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

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

#901

Post by jambalaya8 »

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…

Printers had taken the place of an entire cadre of non-communicating faith workers who used to sit down and painstakingly copy things by hand while being housed and fed for "free", though the variety of reading materials were hardly as large, and it took a lot longer.

In all seriousness, our jobs are almost certainly going the way of AI coding things, the same way we sorta took over a bunch of unskilled women who merely punched a bunch of cards and ran punched cards through a machine to do basic calculations before computing became something else too.

Before digital and electronic switching systems, you most likely didn't get work in a telephone central office unless you were more of a mechanic than a programmer.

I am more worried about the fact there is nothing "next" to "strive for" or do than about the status of someone that knew the ins and outs of wax sublimation printing (though it is a cool thing).

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

#903

Post by Permik »

elmer2 wrote: post #273
pixelready wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer to this is always the one we don’t want to talk about: a robust public safety net. This is the balance to “move fast and break shit” technological disruption. It’s great to have an adaptive overall system, but disruption has a human cost. If there’s a robust public healthcare and UBI type system in place to pad the fall, people will bounce back and adapt when industries break down. If instead we stick our…

"If there’s a robust public healthcare and UBI type system in place to pad the fall, people will bounce back and adapt when industries break down." This would be great, in theory. The reality is that people would live on it and never work, have kids, and the same thing would happen with a new generation. As it expands, you run out of tax payers and the system collapses. A 'robust' healthcare system that the governmen…

I'm probably an outlier, but as someone working a non-physical job, I have been talking about how I personally would still keep working and doing jobs even if all of my basic needs are met.

I do work purely because of idealistic reasons. I'm not actually owed anything, I'm working because of us, humanity. Yeah, people are going to slack, and that's just life. It's just statistics, optimize society to such a configuration that people acts have a place and get the support they need. Most of the "slackers" who represent the people just living on the UBI type system you described, probably don't do it as a direct choice. Most likely they feel like they can't contribute to society, but that's something that's solvable. It's a matter of education and culture.

About your quote:

  "have nothing to lose and decide to attack the source of their misery. Bread and circuses will only distract so much."
There's a theory directly relating to this that I have about the modern golden age of punk and rock in the nordics. When people had all of their basic needs met, they finally had the time to take a breath, take a look inwards and face their own inner demons. I suggest that this was one of the big things that created the conditions which made the nordics the rock/punk powerhouse that they were.

Of course, the good times also had their downsides, lots of complacency in politics and not feeling the need to fight for better, because things were already better than they've ever been!

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

#904

Post by zmmmmm »

Dusseldorf wrote: post #350
cheschire wrote: post #218

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…

I think the reason people get angry about it is that it feels like an asymmetric ask. It feels a bit like saying "everyone needs to come I to the office because I like there to be people in the office, regardless of whether that's what they want." (not saying that's what you're saying here, just trying to shine some light on how it may be perceived)

On top of that, it seems the WFO crowd simply can't help exploiting it to their advantage once they are there. They get less work done, but they hoard higher level decisions about what work should be done. They will say "oh we had this corridor conversation and decided X and Y", and then they will even present the fact that happened as compelling evidence that everyone should work in the office. Whereas I see it as evidence of dysfunction - you want to make a decision you get all the stakeholders in the room and you ensure it's transcribed / recorded. Basically an online meeting is the ideal form of it.

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

#905

Post by zmmmmm »

I will say here that there are meaningful jobs that especially tech people can engage with. There are gigantic unsolved problems. Climate change, cancer, thousands of rare disorders with no therapy or even good diagnostics. And many of these fields have actual roles for technical people to fill and usually can't find highly qualified people to do them because a software eng salary is far out of reach of the average research funding.

Before burning out, retiring or checking out altogether, I really recommend people look at the concept of halving your salary and taking a job that still employs your skills but is directly attached to actual meaning.

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

#906

Post by Exoristos »

estearum wrote: post #728
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…

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…

Most of it actually took about five years, as the manufacturing side of it was outsourced to China and the computer side to India. I was there. Management told us it was "because of 9/11." R.R. Donnelley was one of the world's largest manufacturing companies, a Fortune 50 company -- became a penny stock in a decade or so.

The technologies GP mentions didn't end commercial print -- they were all heavily in use _by_ commercial print.

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

#907

Post by Exoristos »

Exoristos wrote: post #906
estearum wrote: post #728

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…

Most of it actually took about five years, as the manufacturing side of it was outsourced to China and the computer side to India. I was there. Management told us it was "because of 9/11." R.R. Donnelley was one of the world's largest manufacturing companies, a Fortune 50 company -- became a penny stock in a decade or so. The technologies GP mentions didn't end commercial print -- they were all heavily in use _by_ co…

Oh and the actual driving mechanism was vulture capitalist takeover.

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

#908

Post by Tomis02 »

zmmmmm wrote: post #905

I will say here that there are meaningful jobs that especially tech people can engage with. There are gigantic unsolved problems. Climate change, cancer, thousands of rare disorders with no therapy or even good diagnostics. And many of these fields have actual roles for technical people to fill and usually can't find highly qualified people to do them because a software eng salary is far out of reach of the average r…

It's insane that jobs involving cancer research pay half of what a regular VC-funded web company pays.

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

#909

Post by jongjong »

salawat wrote: post #886
jongjong wrote: post #789

I think the part that's hard to absorb is that software engineering was a brutal path. You had to restructure your entire identity, ego, personality, social relationships around that career choice. People didn't expect their career to last forever, but they thought it was a ticket out to gain autonomy. Back in 2010-ish, many developers thought that, in the future, they'd all be running their own systems and servicing…

Almost like all western civilization is architected to ensure the benefit of a few at the expense of the many by design doesn't it? If not by design than by emergent consequence of how it executes.

Yes, the full extractive structure is much more visible now. Used to be discussed as "conspiracy theory" but now it's obvious that such structure exists and it doesn't require any conspiracy; shared incentives suffice. So yes, I would say that this structure is emergent.

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

#910

Post by shimman »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #814
THX1137 wrote: post #286

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…

I am very jealous of you.

Unless you live in a self isolated monastery you have neighbors and the only person stopping you from making friends is yourself.
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