Rolling the ladder up behind us • Hacker News Board

Re: Rolling the ladder up behind us

#191

Post by ChrisMarshallNY » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 9:21 PM UTC

pdimitar wrote: post #189

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and pay me to do the big and meaningful things Ay, there's the rub... It is a lot more expensive to do high-Quality work, than it is to do shoddy (or, to be fair, barely acceptable) work. You need to hire more experienced (expensive) people, and then, you need to hire better managers, because you don't want the usual crap managers in charge of them. And then, you need to pay for the time they take, "polishing the f…

Well money is always the rub. And many people, once they become better off, become stingy and paranoid and don't want to reinvest -- which I completely understand, especially if they didn't have rich parents and trust fund(s) and had to grind their boots off to get where they are. If I ever make it I know I am absolutely joining that exact group. I owe the world nothing -- definitely not after decades of abuse and ze…

Yes, I have been fortunate to be in a position to pay it back (not forward). I'm nowhere near as well-off as a substantial portion of the folks here, but I have enough to live (humbly), and get the equipment I need to do my work.

But I also know that I am an outlier, and, quite frankly, an anachronism.

Just a little while ago, I made a new release of this app[0]. I talked to someone this morning, and realized that they had no idea that you could swipe the screen, to get to different times.

I added a small label to the bottom of the main screen, telling folks that they could swipe to see different times. I had to translate it to Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Brazilian Portuguese, which ChatGPT was ideal for (I don't think that I'd use it for bulk translations, but it was great for a "spot translation").

That kind of thing may seem silly, but it's also exactly the kind of thing that many, many apps don't do. It's quite easy to say that "any power user knows to swipe," but that often excludes a huge number of folks. Since I started hiding the main time selection control panel, swiping has become the main navigation technique.

[0] https://github.com/LittleGreenViper/VirtualMeetingFinder

Re: Rolling the ladder up behind us

#192

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 9:59 PM UTC

kevmo314 wrote: post #6

> Actually, what are we going to do when everyone that cares about the craft of software ages out, burns out, or escapes the industry because of the ownership class setting unrealistic expectations on people? Nothing, I guess? There's an implicit assumption that software written by humans is a necessity. If the future finds that software written by computers is more profitable then that's just what it is. The univers…

[deleted]

Re: Rolling the ladder up behind us

#193

Post by mm263 » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 11:50 PM UTC

ArcTugboat03 wrote: post #152

mm263 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not making an argument you think you are making. We switched from one set of problems to another set of problems that didn't exist before industrial agriculture: soil erosion, pest explosion, entire harvests wiped out by disease because genetic uniformity, which means one pathogen can destroy everything - think Irish potato famine but now it's scientific and modern. The mess of traditional farming - with its…

This is an excessively romanticized view of traditional farming. If you look at the astonishing death tolls from famine throughout human history, including in living memory, it is pretty clear why, for all its problems, industrial agriculture is still a far superior approach. Food security requires food production at levels which demand industrialized agriculture, for better or worse.

You are missing the point. The point isn't that the legacy methods of agriculture are unequivocally better. They have their downsides, some of the downsides are pretty severe. The point is that abolishing traditional farming in favour of industrial agriculture yielded unforeseen costs, the ones that were never even hypothesized when we started scaling agriculture. Now with AI and agents, we'll reap those unforeseen costs again. The profits will go into the pockets of the owners, the unforeseen costs (which include the costs of switching from one system to another) will become the society's burden to bear, as it was with industrial-scale agriculture.

Re: Rolling the ladder up behind us

#194

Post by mm263 » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 11:53 PM UTC

BriggyDwiggs42 wrote: post #141

mm263 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not making an argument you think you are making. We switched from one set of problems to another set of problems that didn't exist before industrial agriculture: soil erosion, pest explosion, entire harvests wiped out by disease because genetic uniformity, which means one pathogen can destroy everything - think Irish potato famine but now it's scientific and modern. The mess of traditional farming - with its…

I need to finish seeing like a state and will defer to your expertise, but this raised a question in me: why are we still limping along if our farming techniques are doomed like this? Did we never adapt in recognition of the flaws of monoculture?

We adapted, that's why the pesticide industry is so big. I'm not a great agriculture expert, but from my understanding it's an uphill battle against nature and we are winning for now.

Re: Rolling the ladder up behind us

#195

Post by tangjurine » Sun, Jun 22, 2025, 3:22 AM UTC

ge96 wrote: post #134

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The owning class will use it to reduce payroll costs Things are cyclic, nothing new; the previous big scare was (is?) outsourcing, where for the same price as one developer in western / northern Europe or SF you can hire five from eastern Europe or India. But that hasn't affected employability of the one developer, as far as I'm aware. I'm not even thinking of skill level, I'm sure that's comparable (but honestly I…

> hasn't affected employability of the one developer I wonder, combo that r&d rule, general economics, saturation in the field The norm for new grads seems to be "apply at least 2000 times, get 1 job"

the one developer

one dev to rule them all, and in darkness bind them

sounds like a 10x dev to me

Re: Rolling the ladder up behind us

#196

Post by mooreds » Sun, Jun 22, 2025, 12:30 PM UTC

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #20

kevmo314 wrote: post #6

> Actually, what are we going to do when everyone that cares about the craft of software ages out, burns out, or escapes the industry because of the ownership class setting unrealistic expectations on people? Nothing, I guess? There's an implicit assumption that software written by humans is a necessity. If the future finds that software written by computers is more profitable then that's just what it is. The univers…

