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AI job grief: A psychological crisis hitting tech workers

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Re: AI job grief: A psychological crisis hitting tech workers

#171

Post by ElProlactin »

pornel wrote: post #116
throw1234567891 wrote: post #113

Earlier 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…

> The job has changed from a craft to operating an unreliable machine.

Many tech/software people were completely unsympathetic if not downright arrogant when their products displaced people in other professions who felt the same way.

The lesson here is that ultimately, change comes for everyone.

Re: AI job grief: A psychological crisis hitting tech workers

#172

Post by throwuxiytayq »

ornornor wrote: post #162
throwuxiytayq wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some stereotypes are a useful description of reality. You’ve gotta pick your battles. In the US, 87.3% of nurses are female and 92.3% of truckers are male.

Maybe this nomenclature of yours doesn’t help. A “computer” used to be a job mostly done by female. Now it’s the opposite.

I'm not going to hold back my description of reality out of fear that it's somehow magically shaping it. Stating most nurses are female is the mildest observation possible, and doesn't sneak in any opinion whether that's good or bad, unlike your comment.

Re: AI job grief: A psychological crisis hitting tech workers

#173

Post by tayo42 »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #11

I 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…

> The obvious and direct answer immediately of course is "to be able to pay the bills".

Slight correction, is that it's I want to pay bills now. And not deal with uncertainty for a decade while other people try to direct the economy or what ever.

Re: AI job grief: A psychological crisis hitting tech workers

#174

Post by conartist6 »

Tech jobs have always contained a bunch of work that didn't matter much: everything to do with perf reviews for example, and most of those reports.

Here's the thing: after we took care of all the little overhead crap that "needed to get done," *we were allowed to go after the real work, the "illegible" "trim tab" work that doesn't really show up on your perf review but actually determines the course of the business over the next 10 years.*

What we've lost is our ability to secure a future for ourselves. The grief is the negative image of the bright future we once saw ourselves building: a vision now replaced with the specter of the wholesale destruction of the fabric of society. That apocalyptic vision is now touted as what we should labor towards since it is apparently THE bet to place that society will collapse. People will shower you with money so long as you make this exact bet.

Re: AI job grief: A psychological crisis hitting tech workers

#175

Post by mplanchard »

throw1234567891 wrote: post #167
mplanchard wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels to me more like the way doing math on paper does.

Yeah, you do it every day for money, right? And someone is paying you for that? Dude, people designed ships, aircrafts, the shuttle with a ruler and a pencil, today people use CAD and CFD because it’s cheaper and better but people still know how to use the ruler and pencil! At least those who want to know, know. But not everything has to be designed with the ruler and the pencil. Be the guy who presses buttons, and k…

It’s different, because in our field we’re often learning or doing new things, as opposed to merely rehashing the exact same thing we’ve done before.

I find it very difficult to learn a new thing by reading it, vs by doing it.

And indeed, most mathematicians, who do get paid to do math, work a lot with pencil and paper. If math is secondary to your job, you likely will not, but if it’s your primary job, you likely spend a lot of time working ideas out in the more primitive fashion.

Re: AI job grief: A psychological crisis hitting tech workers

#176

Post by tdeck »

denkmoon wrote: post #109

I’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.

It's not just waiting on them, you're going to be reviewing an endless flood of their agentic slop, cajoling or bullying them into sticking with a problem or looking harder for information, all in between glancing at AI summaries of your colleagues' AI generated Slack messages and approving the AI generated auto-replies.

Re: AI job grief: A psychological crisis hitting tech workers

#177

Post by tdeck »

lucaspiller wrote: post #130
pornel wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This also perfectly describes the career change from software engineer to engineering manager. Instead of solving things yourself, you need to learn how to describe them in a way others can solve them. Otherwise you will just be fighting the instinct to just do it yourself.

At least as a software manager you get the satisfaction of helping another human being develop in their own career. I doubt making Claude Code less prone to certain kinds of fuckups is quite as rewarding.

Re: AI job grief: A psychological crisis hitting tech workers

#179

Post by amanaplanacanal »

watwut wrote: post #104
sudosteph wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and this is something that is routinely overlooked. Work identities run deep, and they are not easily changed. Andrew Yang actually made a strong point when he was talking about automation-driven job losses way back in 2019. He said you can offer the best and most expensive retraining programs imaginable to help people displaced from their jobs move to fields like healthcare - but most truck drivers, even if out…

Truck driver to nurse is special kind of issue, because nursing is feminine coded occupation and trucking attracts men who want to prove own masculinity. But they will take jobs that are not that much feminine. And nursing also require a lot more study then people assume, 40 years old trucker will have hard time spending that much time in school even if it was his lifelong dream.

Without throwing the gender stuff into it... There are plenty of occupations I have no interest in and can't picture myself ever doing. People spend their childhood and young adulthood figuring out what they are good at and what they enjoy, and you can't expect them to suddenly move to something completely different.

Re: AI job grief: A psychological crisis hitting tech workers

#180

Post by rdtsc »

ornornor wrote: post #149
watwut wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truck driver to nurse is special kind of issue, because nursing is feminine coded occupation and trucking attracts men who want to prove own masculinity. But they will take jobs that are not that much feminine. And nursing also require a lot more study then people assume, 40 years old trucker will have hard time spending that much time in school even if it was his lifelong dream.

> nursing is feminine coded occupation and trucking attracts men who want to prove own masculinity In your head maybe?

> In your head maybe?

How do you mean? Trucking doesn’t mostly attract men and gp made it up?

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