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

#981

Post by ajkjk » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 8:15 PM UTC

mh- wrote: post #342

ajkjk wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. HN comments would (maybe still do) accuse you of astroturfing if you said you preferred an office. Not that much stock should be put in strangers accusing you, but, it was telling how ignorant it was.

I believe "LLMs are useful"* is the current zeitgeist's version of "Working from the office has upsides", in terms of attracting astroturfing accusations over expressing an opinion held by many. * simplifying, of course.

I agree, somewhat, but that is a much more evidence-backed stance---they're obviously useful in a sense; the debate is over what worldview / posture one ought to adopt as a result of that.

Whereas the RTO stuff was a debate between an entirely emotionally-motivated argument, "I don't want to work in an office therefore I must deny that anyone wants to in order to prevent the idea from getting airtime", versus the obvious reality that there are a range of stances on the subject.

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

#982

Post by johnnyanmac » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 8:18 PM UTC

arjie wrote: post #299

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…

I live in San Francisco and life is quite nice. There are many obvious ways that this city is shitty that I’ve noticed other civilizations don’t have a problem with but also I’d say the overall experience is positive. Neither offline nor online reality is defacto unpleasant. As far as the disillusionment sense, I think that’s an active selection bias. I think people (including me) like to feel angry and so we go out…

>I think that’s an active selection bias. I think people (including me) like to feel angry and so we go out there looking for and finding people who will give us that.

Well, it's subjective so I can't speak for you. But personally I want to try and find the good in people and in life. And I see a lot of good.

But that doesn't mean I'm blissfully unaware and won't notice (and call out) the fact that jobs are on the down and down in my country, we're looking at a generation who cannot get their foot in the door whatsoever, that leadership in the country is actively taking a wrecking ball to society, that prices for everyone working is rising faster than their paychecks, and so much more.

I personally don't actively look for misery. I just can't keep ignoring being punched in the face constantly, even if I'm not going to blame any one person for the punch. Especially after 3 years of trying to find full time career placement in times where I would at worst spend 3 months job searching.

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

#983

Post by walleeee » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 8:20 PM UTC

chii wrote: post #734

Matumio wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, work is supposed to be at least useful for somebody. Ideally for the society you live in, at least indirectly. If you are wasting your work time, you are also wasting you life time in the same breath. Would you turn every leaf in the forest around twice, if it was the highest paying job? No, because that's a bullshit job.

> Would you turn every leaf in the forest around twice if someone is paying for this, then it must mean it is useful to the one doing the paying. If you're not the one paying, you also cannot decide whether it's useful to the payer or not.

Of course you can't decide whether it's useful to the payer. You can and should ask yourself why someone would pay for it, and then decide according to your own personal criteria whether to trade your labor to that particular employer.

It is perfectly rational to choose lower income occupations for your own reasons. Income maximization at all costs is how you become a pawn in someone else's game even (especially?) if it makes you rich.

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

#984

Post by adrianwaj » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 8:24 PM UTC

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #166

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…

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.

I find technology's evolution to be a continual recursive loop of "intelligence building on intelligence" to create systems that extract increasing amounts of energy from the environment with increasingly smaller input. And to me coding has now been better integrated into the tech stack. But still a long way to go.

With coding, so far it has really pushed the use-case for English too and people have reverted back to using language for its more conventional patterns. Coders have stopped coding, so shouldn't that be a relief? If only we could stop using cars too! But code is gradually taking over the driver's seat.

Hunter-gatherer societies were very advanced in many ways just by being in tune with natural processes in order to support life. They didn't even need to drive cars! Long-live the camp fire!

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

#985

Post by johnnyanmac » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 8:26 PM UTC

marginalia_nu wrote: post #195

pseudalopex wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All the news is just outrage porn and non-stop predictions of impending doom. No. And this shallow dismissal builds the mood you complained about.

As an experiment, completely stop consuming news and social media for a few weeks. People have lived their entire lives without these information streams, you'll survive unplugging a bit. Now I can't tell you what you will experience if you go through with this, but I can promise it's very enlightening.

I'm not saying I can't, as someone who's abandoned almost all mainstream social media.

But I literally cannot afford to engage in this experiment since I'm still looking around on LinkedIn for job calls and have a few messages I'm waiting on.

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

#986

Post by purplemoonx » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 8:34 PM UTC

MarkusQ wrote: post #534

uncivilized wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was just a brief trend. Geeks and nerds are back to being derogatory.

I suppose I should be grateful, if it means the mercenaries are leaving.

I think we’re leaving not them haha

We’re out!

Grads from big schools and frats are in - regardless of ability.

It’s like when you build a Wordpress site for your client in 2009, after it’s live they don’t need you anymore (until the domain expires or a plugin breaks).

But during that moment they don’t need you they act cold like they will never need you again. This is happening at scale IMO.

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

#987

Post by imhoguy » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 8:41 PM UTC

robotnikman wrote: post #467

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…

This time its the entire white collar industry though. The scale of job displacement will be at a scale never seen before. If there are no societal safety nets in place for this then I can see things going south quickly

There is article from the same site that the next US election will be about AI and how to compensate diminishing labour market https://www.noemamag.com/the-next-us-presidential-election-w...

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

#988

Post by johnnyanmac » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 8:43 PM UTC

tuesdaynight wrote: post #303

jancsika wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just read this from Nokia's blog of all places[1]: > A fresh U.S. residential IP address (especially one behind carrier-grade NAT and harder to block individually) is “gold.” Customers pay up to $95 to lease a single U.S. residential IP address for 2 weeks (versus $0.30 for an Eastern European IP). That's bananas. The place I found a link to that story was jwz's blog, a site that is actively getting hammered by one…

I feel like your last paragraph could be said about any time in the last 10 years. That was my biggest wake-up call to stop following mainstream news. Whatever shows here or in my social circle are enough to be informed as much as needed (YMMV)

I don't think a Nokia blog talking about the economics of renting out area-based IP addresses is anywhere close to mainstream. we'd be in a much much better society if it was.

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

#989

Post by scott_weber » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 8:50 PM UTC

pj_mukh wrote: post #725

danans wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Good faith counter point >>” to scale your wealth with other people's labor” Or you can scale your labor with openly available AI?

So labour doesn't really scale. It's measured in hours, and you only get so many of those in a week.

If you're using "scale your labour" to mean "scale your output". Well, two cases: your selling your labour as an employee, or your output directly. Either way: the market won't value them above their cost of substitution, which is just the cost of substitution of your original, non AI labour, plus the cost of the AI (an ever cheaper commodity).

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

#990

Post by srveale » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 8:57 PM UTC

victorbjorklund wrote: post #912

bushbaba wrote: post #851

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There have been instances of mass unemployment without mass violence, sure. But are you sure you want to see how it plays out in a country with >1.2 guns per capita?