Well, as someone who considers themselves to be a "software craftsman," I have come to the conclusion that the work I do will never be valued, and will always be considered "too expensive." Since I work for free, that's not an issue for me, but that's economically unfeasible for most folks. The issue with an industry awash with cheap dross, is that it becomes prohibitively expensive to produce high Quality stuff. Any…

I've actually thought over my career that software is one of the last places for well compensated craftmanship. In the sense of solving unique problems for good pay. I think that was due to:

- the explosion of software needs due to the internet

- the scalability of software solutions (zero marginal cost for additional copies is a hell of a drug)

I still think that is true, but it may be fading away for many people. That said, the newer devs that I've met that have found jobs tend to find them at bespoke consulting shops (rather than product companies).

I think there will always be room for quality craftmanship in software, but it will be boutique, the same way that there is craftmanship for high quality furniture or cabinetry. ~95% is manufactured mass market and cheap, ~5% is high quality bespoke and expensive.

Re: Rolling the ladder up behind us

#197

Post by RainyDayTmrw » Sun, Jun 22, 2025, 3:28 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #73

Refreeze5224 wrote: post #2

This is the true problem with AI. It's with who owns it, and what they will inevitably use it for. Whether it can do cool stuff with code or equal a junior developer is irrelevant. What it can do is less important than what it will be used for. The owning class will use it to reduce payroll costs, which from their perspective is a cost center and always will be. If you're not an owner, then you have no control over t…

> The owning class will use it to reduce payroll costs Things are cyclic, nothing new; the previous big scare was (is?) outsourcing, where for the same price as one developer in western / northern Europe or SF you can hire five from eastern Europe or India. But that hasn't affected employability of the one developer, as far as I'm aware. I'm not even thinking of skill level, I'm sure that's comparable (but honestly I…

I know of two major examples - one personal and one word-of-mouth - where a major US company successfully took their Covid era remote work knowledge, applied it to outsourcing, and successfully replaced most of their US onshore developers with offshore.

Re: Rolling the ladder up behind us

#198

Post by int_19h » Sun, Jun 22, 2025, 7:39 PM UTC

kevmo314 wrote: post #91

sundaeofshock wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think that capitalists will stop with software developers? If AI can truly eliminate software jobs, then most knowledge based jobs will be at risk of elimination. Let’s be honest; capital wants to eliminate all labor, and damn the consequences. People are not going to willingly give up lives of comfort for abject squalor. This will not go well.

I don't think they will but I also don't think abject squalor is the way to describe artisanal work. On top of that, I agree that capitalists continue to eliminate jobs but I also think they create jobs in other sectors. The reason I don't buy into doomsday scenarios is I don't believe they will eliminate all the jobs at once . I only happen to be a software engineer. If I was born 250 years ago, I'm sure I would've…

The long-term promise of AI is that every job can be automated at scale. This is very different from past industrial advancements in technology.

As for artisans, they'll do fine, but the point is that it's a much smaller niche, so very few people who have jobs today will be the lucky ones to squeeze into it.

Re: Rolling the ladder up behind us

#199

Post by int_19h » Sun, Jun 22, 2025, 7:49 PM UTC

Veedrac wrote: post #55

A defense of the Luddites against sewing machines was honestly not something I expected. Support for the Luddites in general, sure I can predict that, but the claim that sewing machines are bad, exploitative, produce "shitty" cloth, serve only the pursuit of profit...

There's a lot of nonsense there, like:

"They were skeptical that the shitty cloth that the power loom produced would be a net benefit to society because it meant that customers would inevitably have to buy their clothes over and over again, turning a one-time purchase into a subscription."

This is such an obvious attempt to reframe history to fit the modern discourse. What Luddites cared about was their own jobs, not "net benefit to society".

Re: Rolling the ladder up behind us

#200

Post by int_19h » Sun, Jun 22, 2025, 7:56 PM UTC

camgunz wrote: post #180

pdimitar wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is "we"? A lot of "us" don't have the time to do programming as a hobby -- even if we started off that way. Many of "us" don't accept blanket grouping with privileged others who had thousands of opportunities to improve the general IT area but were too cool to do it and invented yet another LISP interpreter instead. And then they come to HN and use "we" as a big convenient scapegoat, obviously to escape responsib…

Hey same team. Earnestly asking: what should we do? I have some ideas but honestly they're so radical they feel like wild overreactions.

We need unions, for starters. And not the small kind that is scoped to one employer, but large industrial unions that can deliver large losses to the capital through massive strikes.

The irony is that the easiest time to establish those was back when software developer jobs were abundant and we had a stronger position wrt employers. But, of course, back then most devs not only didn't see the point of a union, but were actively hostile to the idea. Now that employers have a much stronger upper hand and are flexing their muscle with layoffs etc the idea is suddenly much more palatable to many, but it's also much harder to get going because of the risks involved. But the longer we sit and wait, the more code is written by the robots without human involvement, and the less powerful such a union would be.