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What young workers are doing to AI-proof themselves

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Re: What young workers are doing to AI-proof themselves

#121

Post by NegativeLatency »

yojo wrote: post #46
margorczynski wrote: post #33

The "go into trades" thing has two major flaws: 1) The supply of work will skyrocket when everyone will flock there for work 2) Demand will plummet as the white collar people who bought these services will loose their jobs and income And of course if robotics will get solved to an acceptable degree most of those jobs will also get mostly automated.

Having spent a couple years rehabbing a 100 year old house, I’m convinced the trades will be the last thing to go. When the building you’re working on has been ship-of-Theseus’d by 3 generations of home owners, everything is out of distribution. When a robot can reliably do this work, I think it can reliably do any human job that requires physical ability and judgement.

Especially if you get into a specialized trade for people with money.

I’ve repaired a lot of my historic windows myself because of how expensive it is to get someone else to do it. (Quoted 8k for one leaded glass window) I think it’s become my new backup job if I really am replaced by a computer.

Re: What young workers are doing to AI-proof themselves

#123

Post by bryanrasmussen »

terminalshort wrote: post #89
alex43578 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If an “industry’s labour [is] supplied only by those inherently passionate about it” the post says it would “crush wages and working conditions”. That runs completely counter to the basics of supply and demand in a perfect competition market. It would be market with far fewer (labor) suppliers, who could therefore command a higher wage, not lower.

To use your example of someone working on the plumbing of an accounts payable system, who is passionate about that? The supply is near zero. That, like most jobs, is going to need to be done entirely by people who are just doing it for the money, and there is nothing wrong with that. Your example runs counter to the laws of supply and demand too. You understand that wages will rise when supply is restricted, but you…

> That, like most jobs, is going to need to be done entirely by people who are just doing it for the money

why then do they all have those interview rounds where you have to talk about what really attracted you to work at this boring company and how you would love to do that kind of work? They evidently haven't gotten the memo.

Re: What young workers are doing to AI-proof themselves

#124

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

time0ut wrote: post #11
striped_hash wrote: post #4

I don’t think kids should be insulating from AI. The examples in this article suggest for example that some people are dropping out of college and going into trade schools. I get that society needs electricians and construction workers and new software graduates are finding it difficult to get jobs. But having had a moderately successful career building software, I tend to think there is a lot of scope for the $40 tr…

Optimistically, I hope it filters out the people who were only interested in it for the money. When I was in school, decades ago now, very few people went into CS compared to other majors. Everyone I knew going into it did it because they loved it. I would have done it regardless of the career opportunities because I want to build stuff. Interviewing candidates over the years since then, my experience has been there…

I really wish this entire romanticism of the good old days when people only got into computer science because they breathed ate and dreamed about computers would die.

It was never reality - I graduated in 1996 and have worked at 10 jobs everything from lifestyle companies, to startups, to boring old enterprise to BigTech and now consulting companies. To a tee everyone has treated it like a job and not some religious calling. There is absolutely nothing wrong with coming to work at 8 leaving at 6 and not thinking about computers until the next day.

You don’t need to be doing side projects and open source contributions to do your job as a software developer anymore than a surgeon needs to be performing operations at home.

No I wouldn’t have chosen a major because I enjoyed it if it didn’t make any money. I didn’t then and I still haven’t found a method to get over my addiction to food and shelter.

Re: What young workers are doing to AI-proof themselves

#125

Post by galaxyLogic »

So a lot of people might lose their jobs because of AI, right? But the same amount of economic output, probably more, will be produced because of AI. By whom will that output then be consumed? If people don't have jobs they don't have money to buy and therefore ... prices will have to come down!

Society as a whole will be better off because there is more output, better quality output. Then it's for us to vote in a government that shares the fruits of AI with everybody, by way of progressive taxation. Government, use the taxes you collect to give us free food. We don't need 5-star restaurants, just healthy food. We can do this, in a democracy.

Re: What young workers are doing to AI-proof themselves

#126

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #123
terminalshort wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To use your example of someone working on the plumbing of an accounts payable system, who is passionate about that? The supply is near zero. That, like most jobs, is going to need to be done entirely by people who are just doing it for the money, and there is nothing wrong with that. Your example runs counter to the laws of supply and demand too. You understand that wages will rise when supply is restricted, but you…

> That, like most jobs, is going to need to be done entirely by people who are just doing it for the money why then do they all have those interview rounds where you have to talk about what really attracted you to work at this boring company and how you would love to do that kind of work? They evidently haven't gotten the memo.

I have never once pretended to be “passionate” about working. Never wrote a single line of code that I haven’t gotten paid for since I graduated from college 30 years ago. I was a hobbyist before college for 6 years.

I’ve gone through the BigTech guantlet successfully. Even then I showed I cared about doing my job well and competently.

I have purposefully thrown nuggets out during interviews letting companies know that I had a life outside of work, I’m not going to work crazy hours and in the latter half of my career, I don’t do on call.

Re: What young workers are doing to AI-proof themselves

#127

Post by fnordpiglet »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #125

So a lot of people might lose their jobs because of AI, right? But the same amount of economic output, probably more, will be produced because of AI. By whom will that output then be consumed? If people don't have jobs they don't have money to buy and therefore ... prices will have to come down! Society as a whole will be better off because there is more output, better quality output. Then it's for us to vote in a go…

Because in modern society we equate toil with morality we will toil on ever more meaningless crap tasks for food coupons for food that costs nothing to produce but is withheld through artificial scarcity to ensure meaningless toil occupies our existence because of a philosophy from the 1700’s.

Re: What young workers are doing to AI-proof themselves

#128

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

sb057 wrote: post #42
denkmoon wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having an industry’s labour supplied only by those inherently passionate about it is a great way to crush wages and working conditions. Look at what companies like Blizzard get away with because their employees just want to make video games at their favourite dev studio. While they’re a pain in the ass sometimes, I welcome the devs who are only here for the cash.

See also: public school teachers. You either need to be insanely passionate or incredibly stupid to take ~$55k/year for long hours as an educator that is also a babysitter. And insanely passionate teachers are in short supply.

There are a lot of other benefits of being a teacher especially if it’s a secondary income in a two income family. Namely you are on the same schedule as your kids. My mom is a retired high school teacher.

Re: What young workers are doing to AI-proof themselves

#129

Post by SequoiaHope »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #125

So a lot of people might lose their jobs because of AI, right? But the same amount of economic output, probably more, will be produced because of AI. By whom will that output then be consumed? If people don't have jobs they don't have money to buy and therefore ... prices will have to come down! Society as a whole will be better off because there is more output, better quality output. Then it's for us to vote in a go…

I agree completely, but you forget that another option is that the powerful will use these tools to make us suffer and we will be powerless to stop them.

Re: What young workers are doing to AI-proof themselves

#130

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

saltyoldman wrote: post #57
striped_hash wrote: post #4

I don’t think kids should be insulating from AI. The examples in this article suggest for example that some people are dropping out of college and going into trade schools. I get that society needs electricians and construction workers and new software graduates are finding it difficult to get jobs. But having had a moderately successful career building software, I tend to think there is a lot of scope for the $40 tr…

You're coping. Everyone wants a remote software job. These are dead. If you want something in software, it will need to be robotics or space related and you'll drive to a location to do it. If you want to be in a remote, small town, get into construction and become a builder with their own GC license in a few years. Then charge people 400k to build that little dream cottage with 2 guys (you and a team mate) twice a y…

Interesting, I’ve been working remotely at “remote first departments/companies for 6 years across 3 jobs.

Admittedly the first was at BigTech in a “field by design” role that went RTO last year a year after I left.

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