Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

noemamag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

971–980 of 1001 posts

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

#971

Post by rubicon33 »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #163

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'm right there with you. Been in tech for close to 20 years, mostly in SWE roles but last few years of been hybrid SWE/Management.

Check my bookcase and you'll find ~60 thick books all about programming languages and frameworks. I've learned something like 9 languages at a professional level, and I've worked up and down the stack all the way from bare metal firmware, to mobile, to web, and server.

AI has gutted my passion for software development. It seems people in this industy can be loosely bucketed as follows:

* Went into software because you love writing code to solve problems, where the actual design and writing of said code is as important as the outcome.

* Went into software purely for the outcome, love building things, don't care how it gets built.

At the end of the day I'm a craftsman. I became passionate ~20 years ago about the design and architecture of software, and it fueled a beautiful career. Now, what?

I've spent the last year just throwing prompts at claude and seeing how well it does. Despite having built more in the last year than would have ever been possible before, I feel empty. The outcomes work, they work well, but I didn't write the code. I explained some high level directives to claude, maybe jumped in here or there with a technical angle to fix something when claude got stock... but by and large... the skills I've built over the last 20 years don't really apply anymore.

Yea, I'm not honestly not sure what is going to happen. Your comment about dreaming to be homeless really resonated with me. I either need to find a joy in this AI coding, or I don't know what will happen with me.

My Mom once said something to me as a kid that resonated deeply, even then. Human beings' most valuable skill is adaptation. If you cannot adapt, you will die. As long as I can enjoy this fight, this life, this grind, this mystery... then I will make it my priority to adapt and to reframe my thoughts such that joy is possible again.

It doesn't have to be the end if I don't want it to be. The world will always change, it's on me to change with it.

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

#972

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

We usually see this kind of discussion around weekends. To me it looks a bit like psychological warfare, designed to drive up the mega valuation of some IPO candidates, in other words: to make LLM based systems more valuable by bashing an entire class of workers.

I don't quite believe in the doom scenario: a lot of stuff depends on the correct functioning of software. However language model don't have a complete model of reality, they won't be able to evaluate if a given change is sufficient. Therefore systems based on language models will not be able to provide complete solutions - for some time to come. There will still be quite a bit of work in software development.

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

#973

Post by tootie »

flaburgan wrote: post #839

I don't understand those articles, especially, I don't see why AI changed anything. At least for me, the important quest isn't how you build, but what you build. If your product is meaningless, useful only to the company because what it does is futile, then the emptiness you feel is not coming from the fact that AI is "stealing your job". Don't quit to a farm with goats, find a way to distribute food which would have…

I've been hearing about quitting tech to open a bakery forever. I even know several people who did it long before ChatGPT. It's the nature of any corporate job. The politics and focus on shareholder value are incompatible with most human ethos.

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

#974

Post by mrj »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #887
miyoji wrote: post #858

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah.. no, thanks. I make coffee and sit by the pool for that, or bike around town before the heat sets in. I commuted for 20 years and, sure, I had lots of time to think, but it also destroyed my back and health.

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

#975

Post by jgerrish »

jLaForest wrote: post #452
jgerrish wrote: post #368

I'd like to congratulate Aaron Horwath on publishing this article. As a creative professional, he must feel pride in bringing his ideas to light. Unfortunately, this isn't the movie industry. We don't see a list of credits at the end of his commentary recognizing the thousands of others involved in helping him publish his thoughts. Perhaps we can all chip in and name some of the many people involved in building the t…

Matt burned any leftover good will a long time ago

Do the credits in a movie stop on a name and shame? Maybe some future one will, just to prove this wrong.

But most of them let those millions of unheard of crew members, unknown but still important, point to their name proudly when they're watching it with their family and friends.

They realize creative works are built on a mountain of contributions. People who may be going through tough times right now due to rising anti-tech feelings. People who have heard one too many "evil developer" jokes.

I don't really want to do this unaccountable work either. But here's another:

I don't have view source on my phone. I'm guessing maybe jQuery too?

Thank you John Resig.

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

#976

Post by senordevnyc »

mbesto wrote: post #928
thegrim33 wrote: post #882

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Who are you talking about? Who has promised that the entire workforce is going to be eliminated overnight?

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

#978

Post by Schlagbohrer »

BloondAndDoom wrote: post #639
marginalia_nu wrote: post #54

Saw a meme on mastodon the other day contrasting people of the '90s going online to escape from offline reality, and people of the '20s going offline to escape from online reality. There's something to that. I think a big part of it is just how incredibly toxic the web has become. If you spend any time online, as most tech workers do, you have exceptional resiliency if you're able to stay sane and level headed. Going…

As someone who has been in the industry over 25+ hands down this is the worst period of being online. There has always been that programmer who wanted to quit and run a restaurant, but tech world lost its original soul. We were making people’s lives better, now we are just creating more wealth gap. Majority of the industry is hostile, online communities are extremely hard to get into and very exclusive, if you are ne…

What online communities are hard to get into or exclusive?

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

#979

Post by Schlagbohrer »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #163

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…

You should absolutely sell / give away your possessions and travel the world with just a traveler's backpack and a medium suitcase. It is fun as heck. Bring a laptop with some hobby projects to do on "down days" or "recovery days" when you just chill in your hotel or hotel's neighborhood. Bring a couple good paperback books or an e-reader. A little bit of money can last a long time when you are in cheap parts of the world.

You will eventually get tired of it, homesick, want to settle down somewhere, but it is a tremendously good brain refresher.

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

#980

Post by kaffekaka »

braiamp wrote: post #893
strken wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If by teams you mean the manager of the team, then no. If by teams you mean each individual can evaluate their role and say "I do not need to come to the office at all", then yes.

In my experience there are unfortunately some people, call them X, who feel that they do not need to be in the office, while their colleagues feel that X do need to be in the office at least for some tasks/occasions. Not all tasks can be done as well remotely.

Sometimes people are not very good at combining their own needs and preferences with those of people around them.

I am all for WFH and prefer a hybrid setup. WFH is easily the most convenient for me, but some time in the office is good for practical reasons and also for my mental health.

Post reply on HN