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

#681

Post by Peaches4Rent » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 9:28 AM UTC

danans wrote: post #656

close04 wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he had 5 children, a house in Daly City and 3 apartments across the street from Dolores park as well as a brand new home in Terra Linda How well would you need to be paid now in any career to support a family like that one while accumulating that wealth already early in life? Careers can evaporate just the same but what they leave behind is vastly different from 60 years ago.

> How well would you need to be paid now in any career to support a family like that one while accumulating that wealth already early in life? The answer is that you don't do it by getting paid (as in exchanging labor for wages). You do it by finding a way to scale your wealth with other people's labor.

Aah, so by definition only a select few can do it

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

#682

Post by geraneum » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 9:29 AM UTC

MarkusQ wrote: post #381

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…

We, developers/tech-employees (safe to assume since we’re on HN) are the “entire class of workers” that the article is talking about. The premise is losing faith in the future of our profession. Which is something that’s openly advertised to the investors by AI companies and more importantly, openly discussed.

> But "our misery is some potential investor’s financial prospect" sounds like some schlock B-movie plot.

That’s a curious one. I think it’d be healthier if you reflect on why you perceive it that way.

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

#683

Post by roenxi » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 9:31 AM UTC

close04 wrote: post #642

jimbobbam wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My grandfather was a printer not to far from that Burger King, in a building now owned by the academy of art. In 1963 he had 5 children, a house in Daly City and 3 apartments across the street from Dolores park as well as a brand new home in Terra Linda. He died early, but extended family stayed in the business. It was union work, he as the youngest operator of the 4 color press. His wife my grandmother didn’t work.…

> he had 5 children, a house in Daly City and 3 apartments across the street from Dolores park as well as a brand new home in Terra Linda How well would you need to be paid now in any career to support a family like that one while accumulating that wealth already early in life? Careers can evaporate just the same but what they leave behind is vastly different from 60 years ago.

If you're happy to live life to a 1960s standard, it'd be quite cheap. If I'm interpreting the stats properly [0], he expected to put two children through high school and the other 3 would have been contributing a lot to the family quite early on. It'd also be interesting to check whether it's legal to build the same apartment in Daly City's current regulatory environment because that isn't a given.

Plus, the US government at the time was less than half the size of the private sector [1] so we'd expect he was contributing less to dead-weight government projects and corruption.

[0] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_104.10.a...

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Governme...

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

#684

Post by amoe_ » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 9:31 AM UTC

thraway3837 wrote: post #547

I 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…

As you say, many entered the field beacause of a natural interest in tech, rather than pay. But that doesn't imply that they uncritically accept every new technology just because it's new. It seems like you're arguing for "tech for the sake of tech", which you're entitled to do. But now tech has a transformative impact on the world, and most did not consent democratically to said transformation. It makes sense for an adult to consider the effect that their role has on the world at large.

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

#685

Post by burnt-resistor » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 9:34 AM UTC

xlii wrote: post #85

Long long time ago people in tech were in tech because of the tech. Then, at some point, being in tech became a gilded profession and everyone: salesmen, artists, clerks etc. joined in. Not because they wanted to be in tech. They wanted gold. For years it was working, but right now things shifted. You can no longer just do the thing you learned for a job and continue doing so, because landscape shifted. So they're mi…

This is what annoyed me to no end; being surrounded by incurious corporate political players who wanted to appear "smart" but couldn't care less about learning, excellence, or much of anything except leaving in time to pickup their kids.

Meanwhile, I had taught myself coding the hard way without the internet or proper reference materials or community, by trial-and-error in front of a debugger/profiler/disassembler in the mid 80's - late 90's. Apparently, that holds no economic value now because all that matters is # of PRs, tokenmaxxing, and "impact" like savings and features. But really, the deal breaker for me is the brazen and/or clueless evil aims of the ownership class such that working for them enables rather than reduces societal harm. Thus, tech isn't for me. Also, the number and distribution of cool, decent, clever people has been driven out of both the startup scene and the megacorp scene; maybe there's better hope in obscure SMBs or nonprofits.

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

#686

Post by port11 » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 9:35 AM UTC

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…

The author doesn’t really address the question either. Even if I agree with them that work isn’t all that important, paying your bills and eating food is, so… ahm.

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

#687

Post by RivieraKid » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 9:38 AM UTC

hungryhobbit wrote: post #537

RivieraKid wrote: post #330

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…

You have a distorted definition of UBI. The B stands for "basic", as in "not dying in the street of starvation" and a "a roof over your head". It is NOT about enabling "a modest life" or stopping people from working! On any serious UBI proposal everyone is still incentivized to work.

I didn't imply that this is how I define UBI. Look at the exact wording I used.

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

#688

Post by RivieraKid » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 9:42 AM UTC

la64710 wrote: post #662

RivieraKid wrote: post #330

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…

No UBI is taxing the surplus productivity achieved by replacing humans with robots or AI AND redistributing it to all the citizens.

AI is just a technology, nothing fundamentally different from what has been happening for centuries.

Once AI is able to replace all human work, that's a new situation. But this is not happening in the next 20+ years.

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

#689

Post by listenallyall » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 9:45 AM UTC

lp4v4n wrote: post #668

jimbobbam wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My grandfather was a printer not to far from that Burger King, in a building now owned by the academy of art. In 1963 he had 5 children, a house in Daly City and 3 apartments across the street from Dolores park as well as a brand new home in Terra Linda. He died early, but extended family stayed in the business. It was union work, he as the youngest operator of the 4 color press. His wife my grandmother didn’t work.…

The worst of all is that people will still argue that, in this day and age, labour has not been completely devalued and that you are wealthier than your grandfather. That kind of story was not uncommon at all in the past, today you would have to be a literal multi-millionaire to have that lifestyle.

Your point about affording the lifestyle isnt entirely incorrect, but it is skewed by what you choose to include vs ignore. Owning a house? Indeed, grandfather probably had it easier. More space per person in the primary residence? Grandson wins, most likely. Restaurant meals vs home cooked, international travel, ubiquitous air conditioning, threat of being drafted into the military (and actually being deployed!), expected lifespan, dental visit experience, number of sexual partners... I'd bet most grandsons have all of those significantly better than their gainfully-employed grandfathers.

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

#690

Post by pj_mukh » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 9:47 AM UTC

lelanthran wrote: post #585

pj_mukh wrote: post #242

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.

> 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.

I’m sorry this wasn’t obvious in my comment but I meant AI engineers not software engineers (and not the AI capital owners either)

Either way, I empathize with your anxiety but posit that its primarily driven by techs original sin: the algorithmic feed and the resultant 24hour news cycle. I think the truth will be a lot more boring (mass upskilling and reskilling) but those narratives aren’t easily sold on the feeds.

AI is normal technology but it’s probably the largest upgrade to productivity and massively deflationary especially as it hits atoms and not just bits. That is actually extremely exciting.