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

#871

Post by stego-tech » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 3:58 PM UTC

Terr_ wrote: post #327

stego-tech wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, yeah. I got into IT because I loved working with technology, building communities and game servers and chatrooms and computers and the like. I got lucky that someone found me, my interest in these things, and showed me how it could be a career. Nowadays though, so much of my time isn’t spent building so much as debunking the latest grift, scam, or lie. It’s spent unfucking arbitrary vendor changes that didn’t…

> The technology of today does not enable, or empower To say much the same things stuff a slightly different framing: The promise of "personal computers", and then the internet, making your own applications, etc. was that they would democratize and spread certain capabilities so that everyone could have their tool which accomplished their goals to make their life better. One might even call it owning your own "means…

100% agree with your twist, there. I was speaking from the broadest possible sense, from local OS all the way to corporate internet infrastructure, but you're correct that one of the earliest promises was independence and intent separate from corporate dicta.

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

#872

Post by lbrito » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 4:00 PM UTC

Agree with the dread, but the point is often just making money so one can survive. While the jobs might be meaningless in an ontological sense, the surplus value is very real. All the billionaire yachts are there to prove it

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

#873

Post by kazinator » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 4:01 PM UTC

close04 wrote: post #672

jimbobbam wrote: post #571

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.

Maybe the secret is in what you print?

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

#874

Post by thegrim33 » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 4:01 PM UTC

estearum wrote: post #790

Animats wrote: post #222

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…

Surprised no one has made the extremely obvious observation that it took literal centuries for printing technology to eliminate the trade of printers, which could not have possibly have employed more than 0.01% of people at its peak. Compared to the potential obsolescence of 40% to 60% of the US workforce over the course of 10 - 20 years? You can argue about whether the obsolescence is real or not, but if it is , the…

The difference is that one of those things actually happened, and the other one is your hypothetical extremist/exaggerated/worst possible case of what might happen this time.

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

#875

Post by dec0dedab0de » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 4:04 PM UTC

mancerayder wrote: post #853

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #162

This 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 and my cohorts are forced back in the office four days a week. It's a miserable grind. Routine includes alarm, after a poor night of sleep, getting ready, commuting in, loud, bright offices where while you enjoy the convivial nature of joking and commiserating with colleagues, it's so distracting and noisy and visually distracting that you can't be productive technically. Next you go home at 6, 630, sleepy, go to t…

I remember feeling exactly the same way. When I got offered a work from home job in august of 2014 it felt like a magic portal into a dream life I always wanted, and it was for the first 6 years.

Maybe it is my town, maybe it's me. But I just don't think it's healthy to wake up, walk down the stairs and sit in front of a computer for 8-15 hours every day, rinse and repeat. Maybe things would be different if I had the discipline to consistently shower, cook, exercise, go outside, spend time with friends, pursue my hobbies, and maintain my household.

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

#876

Post by animal_spirits » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 4:04 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #822

soulofmischief wrote: post #813

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now, many people do not own property and are one missed paycheck away from homelessness.

[flagged]

Many states in the United States have a 7 day eviction limit. It really can be life or death

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

#877

Post by hyperadvanced » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 4:05 PM UTC

mangoman wrote: post #515

> The world does not wait with bated breath for product launches. A marketing campaign will not change the world. Almost no one will remember all the work we do. It did at one time! I think that’s what’s so alluring initially about Workism. People waited with bated breath for the iPhone and iPad and its new versions. Those iPod commercials and the marketing campaigns for “rip. Mix. Burn.” did change the music world.…

I think the next frontier for (knowledge) Workists is to use the AI to make sci-fi shit. Someone go make me a schematic for a 3d-printed battery. Someone go make me a an electric (flying?) skateboard kit. Someone go make me an at-home clothes printer. Someone go make me a flying car. Someone go make me an RPG that feels like Morrowind, EverQuest, or WoW did when I was a teenager - let me play it on the couch with my friends and our kids. There are so many possibilities… I feel like the doomers here are (rightly) mad that these kinds of problems are hard and not the same as “write me a web GUI that lets me search a database for music” or even “spend 80 hours writing a custom k8s operator to manage autoscaling for semi-persistent queues” but compared to what tech was 10 years ago, the ability to create anything and everything right now is amazing.

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

#878

Post by Obscurity4340 » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 4:05 PM UTC

jvidalv wrote: post #707

hellohello2 wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I'm not sure what happened but Reddit in particular is beyond saving, and I'm not saying it was ever great. I think we simply don't know how to create online communities that make any sense yet. I'd rather have second hand smoke than any more algorithmic "engagement" maximization at this point.

Small forums is the answer. In spain they are still popular and after some time it feels like an small town in the good sense, you know everyone and everyone knows you. Of course small forums will not IPO

Tildes is nice, Hubski's a nice slow and thoughtful

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

#879

Post by dec0dedab0de » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 4:05 PM UTC

miyoji wrote: post #850

cheschire wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did the remote thing before Covid and rejected it for many of the same reasons. Then Covid happened and so many people got to experience it and loved it. But I still hated it while I was forced to. Every time I told anyone that I personally didn’t like working from home, and was excited about the return to office that would inevitably come, I got SHOUTED at. Absolutely flayed for not being 110% in support of this t…

Commutes are uncompensated labor, so you're advocating for a pay decrease for both yourself and your coworkers. Pay me for my commute and I'll gladly work from wherever you like, just recognize that I would get more done if you weren't paying me to travel to and from work. If you don't pay me for the time I spend commuting, you aren't interested in paying the total cost of employing me and you can kindly go fuck off.

Commutes can also be forced meditation, exercise, and exposure to sunlight and fresh air.

If you don't naturally prioritize those things, the impact of missing them will sneak up on you.

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

#880

Post by dec0dedab0de » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 4:09 PM UTC

BoingBoomTschak wrote: post #827

ang_cire wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't that WFO-preferenced people don't exist, it's that it aligns with the narratives of the extroverted management (who approve their own PTO) that it's better, and people who aren't extroverts dread being forced back. No one who prefers WFH is actually against people who prefer offices being allowed to go there, they're opposed to people publicly claiming they prefer that- unqualified- because they see…

Here at least, I see it as the complete opposite: extroverts have normal lives, families and lack time that commuting eats up even more, so WFH is a boon to them. Actual introverts (especially in our computer world) don't have that and often lack a healthy social life, which can be partly fulfilled by the office's interactions. Some of us even are chronically depressed, which means escaping home is important to allow…

I'm not sure if I actually believe in the intro/extro-vert dichotomy, so I normally try to stay away from the topic, but you have captured my gut feeling here.