

Post by altern8 »

I've been trying to figure out how to make money with trading for years (and I _might_ be getting closer, now).

Trading is the only way to make money I can think of where you don't have customers/clients and are truly in control of your own destiny.

But of course it's not that easy.

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

#670

Post by dinkumthinkum »

notsmarthuh wrote: post #239
MichaelZuo wrote: post #225

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.

The problem in the Western world is that switching to a different career is made almost impossible. This society pushes people out of the workforce all the time. I'm one of them. I've been "unemployed" since 2012 with apparently ZERO ability to get any kind of skilled job ever again, just due to a "zigged when I should have zagged" situation decades ago.

What are you talking about? Why do you call out "Western world," this seems like the reflexive idea of the left that the West is some brutish downtrodden hellhole. What's weird is what you are describing is the opposite. It is much more common in the West to be able to change your career than in the East, by an enormous margin. In many places in the East, a tremendous amount of career possibilities are removed from kids from tests they take having barely begun puberty. How many Adam Steltzner's do you think there are outside of the West? What are we talking about? As far as your specific situation with 2012, I have no idea but this is not laid at the feet of the Western world.
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