The problem is not AI itself. But the fact the we live in the apex of the Business Idiot era.
AI job grief: A psychological crisis hitting tech workers
111–120 of 221 posts
Re: AI job grief: A psychological crisis hitting tech workers
#112I am probably different to most people, but I always have trouble understanding why people want to have jobs so much. The obvious and direct answer immediately of course is "to be able to pay the bills". But of course if we automated those jobs with AI, we could direct AI produced value into universal basic income so people wouldn't lose their income. Then the concern is of course, that the owners will not share the…
what you say about your desires makes perfect sense. I too would enjoy that kind of world. But how do you envision that playing out in reality?
Would you just nicely walk up to the White House and ask them to pass a law for UBI? Would you politely knock on Jeff Bezos’s door and ask him to share his billions?
no disrespect intended, but your comment strikes me as one that a young child might say. what I mean by that is - it feels very naïve about the (political and greed) problems we face in the world. Reality is there is a small club of extremely powerful and wealthy people who run the show. It’s a small club and we ain’t in it. if we lived 500 years ago, we could just force them to share. But that’s not going to happen in 2026 with a military and a police force, etc.
Re: AI job grief: A psychological crisis hitting tech workers
#113I’m close to despondent about how my job has changed. If the next 15 years of my life is just waiting on LLMs, I don’t think I can do it.
What are you saying, you want to type? You must be good at typing.
Re: AI job grief: A psychological crisis hitting tech workers
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your contribution moved the debate forward not one jot. Whining about people whining is even less valuable than the whining. And given Simon was meta-whining as a response to me whining… Well, I just don’t know where that leaves you. But I’ve added even less to the debate, beyond my initial contribution. However, to your point directly: Simon has a pretty valid argument. There’s a lot of slop posted on jere these day…
I'm not disagreeing about the slop, which is a monumental waste of everybody's time, for exactly the reasons discussed - which is why I quite specifically did not quibble about that aspect. I thought it would be clear that I was obviously referring to the last paragraph only, that being that part that contains as it does one quite specific reference to These Days, and some minor froth about downvotes. But perhaps not…
I thought you were just moaning generally… But in which case I take it back - your moan was perhaps somewhat justified. Posting about maybe less so :)
Re: AI job grief: A psychological crisis hitting tech workers
#115I’m close to despondent about how my job has changed. If the next 15 years of my life is just waiting on LLMs, I don’t think I can do it.
I hear you, brother. The prospect of being just a babysitter for the clanker strikes me as hell on earth. I'll try to do it - better to be miserable but employed, after all. But if that happens I will mourn the death of a job which I truly loved for the rest of my life.
Re: AI job grief: A psychological crisis hitting tech workers
#116I’m close to despondent about how my job has changed. If the next 15 years of my life is just waiting on LLMs, I don’t think I can do it.
What are you saying, you want to type? You must be good at typing.
Such dismissive quip is unkind.
The job has changed from a craft to operating an unreliable machine.
Instead of satisfaction of solving challenging problems with your own skill and creativity, you babysit a text extruder and slog through mistakes in its generated output.
Arguably this may make software cheaper to make and accessible to non-programmers, but for people who liked their job it's like being demoted from a restaurant chef to a microwave button pusher.
Re: AI job grief: A psychological crisis hitting tech workers
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are you saying, you want to type? You must be good at typing.
Such dismissive quip is unkind. The job has changed from a craft to operating an unreliable machine. Instead of satisfaction of solving challenging problems with your own skill and creativity, you babysit a text extruder and slog through mistakes in its generated output. Arguably this may make software cheaper to make and accessible to non-programmers, but for people who liked their job it's like being demoted from a…
Meh. Since when "typing" implies "solving challenging problems with your own skill and creativity". The "solving" and the "creativity" happen in your head while "typing" is a manual labor. I can contemplate multiple problems at the same time but I can only type one thing at a time. Writing code is like 10% of my programming job. I take an LLM to do the typing for me any day. I still solve challenging problems. Because my secret skill isn't typing, you see. Yeah, call it "dismissive".
Re: AI job grief: A psychological crisis hitting tech workers
#118I am probably different to most people, but I always have trouble understanding why people want to have jobs so much. The obvious and direct answer immediately of course is "to be able to pay the bills". But of course if we automated those jobs with AI, we could direct AI produced value into universal basic income so people wouldn't lose their income. Then the concern is of course, that the owners will not share the…
UBI is never coming man. Rich countries don’t even properly provide healthcare or take care of pensioners, let alone handing everyone a paycheck every month for doing nothing.
Re: AI job grief: A psychological crisis hitting tech workers
#119I’m close to despondent about how my job has changed. If the next 15 years of my life is just waiting on LLMs, I don’t think I can do it.
What are you saying, you want to type? You must be good at typing.
> What are you saying, you want to type?
Nah, they want to think beyond the superficial prompting level. A lot of real programmers feel exactly the same.
It is hard to notice this sometimes on HN because this site is rife with the very idea-man-VC-pilled-finance-bro-pseudo-hackers that over the past 15-20 years have turned the tech industry from one of optimism for a brighter future to one that most normal people now distrust and hate.
Re: AI job grief: A psychological crisis hitting tech workers
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not disagreeing about the slop, which is a monumental waste of everybody's time, for exactly the reasons discussed - which is why I quite specifically did not quibble about that aspect. I thought it would be clear that I was obviously referring to the last paragraph only, that being that part that contains as it does one quite specific reference to These Days, and some minor froth about downvotes. But perhaps not…
I thought you were just moaning generally… But in which case I take it back - your moan was perhaps somewhat justified. Posting about maybe less so :)
We are exhorted not to comment on the voting in general: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html - of course, if you're urged not to comment on the voting, would commenting on commenting on the voting be any better? Possibly not.
But, too late: my delete rights have expired. We're stuck with my comment forever now. May this be a lesson to everybody involved.