What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers • Hacker News Board

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

#531

Post by noduerme » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 1:59 AM UTC

paulorlando wrote: post #507

Rendello wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Farewell, Etaoin Shrdlu documents the last day of hot type at The New York Times before the digital changeover. It's one of my favourite documentaries, everything feels so vivid and alive: https://www.nytimes.com/video/insider/100000004687429/farewe...

Since you mentioned Etaoin Shrdlu and hot type / linotype... There are a lot of industries (at least historically) that have organized labor. In the UK, there was the “Wapping Dispute” in 1986 when computer technology enabled journalists to type in their copy directly, doing away with the need for workers to set type using linotype printing. Linotype was a big improvement on the older letter-by-letter typesetting and…

I live in Oregon. Up until last year, you weren't allowed to pump your own gas in most parts of the state. The law required gas station attendants to do it, as a scheme to keep them employed. The most annoying part of this wasn't the tiny marginal cost, but that it sometimes took forever to get your gas if the attendant was busy. You'd just sit there looking at the pump you weren't allowed to put your credit card into.

You can create laws to keep making work for a class of workers, but it ends up unpopular. Instead of a social safety net as it was intended, it turns into a corrupt drain on society at large, and a relative disadvantage to your economy versus those that are more ... agile, let's say. Check out e.g. the underpaid but overstaffed government bureaucracies and police forces in most Latin American countries. Giving a third of your society badge and a lousy paycheck often does more harm than good.

I don't consider this observation to be right wing (per the sibling post), it's just how things work. While there's nobility in work and psychologically it's better to keep people employed, I'd just as soon give all the gas station attendants a lifelong retirement UBI so they'd get out of the way and let me pump my gas.

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

#532

Post by stalfosknight » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 1:59 AM UTC

titanomachy wrote: post #412

cheschire wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did the remote thing before Covid and rejected it for many of the same reasons. Then Covid happened and so many people got to experience it and loved it. But I still hated it while I was forced to. Every time I told anyone that I personally didn’t like working from home, and was excited about the return to office that would inevitably come, I got SHOUTED at. Absolutely flayed for not being 110% in support of this t…

I understand both types of people, I think. Some of my friends are parents living outside of tech hubs whose lifestyle would be impossible without remote work, so they understandably felt attacked. But the discourse around this was unhinged. Some remote advocates were convinced that RTO was either a C-suite power trip, or a move to stop commercial real estate from imploding.

It is a C-suite power trip.

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

#533

Post by sysworld » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 2:07 AM UTC

robotnikman wrote: post #451

Animats wrote: post #222

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…

This time its the entire white collar industry though. The scale of job displacement will be at a scale never seen before. If there are no societal safety nets in place for this then I can see things going south quickly

We need a path for people effected to be able to at least cover basic needs, while also offering some kinda training into a different role that pays.

Defiantly not something most countries have setup.

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

#534

Post by bentcorner » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 2:07 AM UTC

jleyank wrote: post #482

Animats wrote: post #222

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…

Look at the disappearance of pink-collar jobs due to computerization and "do it yourself" that it enabled. There's lots of examples of whole career fields disappearing. The trick has always been to see whether and how things reappear.

Deleting career fields in and of itself is not a problem with technology, but when it's like the eye of sauron scouring workplaces and snapping jobs away (pardon the mixed universes), it starts to become a little alarming.

University graduates are often considered min-bar for white-collar work hiring, so if it takes 4 years to train someone, how are people supposed to decide on a career path when it takes less time than that to completely alter the workplace?

My daughter is entering her first year of nursing, a career path that she is greatly looking towards. Who says in 3 years that robotics companies don't actually deliver on their promises and completely up-end the care industry? While I think that unlikely, it's not like people aren't trying to automate nurses away.

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

#535

Post by Lerc » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 2:10 AM UTC

lovich wrote: post #500

Muromec wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(not a native speaker) fired up as in "optimistic and enthusiastic about the new messiah" or as in "Butlearian jihadi, all AI is haram" way?

There are sizeable camps for both those opinions.

I mostly agree, except for the Messiah part.

I think the optimistic excited people are thinking more 'What a time to be alive' than 'All praise be, for they have come'

Which is not to say there won't be people deifying AI, I just don't think there are many of those yet.

The cynical side of me thinks it will happen, but right now I feel like most of those who seem susceptible to that kind of thinking are tending towards the Butlearian.

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

#536

Post by tcrenshaw » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 2:12 AM UTC

sysworld wrote: post #533

robotnikman wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This time its the entire white collar industry though. The scale of job displacement will be at a scale never seen before. If there are no societal safety nets in place for this then I can see things going south quickly

We need a path for people effected to be able to at least cover basic needs, while also offering some kinda training into a different role that pays. Defiantly not something most countries have setup.

What is the different sort of roll that pays at this point?

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

#537

Post by tbrownaw » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 2:12 AM UTC

Foobar8568 wrote: post #375

Animats wrote: post #222

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?

Probably clergy?

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

#538

Post by an0malous » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 2:18 AM UTC

andix wrote: post #419

I have the feeling this goes much deeper than knowledge work and AI. I see it in many places that people seem to not take their job serious anymore. The incentive seems to be gone. Also their managers don't seem to care anymore, as they are also taking their job less seriously. I can't put a finger on it, but it's not about younger people or Gen Z, it also applies to older people. It just feels like good work doesn't…

Yeah something broke during COVID. One factor was the stimulus created enormous wealth inequality, people who owned assets before that live like gods now and people who didn’t can’t even buy a home. The economic policies since then have exacerbated the issue.

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

#539

Post by hungryhobbit » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 2:24 AM UTC

RivieraKid wrote: post #331

pixelready wrote: post #247

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…

> UBI type system in place to pad the fall, people will bounce back and adapt when industries break down If you mean UBI that would allow anyone to stop working and live a modest life, that just doesn't work. UBI is essentially redistribution from those who work to those who don't work. That's not just a "safety net" because you could decide to stop working forever just because it's more comfortable than working. I w…

You have a distorted definition of UBI. The B stands for "basic", as in "not dying in the street of starvation" and a "a roof over your head".

It is NOT about enabling "a modest life" or stopping people from working! On any serious UBI proposal everyone is still incentivized to work.

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

#540

Post by jakelazaroff » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 2:32 AM UTC

noduerme wrote: post #531

paulorlando wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you mentioned Etaoin Shrdlu and hot type / linotype... There are a lot of industries (at least historically) that have organized labor. In the UK, there was the “Wapping Dispute” in 1986 when computer technology enabled journalists to type in their copy directly, doing away with the need for workers to set type using linotype printing. Linotype was a big improvement on the older letter-by-letter typesetting and…

I live in Oregon. Up until last year , you weren't allowed to pump your own gas in most parts of the state. The law required gas station attendants to do it, as a scheme to keep them employed. The most annoying part of this wasn't the tiny marginal cost, but that it sometimes took forever to get your gas if the attendant was busy. You'd just sit there looking at the pump you weren't allowed to put your credit card in…

As a New Jersey native (the single remaining state that still mandates gas station attendants) I have spent my entire life convinced this is sour grapes from other states. Why would you want to leave your warm cozy car in the winter to pump your gas?!