Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

noemamag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 1001 posts

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#421

Post by andix »

annoyingnoob wrote: post #413

I'm not sure that Hobbies are an existential threat. We had hobbies before the Internet too. It is the non-stop rat race that is the problem. Before cellphones and email we went home from work and left work at work, for the most part. Find a rich life outside of work.

Here in Europe employees turn off their company devices after work. Getting called-in in your time off usually happens not more than once every few months. You're not supposed to check your messages in your time off. But it still feels a lot like described in this article.

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#422

Post by analog31 »

Animats wrote: post #221

Addressing the question in the title, "What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers", look at what happened to printers. That was a good skilled trade for centuries. Then it just went away. Phototypesetting took the high volume end. Desktop publishing took the low end. Computer-controlled presses took press operators. And then the newspaper business died. I've heard homeless former printers…

Agreed. I'm a musician. Talking pictures. Then piracy, and a few things in between. Now music is either a spectacle, is carried out in private, or as a labor of love by people like myself who have some other means of support.

Support that AI is now threatening.

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#423

Post by pydry »

xlii wrote: post #85

Long long time ago people in tech were in tech because of the tech. Then, at some point, being in tech became a gilded profession and everyone: salesmen, artists, clerks etc. joined in. Not because they wanted to be in tech. They wanted gold. For years it was working, but right now things shifted. You can no longer just do the thing you learned for a job and continue doing so, because landscape shifted. So they're mi…

>For people I know who are in tech for the tech nothing changed.

Yeah it did. The environments became a lot more toxic and the decisions became a lot more stupid.

I also miss working with people who actually cared about the craft. They exist on the IC level but they're burned out and on the executive level it's mostly just insecure morons these days.

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#424

Post by analog31 »

Foobar8568 wrote: post #373
Animats wrote: post #221

Addressing the question in the title, "What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers", look at what happened to printers. That was a good skilled trade for centuries. Then it just went away. Phototypesetting took the high volume end. Desktop publishing took the low end. Computer-controlled presses took press operators. And then the newspaper business died. I've heard homeless former printers…

Fuck, there has been a class of workers who had faith in their careers? Beside Charlatans and Billionaires?

I had some level of faith as a scientist. Today, I expect that scientists will be replaced by faith in AI before we're replaced by AI. Either one is a threat to my job.

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#425

Post by michaelhoney »

greenchair wrote: post #296
pixelready wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer to this is always the one we don’t want to talk about: a robust public safety net. This is the balance to “move fast and break shit” technological disruption. It’s great to have an adaptive overall system, but disruption has a human cost. If there’s a robust public healthcare and UBI type system in place to pad the fall, people will bounce back and adapt when industries break down. If instead we stick our…

maybe because every time UBI is tried it fails?

you will need to provide evidence for that assertion

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#426

Post by cupcakecommons »

I read up until the term "late capitalism" then stopped and rolled my eyes and closed the page. Coin clippers control the money supply and mainstream economics is the sham - it really is that simple. Mass enshittification will continue until monetary debasement and ensuing Cantillon effect is halted and pricing mechanisms can function.

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#427

Post by pseudalopex »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #195
pseudalopex wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All the news is just outrage porn and non-stop predictions of impending doom. No. And this shallow dismissal builds the mood you complained about.

As an experiment, completely stop consuming news and social media for a few weeks. People have lived their entire lives without these information streams, you'll survive unplugging a bit. Now I can't tell you what you will experience if you go through with this, but I can promise it's very enlightening.

> As an experiment, completely stop consuming news and social media for a few weeks.

The assumption I had not was false.

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#428

Post by harimau777 »

RealityVoid wrote: post #247
Animats wrote: post #221

Addressing the question in the title, "What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers", look at what happened to printers. That was a good skilled trade for centuries. Then it just went away. Phototypesetting took the high volume end. Desktop publishing took the low end. Computer-controlled presses took press operators. And then the newspaper business died. I've heard homeless former printers…

I sense there is this air around of "demand our jobs keep being relevant" - I personally feel this kind of thing holds the world backwards if it works. I think if our jobs were to become obsolete, embracing it and re-orienting oneself is the one thing that is personally effective and is morally right. But what do I know, I'm just some doofus on the internet. The irony is not lost on me on all those years where people…

Sure, as long as the new jobs pay at least as much as the old jobs and society is willing to pay for the retraining. In that case I imagine there would be lots of people willing to reskill.

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#429

Post by deadbabe »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #54

Saw a meme on mastodon the other day contrasting people of the '90s going online to escape from offline reality, and people of the '20s going offline to escape from online reality. There's something to that. I think a big part of it is just how incredibly toxic the web has become. If you spend any time online, as most tech workers do, you have exceptional resiliency if you're able to stay sane and level headed. Going…

I can’t prove it, but my gut tells me a large amount of people on the web are basically just LARPing extremist takes or depressions as some kind of fun outlet.

Why take the web seriously? It’s more fun to be some ridiculous person. Of course, some people are genuine and this kind of behavior chews them up when they take it seriously.

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#430

Post by jLaForest »

jgerrish wrote: post #355

I'd like to congratulate Aaron Horwath on publishing this article. As a creative professional, he must feel pride in bringing his ideas to light. Unfortunately, this isn't the movie industry. We don't see a list of credits at the end of his commentary recognizing the thousands of others involved in helping him publish his thoughts. Perhaps we can all chip in and name some of the many people involved in building the t…

Matt burned any leftover good will a long time ago
Post reply on HN