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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

#61

Post by F7F7F7 »

crop_rotation wrote: post #6
striped_hash wrote: post #4

I don’t think kids should be insulating from AI. The examples in this article suggest for example that some people are dropping out of college and going into trade schools. I get that society needs electricians and construction workers and new software graduates are finding it difficult to get jobs. But having had a moderately successful career building software, I tend to think there is a lot of scope for the $40 tr…

Even if people assume the worst impacts of LLMs on white collar work, there is simply not enough demand for electricians and plumbers for that to work, right now these professions work only because the number of people going into them is limited.

You sound like you're not a home owner. In populated areas it could take a week to get a electrician or plumber out. And contractors are hard to find.

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

#62

Post by variadix »

abcde666777 wrote: post #41

> People fear that programming is dead. > People stop learning programming. > Programmers become scarce. > Programmers become valuable again. Maybe it's wishful thinking but I'm not going to be surprised if it plays out like this. In some sense the reverse happened over the last couple of decades - everyone and their mother got into IT and the industry became saturated.

Maybe, another possibility is the frontier providers change their pricing terms to try to capture more of the value once a sufficient number of people’s skills have atrophied. For example: 20% of the revenue of all products built with $AI_SERVICE. For someone several years out of practice they may have no other option.

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

#63

Post by striped_hash »

crop_rotation wrote: post #6
striped_hash wrote: post #4

I don’t think kids should be insulating from AI. The examples in this article suggest for example that some people are dropping out of college and going into trade schools. I get that society needs electricians and construction workers and new software graduates are finding it difficult to get jobs. But having had a moderately successful career building software, I tend to think there is a lot of scope for the $40 tr…

Even if people assume the worst impacts of LLMs on white collar work, there is simply not enough demand for electricians and plumbers for that to work, right now these professions work only because the number of people going into them is limited.

Agree.

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

#64

Post by marcus_holmes »

striped_hash wrote: post #4

I don’t think kids should be insulating from AI. The examples in this article suggest for example that some people are dropping out of college and going into trade schools. I get that society needs electricians and construction workers and new software graduates are finding it difficult to get jobs. But having had a moderately successful career building software, I tend to think there is a lot of scope for the $40 tr…

The thing I'm seeing in people's use of LLMs is that there's still a strong contrast in technical usage of them.

I went to the local Claude Code meetup last week, and the contrast between the first two speakers really stuck with me.

The first was an old-skool tech guy who was using teams of agents to basically duplicate what an entire old-fashioned dev team would do.

The second was a "non-technical" (she must have said this at least 20 times in her talk) product manager using the LLM to prototype code and iterate on design choices.

Both are replacing dev humans with LLMs, but there's a massive difference in the technical complexity of their use. And I've heard this before talking to other people; non-technical folks are using it to write code and are amazed with how it's going, while technical folks are next-level using skills, agents, etc to replace whole teams.

I can see how this becomes a career in its own right; not writing code any more, but wrangling agents (or whatever comes after them). The same kind of mental aptitude that gets us good code can also be used to solve these problems, too.

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

#65

Post by striped_hash »

ctoth wrote: post #44
striped_hash wrote: post #4

I don’t think kids should be insulating from AI. The examples in this article suggest for example that some people are dropping out of college and going into trade schools. I get that society needs electricians and construction workers and new software graduates are finding it difficult to get jobs. But having had a moderately successful career building software, I tend to think there is a lot of scope for the $40 tr…

> What should kids be aiming for according to you? Computer Scientist? Biologist? Finance? Construction? Can you sit down with an unfamiliar domain and develop enough genuine curiosity to get good at it, without a syllabus or a credential dangling in front of you? The kids who'll do well in a world where the field-to-security mapping keeps shifting are the ones who can self-direct — not the ones who picked the right…

> The kids who'll do well in a world where the field-to-security mapping keeps shifting are the ones who can self-direct — not the ones who picked the right field in 2026.

