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

#911

Post by victorbjorklund » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 5:12 PM UTC

bushbaba wrote: post #851

estearum wrote: post #790

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I doubt unemployment can even raise to 40% before the government and billionaire class is overthrown. The French Revolution was not an isolated event

You have way higher unemployment among young people in many countries without any revolution. What are they gonna do? Randomly kill people who are ”kulaks” and that will solve their problems how? Are they gonna get to eat if they kill a guy running a saas company?

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

#912

Post by zero-sharp » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 5:13 PM UTC

thegrim33 wrote: post #873

estearum wrote: post #790

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The parent is making a point about the rate/scale at which technology replaced workers. If you think the hypothetical is too extreme, then what would a more realistic version be? Are you uncertain about the rate of disruption?

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

#913

Post by dec0dedab0de » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 5:13 PM UTC

csomar wrote: post #606

THX1137 wrote: post #291

Earlier 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…

Dude. This is too mean. I'm a real person.

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

#914

Post by kasey_junk » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 5:14 PM UTC

strken wrote: post #495

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…

I'm not an extrovert, I'm more or less on the line between the two extremes, and I prefer WFO or hybrid. Teams should really be choosing their model of work themselves, and anyone who doesn't like it should shuffle off to a different team within the company. Top down RTO is nuts.

I’m an extrovert and strongly prefer working remotely.

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

#915

Post by purplemoonx » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 5:15 PM UTC

chrisjj wrote: post #31

FLeXMurphy wrote: post #7

This article is too inward, clique referential looking. It uses too many "known" things to frame and validate its points, but has very little contributions of its own. The way that people are described, and the conditions portrayed, have been this way for quite some time. The only thing that is changed is now there is a clearly defined boogeyman to point to that justifies it. Because the other boogeymen make the usua…

> This article is too inward Too inward for what?

Can't say the inward here (it's racist)

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

#916

Post by sluggishpudding » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 5:17 PM UTC

zulban wrote: post #833

Havoc wrote: post #464

I'm not even a programmer (by profession, though hobby) and I must say I find the gleefulness in the article off-putting. That said I do think it is useful from a societal perspective that programmers are both doing this and getting hit. I'm not going to celebrate someone's job being threatened but in this particular case I think that symmetry is a major societal win for surfacing the question as to how are we collec…

> See translator jobs getting wiped out. Nobody even blinked an eye, it didn't spark any discussion, no deep thoughts were had. Whenever someone writes something like this "nobody talks about it, nobody cared" I always think that just tells you more about the media sources and community of the author (you) than anything else. Of course people talked about it. They are still talking about it. Of course they cared. The…

Nah. OP's real point is that people didn't talk about translators _enough_. Of course people in the circle are devastated and are screaming at the top of their lungs right now, but at a societal level no one cared enough to for example seriously consider policy changes (like UBI for example).

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

#917

Post by freejazz » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 5:18 PM UTC

alsetmusic wrote: post #905

estearum wrote: post #889

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke: "theres actually zero reason to think about events that haven't happened yet. you imbecile. you fucking moron"

I don't think they said that at all. I'm pretty sure they were saying that the thing to think about / discuss is the thing that happened, rather than the hypothetical.

The entire premise of this article is a hypothetical

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

#918

Post by mbesto » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 5:20 PM UTC

thegrim33 wrote: post #873

estearum wrote: post #790

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The entire premise of the article is that we're being promised that an entire workforce is going to be eliminated overnight. The people who are promising this, do not care about what happens to the working class. This is clearly causing anxiety.

The comparison is useful. Printers had decades to pivot and hence the anxiety didn't exist like it does today. Today's capital allocated wants this to happen within a decade.

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

#919

Post by dec0dedab0de » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 5:23 PM UTC

cheschire wrote: post #229

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #166

Earlier 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.

Were you chasing the feeling of successfully solving a problem?

Yes, and it lead to ruin before llms were viable.

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

#920

Post by purplemoonx » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 5:24 PM UTC

jimt1234 wrote: post #609

For me it's not just AI. The industry just doesn't feel the same anymore. Maybe I'm just an old curmudgeon - I've been in this industry since the 80s, but things really seemed to change, or I finally noticed it, around 2010 or so. It seemed like everything we were building wasn't to help people, it was to extract data from people and generally just harass people into buying shit. We transformed society through email,…

I agree on ~2010 at least in San Francisco, that's when it all started to turn toward social media and VC hype.

a16z, Sequoia, Accel - people like that started showing up. (a16z invested in the first startup I worked at, they were only founded 1 year prior in 2009).

The Facebook movie, Justin Timberlake, I mean Sean Parker, I mean Justin Timberlake. Ashton Kutcher? Wtf

It got out of control, but at least the cash was flowing.

2016 is the year I use for "when it all fell apart".

The young guns always point to 2020s as the "overhiring boom" etc. but they have no idea what a frenzy it was in ~2010. If you knew basic HTML and jQuery you could literally get a $1M Series A in the right circles of people. It was like they could not find enough web designers and would do anything to get one.

Fun times. But of course, that could not have lasted.