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

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

#631

Post by Matumio »

chii wrote: post #601
quijoteuniv wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t it better to find out that a lot of corporate work may not have much intrinsic meaning now, rather than just before you die? At least then you get a chance to do something about it. It seems to me these changes are much more daunting if you live in a country where no job means no health insurance, and where the pay gap between skilled and unskilled work is huge. That makes an existential question about work int…

> much intrinsic meaning now work should not be considered to have to have intrinsic meaning for it to be worthwhile - you merely need to make sure your pay is worthwhile. Find intrinsic meaning outside of work. The best way, imho, is to find the highest paying job you can, work super hard and earn maximally, until you built up a nest egg from which you can draw a living off indefinitely. Then, use the remaining time…

No, work is supposed to be at least useful for somebody. Ideally for the society you live in, at least indirectly. If you are wasting your work time, you are also wasting you life time in the same breath. Would you turn every leaf in the forest around twice, if it was the highest paying job? No, because that's a bullshit job.

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

#632

Post by close04 »

jimbobbam wrote: post #547
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…

My grandfather was a printer not to far from that Burger King, in a building now owned by the academy of art. In 1963 he had 5 children, a house in Daly City and 3 apartments across the street from Dolores park as well as a brand new home in Terra Linda. He died early, but extended family stayed in the business. It was union work, he as the youngest operator of the 4 color press. His wife my grandmother didn’t work.…

> he had 5 children, a house in Daly City and 3 apartments across the street from Dolores park as well as a brand new home in Terra Linda

How well would you need to be paid now in any career to support a family like that one while accumulating that wealth already early in life? Careers can evaporate just the same but what they leave behind is vastly different from 60 years ago.

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

#633

Post by dinkumthinkum »

tayo42 wrote: post #253
notsmarthuh wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem in the Western world is that switching to a different career is made almost impossible. This society pushes people out of the workforce all the time. I'm one of them. I've been "unemployed" since 2012 with apparently ZERO ability to get any kind of skilled job ever again, just due to a "zigged when I should have zagged" situation decades ago.

I've been curious about leaving software but it really feels impossible. Theresa no careers that you can learn on the job and you need to go back for another 4year degree to maybe get into the entry level job,no guarantee though.

If you a degree already, you don't necessarily have to go for four years for another degree, you will have to take the courses for your major and a small amount of additional requirements versus a first degree.

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

#634

Post by entropy47 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #530
entropy47 wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I certainly do. As usual the revolution is weeks away, but I continue to produce work better, faster and more reliably than my colleagues who have outsourced their brains to Claude. You can tell me I'm not gonna make it and the last 5% is going to topple on the next model release, but the work I enjoy doesn't have precedents and it seems the plagiarism machine is quite bad at that specific flavour of knowledge work.

> I continue to produce work better, faster and more reliably than my colleagues who have outsourced their brains to Claude. It matters little if your employer does not recognize/value that? Given the quality of most software nowadays, the output of Claude driven by a monkey appears to be perfectly acceptable for a lot of companies. (yes, there's likely a big reckoning coming where all the slop and tech debt suddenly…

My employer pushes everybody heavily towards AI, but unsurprisingly that stops the moment the work is late or bad in a way that catches their management chain's attention.

I'm not doing work in the way they tell me to but the results are good enough that my performance reviews / job security is fine. For now!

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

#635

Post by Godsend69 »

CodeCompost wrote: post #624
testerius wrote: post #623

Currently, I have 3 main issues with AI, LLMs and so on. Generally speaking I am happy that I can use Claude Code and Codex to help building, fixing and maintaining software in my job. To be honest it is so helpful, I am less stressed bacause most of the time I can "find out" solution without asking collegues for help or I do not have spend a lot of time struggling myself. Yeah, if you understand what feeling it is t…

2. Local models are not "ready yet". You still have to own decent hardware and it will not be the same level of frontier models. I am big fan of local first, offline and "unlimited usage" compared to paid solutions. But probably I have to wait few or several years to get to that point. This is why tech companies are working hard to make sure you can never build your own computer again.

[dead]

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

#636

Post by Godsend69 »

testerius wrote: post #623

Currently, I have 3 main issues with AI, LLMs and so on. Generally speaking I am happy that I can use Claude Code and Codex to help building, fixing and maintaining software in my job. To be honest it is so helpful, I am less stressed bacause most of the time I can "find out" solution without asking collegues for help or I do not have spend a lot of time struggling myself. Yeah, if you understand what feeling it is t…

[dead]

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

#637

Post by punkbit »

testerius wrote: post #623

Currently, I have 3 main issues with AI, LLMs and so on. Generally speaking I am happy that I can use Claude Code and Codex to help building, fixing and maintaining software in my job. To be honest it is so helpful, I am less stressed bacause most of the time I can "find out" solution without asking collegues for help or I do not have spend a lot of time struggling myself. Yeah, if you understand what feeling it is t…

Three really good points. Specially the third one. Not sure why HN readers are downvoting you…

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

#638

Post by crnkofe »

I have this nagging feeling that the depression, anxiety and pessimism is as-of-late coming from people from all the companies that risked it by adopting token maxing and AI usage enforcement. Its not representative of the whole industry though. There are still many places where engineers or knowledge workers are respected and left to lead (or not) AI adoption.

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

#639

Post by dinkumthinkum »

anovikov wrote: post #618
tossandthrow wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are too early to deem it failed ai strategies. I am advising small startups. One of them went entirely to agentic developed software by a team of non technical founders. They had their sec audit done with considerably fewer errors than had a software developer build the same (which would have taken upwards of 4 times as long). I am sorry, the technical capabilities of the agentic systems for software development i…

I agree. There is no point in hiring anyone into a technical-only role anymore. It's very valuable (and probably always will be) to be something-and-technical: a specialist in the target field who also understands how computers and software work. But not "just" technical, these are already completely obsolete and all of them who still have jobs, do so simply because of institutional inertia, connections, and companie…

Do you realize that there is software out there that are not simple React apps? The models are clearly advanced but I think the world is a lot more complex than you seem to think.

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

#640

Post by 0123456789ABCDE »

pc86 wrote: post #151
scottLobster wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He murdered a guilty man, not an innocent one. Still murder, and murder is wrong, but let's not get things twisted

[flagged]

you will note gp did not refer to the deceased as a criminal, nor did they condone their murder, on the contrary.
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