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

#661

Post by entropy47 » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 7:36 AM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #539

entropy47 wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I certainly do. As usual the revolution is weeks away, but I continue to produce work better, faster and more reliably than my colleagues who have outsourced their brains to Claude. You can tell me I'm not gonna make it and the last 5% is going to topple on the next model release, but the work I enjoy doesn't have precedents and it seems the plagiarism machine is quite bad at that specific flavour of knowledge work.

> I continue to produce work better, faster and more reliably than my colleagues who have outsourced their brains to Claude. It matters little if your employer does not recognize/value that? Given the quality of most software nowadays, the output of Claude driven by a monkey appears to be perfectly acceptable for a lot of companies. (yes, there's likely a big reckoning coming where all the slop and tech debt suddenly…

My employer pushes everybody heavily towards AI, but unsurprisingly that stops the moment the work is late or bad in a way that catches their management chain's attention.

I'm not doing work in the way they tell me to but the results are good enough that my performance reviews / job security is fine. For now!

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

#662

Post by Godsend69 » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 7:44 AM UTC

CodeCompost wrote: post #649

testerius wrote: post #648

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.

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

#663

Post by Godsend69 » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 7:44 AM UTC

testerius wrote: post #648

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…

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

#664

Post by punkbit » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 7:44 AM UTC

testerius wrote: post #648

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…

Three really good points. Specially the third one. Not sure why HN readers are downvoting you…

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

#665

Post by crnkofe » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 7:47 AM UTC

I have this nagging feeling that the depression, anxiety and pessimism is as-of-late coming from people from all the companies that risked it by adopting token maxing and AI usage enforcement. Its not representative of the whole industry though. There are still many places where engineers or knowledge workers are respected and left to lead (or not) AI adoption.

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

#666

Post by barrenko » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 7:50 AM UTC

mrguyorama wrote: post #341

chasd00 wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i go back to what happened to Journalism when the Internet and especially "web2.0" took off. It was hard on the industry but I don't think we have lost generations of journalists. The software biz has always expected everyone else to adapt to technological shifts at a rapid pace. I'm a dev (more of a lead/mgr these days) so my neck is on the line too but even i have to chuckle at the irony.

>It was hard on the industry but I don't think we have lost generations of journalists. We literally did. There are dramatically fewer journalists now than just a few decades ago, and everyone is constantly complaining about how bad "journalism" is now. It was definitely bad a long time ago, in the era of yellow journalism, but now "Journalists" don't even ask basic questions, don't push back in interviews at all, do…

We did, and we have our public spaces (public in the non-physical sense here) to show for it.

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

#667

Post by dinkumthinkum » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 7:50 AM UTC

anovikov wrote: post #642

tossandthrow wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are too early to deem it failed ai strategies. I am advising small startups. One of them went entirely to agentic developed software by a team of non technical founders. They had their sec audit done with considerably fewer errors than had a software developer build the same (which would have taken upwards of 4 times as long). I am sorry, the technical capabilities of the agentic systems for software development i…

I agree. There is no point in hiring anyone into a technical-only role anymore. It's very valuable (and probably always will be) to be something-and-technical: a specialist in the target field who also understands how computers and software work. But not "just" technical, these are already completely obsolete and all of them who still have jobs, do so simply because of institutional inertia, connections, and companie…

Do you realize that there is software out there that are not simple React apps? The models are clearly advanced but I think the world is a lot more complex than you seem to think.

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

#668

Post by 0123456789ABCDE » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 7:55 AM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #151

scottLobster wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He murdered a guilty man, not an innocent one. Still murder, and murder is wrong, but let's not get things twisted

[flagged]

you will note gp did not refer to the deceased as a criminal, nor did they condone their murder, on the contrary.

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

#669

Post by harvey9 » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 8:02 AM UTC

Earw0rm wrote: post #631

noduerme wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Oregon. Up until last year , you weren't allowed to pump your own gas in most parts of the state. The law required gas station attendants to do it, as a scheme to keep them employed. The most annoying part of this wasn't the tiny marginal cost, but that it sometimes took forever to get your gas if the attendant was busy. You'd just sit there looking at the pump you weren't allowed to put your credit card in…

They're doing this in the UK right now with security for cultural events. Since the Manchester Arena terror attack (awful, tragic, evil, and an isolated event), it has been mandatory for music and live theatre venues to have an absolute army of "security" staff checking people's bags. A full 95 percent of whom would be entirely and totally useless in any actual emergency or danger situation. It's one of the things co…

A lot of the time bag checks are for glass bottles either because they can make brawls more dangerous or because the venue doesn't want you bringing your own booze.

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

#670

Post by littlecranky67 » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 8:06 AM UTC

tacker2000 wrote: post #473

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.

Unfortunately people all over are starting to not do anything. On a recent plane ride some old guys were watching movies on their phones on full volume. I complained and they stopped, but another guy in another row started doing it again. It gets tiring. Last week I was on a NYC subway train to JFK Airport and there was a guy blasting some loud hip-hop/trap and a small kid playing some loud game, totally oblivious to…

I am in the give up department. Don't own a car, so public transport heavy. TikTok adicts everywhere, elderly taking video calls on super high volume, people playing or recording Whatsapp audios etc. has become the norm. Every bus, every restaurant, everywhere I go, people do it all the time. Pointing it out and confronting people has become pointless, it takes 3 minutes for the next person to offend. It is easier to accept it and hope for noise-cancellation technology to become better.