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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

#281

Post by strofocles »

lb1lf wrote: post #250
edwcross wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how it works in the US, but in some parts of Europe, blue collar trades are currently much better, for several reasons: - Price of housing and associated maintenance keeps rising, and so do small jobs like fixing plumbing, gardening, etc; - You can easily avoid paying VAT if you know how to, so that's a 20% increase, or even more, if you can benefit from social services (e.g. since you don't earn a lot, you…

Time for a classic, Soviet-era joke: A Soviet engineer needs some plumbing done in his apartment, and calls for a plumber. The plumber arrives, does his thing, and hands over the bill. The engineer is shocked. -'What, this is like a quarter of what I make in a month - for half an hour's work???' Plumber shrugs. -'Well, why don't you come join us? Easy work, well paid, no responsibility - just remember to keep mum abo…

thank you

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

#282

Post by red-iron-pine »

alistairSH wrote: post #265
edwcross wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how it works in the US, but in some parts of Europe, blue collar trades are currently much better, for several reasons: - Price of housing and associated maintenance keeps rising, and so do small jobs like fixing plumbing, gardening, etc; - You can easily avoid paying VAT if you know how to, so that's a 20% increase, or even more, if you can benefit from social services (e.g. since you don't earn a lot, you…

Is it actually true that the savings on home maintenance and social services offsets the higher salaries of white collar work? That's kind of crazy if it's true. In the US, you can make pretty good money in the trades, but generally, there are many caveats - you have to be your own boss, preferably with a few employees; you pay your own benefits; you don't get any paid leave; and depending on the trade, you could be…

$10-20k of home improvement work adds considerable value for reselling, and you're only on the hook for raw materials -- you've already got the tools and skills and time

one of the wealthiest dudes I know is a carpenter who loves workin wood. his free time is spent making cabinets and furnature and blasting obscure music

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

#283

Post by Moto7451 »

creamyhorror wrote: post #259
ehnto wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber needs to prove that they are growing though to validate their stock value, one of the tricks used to be increasing headcount to show growth. But other tricks include new ventures, essentially public companies and VC companies have an almost unlimited appetite for new ventures, as that is how they keep validating their future growth and stock prices. Currently financial realities are forcing layoffs, and the AI s…

The end of ZIRP (cheap money) is precisely what ended the new-ventures/new-projects drive among big companies and turned them all to cost-cutting and maintenance mode.

This is precisely my experience. Except our roadmaps didn’t change much.

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

#284

Post by dominotw »

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.

we wont be living in these houses because cost of mainintence will be unaffordable.

we will be living in houses that can be reparied by robots.

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

#285

Post by dominotw »

GorbachevyChase wrote: post #96
cal_dent wrote: post #48

I still don't understand the logic that any job is safe from ai (if it lives up to expectations). Sure, it might not be directly impacted by ai but why is there this expectation that the excess labour from those directly impacted doesnt act to suppress the earning power of other jobs? Especially considering that the implication is that humans just become a pair of hands with opposable thumbs?. Take the electrician in…

I don’t think we have any way of knowing what will happen. We’re in such an age of abundance now that it’s possible to make a living fighting with your girlfriends in Salt Lake City. Graphite block warehouse owners in China can be celebrities in the US. The influencer economy would have seems unthinkable and absurd in the 90s. What will be normal 30 years from now will probably seem just as bizarre. I’d like to think…

> make a living fighting with your girlfriends in Salt Lake City.

what again?

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

#286

Post by AlexeyBelov »

alephnerd wrote: post #37
ramesh31 wrote: post #2

I'll say invest totally in domain knowledge now. The value of knowing how to invert a binary tree from memory has dropped to approximately zero. Web development as we knew it for the past 20 years is completely dead as an entry level trade. The power is shifting to people with useful knowledge and expertise that isn't about twiddling bits.

[flagged]

Can you calm down? He's not downvoted. I noticed recently your comments started really being low quality. Constant complaining and "EDIT: cannot reply" and zero introspection.

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

#287

Post by bodhi_mind »

Amezarak wrote: post #230
edwcross wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how it works in the US, but in some parts of Europe, blue collar trades are currently much better, for several reasons: - Price of housing and associated maintenance keeps rising, and so do small jobs like fixing plumbing, gardening, etc; - You can easily avoid paying VAT if you know how to, so that's a 20% increase, or even more, if you can benefit from social services (e.g. since you don't earn a lot, you…

You would be highly advised to learn how to do basic plumbing, electrical, and renovation tasks yourself in the US as well. The cost savings is enormous. Finding a quality contractor, in addition to being expensive, can also be very hard - there's plenty of people doing plumbing or electrical who might be licensed and everything but are grossly incompetent or never finish jobs. A lot of stuff in the US is absurdly ea…

Cutting pex to remove old shutoff valve and crimp on a new 1/4 turn valve took me probably 2 min and a $15 tool from Amazon.

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

#288

Post by AStrangeMorrow »

alistairSH wrote: post #265
edwcross wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how it works in the US, but in some parts of Europe, blue collar trades are currently much better, for several reasons: - Price of housing and associated maintenance keeps rising, and so do small jobs like fixing plumbing, gardening, etc; - You can easily avoid paying VAT if you know how to, so that's a 20% increase, or even more, if you can benefit from social services (e.g. since you don't earn a lot, you…

Is it actually true that the savings on home maintenance and social services offsets the higher salaries of white collar work? That's kind of crazy if it's true. In the US, you can make pretty good money in the trades, but generally, there are many caveats - you have to be your own boss, preferably with a few employees; you pay your own benefits; you don't get any paid leave; and depending on the trade, you could be…

Might be surprising but I am kinda willing to believe it. Since we bought our house, we had quite a bit of work done by professionals. But whenever I can I do things myself.

Like I had multiple companies quote me $300-500 based on the job for things that take me maybe 2-3 hours total to do, including learning about it (will be faster next time), getting the materials, and doing the job.

When you have a few of these a months they add up. It is usually nothing for a month and then 4-5 things to fix/improve the next

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

#289

Post by fnordpiglet »

ghufran_syed wrote: post #149
fnordpiglet wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I look forward to seeing your company actually producing and selling food for “next to nothing”, given how easy it apparently is

We can produce enough food for everyone on earth to eat, and as more automation sets in, labor costs will decline. We are already at artificial scarcity - other than political animus rooted in racism and toil is moral there’s no reason for anyone anywhere to starve. This trend won’t reverse, but will become increasingly perverse.

For example, in my neck of the woods there’s the company Carbon Robotics, which is pretty successful. They develop autonomous tractors and a laser weeding system both of which have good adoption and sales at megafarms. They decrease the cost of herbicide application and labor significantly. That’s just one such company. It’s to the point that farms go fallow, or convert to solar, because the revenue produced farming isn’t enough to justify farming because we would be feeding people for free otherwise. That, my friend, is artificial scarcity. So keep toiling for your food coupons and convince yourself that the market is infallible.

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

#290

Post by laffOr »

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…

Rich people will consume most of the output. This is how life worked for most of the last 10k years, didn't it?
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