Agreed that if someone can self direct and is capable, they’ll do better. Assuming two people who are similar in that regard, what are professions that may benefit from AI rather than hurt because of it.

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

#66

Post by boringg »

sb057 wrote: post #42
denkmoon wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having an industry’s labour supplied only by those inherently passionate about it is a great way to crush wages and working conditions. Look at what companies like Blizzard get away with because their employees just want to make video games at their favourite dev studio. While they’re a pain in the ass sometimes, I welcome the devs who are only here for the cash.

See also: public school teachers. You either need to be insanely passionate or incredibly stupid to take ~$55k/year for long hours as an educator that is also a babysitter. And insanely passionate teachers are in short supply.

I bet a lot of teachers look at what devs do and think that its also insane to sit in front of computer all day, in a no boundary job, working on something you really don't care about and is potentially really bad for civilization only to make money off and lose your sense of self.

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

#67

Post by alex43578 »

Archonical wrote: post #55
alex43578 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is totally leaving out the supply and demand aspect. People like the idea of making games more than working on the plumbing of some accounts payable software, so Blizzard can pay less and treat worse than NicheBoringFinanceCo.

The parent comment is describing supply and demand. If Blizzard attracts a larger supply of workers who will accept lower pay and worse conditions because they intrinsically want the job, Blizzard gains leverage. That is exactly why studios like Blizzard can get away with more than “NicheBoringFinanceCo.”

If an “industry’s labour [is] supplied only by those inherently passionate about it” the post says it would “crush wages and working conditions”.

That runs completely counter to the basics of supply and demand in a perfect competition market. It would be market with far fewer (labor) suppliers, who could therefore command a higher wage, not lower.

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

#68

Post by rootusrootus »

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…

Agreed, there would definitely be knock-on effects. If a bunch of people who were otherwise going to be software developers decide to focus their career on the trades, then the wages for trades jobs will drop.

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

#69

Post by alex43578 »

sb057 wrote: post #42
denkmoon wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having an industry’s labour supplied only by those inherently passionate about it is a great way to crush wages and working conditions. Look at what companies like Blizzard get away with because their employees just want to make video games at their favourite dev studio. While they’re a pain in the ass sometimes, I welcome the devs who are only here for the cash.

See also: public school teachers. You either need to be insanely passionate or incredibly stupid to take ~$55k/year for long hours as an educator that is also a babysitter. And insanely passionate teachers are in short supply.

Long hours? Teachers work the same hours or less than other adults per “New Measures of Teachers’ Work Hours and Implications for Wage Comparisons” by West.

“Teachers work an average of 34.5 hours per week on an annual basis (38.0 hours per week during the school year and 21.5 hours per week during the summer months).”

That’s leaving out the benefits of incredibly strong union protections, it being a state job with matched benefits, absurd job security even in the face of terrible performance, etc.

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

#70

Post by underlipton »

time0ut wrote: post #11
striped_hash wrote: post #4

I don’t think kids should be insulating from AI. The examples in this article suggest for example that some people are dropping out of college and going into trade schools. I get that society needs electricians and construction workers and new software graduates are finding it difficult to get jobs. But having had a moderately successful career building software, I tend to think there is a lot of scope for the $40 tr…

Optimistically, I hope it filters out the people who were only interested in it for the money. When I was in school, decades ago now, very few people went into CS compared to other majors. Everyone I knew going into it did it because they loved it. I would have done it regardless of the career opportunities because I want to build stuff. Interviewing candidates over the years since then, my experience has been there…

I'm not saying that this is an incorrect read, but I think it's important to consider that young people might be responding to the general desperation of a tight labor market across the last generation. It used to be that you could get a degree - any degree - and that would be enough to get you in the conversation for a position somewhere. Today, a degree isn't any sort of guarantee of any sort of job - in your field, entry level, dead-end retail, anything. Tuition skyrocketed and only a few fields kept pace. So, you get the degree in the field that's a "winner." Of course, this just increases competition, robs other fields of needed competency, etc. Prisoner's dilemma?
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