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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

#651

Post by montebicyclelo »

Rendello wrote: post #236
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…

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...

Cool doc, thanks for sharing. Amazingly, a quick search brought up one of the articles they were shown setting (from the few words mentioned):

https://www.nytimes.com/1978/07/01/archives/150-hurt-as-truc...

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

#653

Post by customguy »

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…

Labour is having to eat and clip your fingernails, having to sleep and repair the roof every year. All animals have to do it, humans always will have to do at least a bit of that, producing things just for them to be consumed. But work is building a world, and of course it does have to have meaning. An animal that won't breed in captivity doesn't want to survive under all circumstances. Sometimes even "nature" just says you know what, if I can only live as someone else's furniture, why live? Burnout is probably a similar mechanism.

"the remaining time"

Doing what is intrinsically valuable to you hinges on you still having access to the person you are. Don't take that for granted. A lifetime of settling can easily drive that out of someone, but planning to settle before it even started, as the only option, surely will. How could it not?

Old men [0] living it up because they never did while they lived is the worst. You can't regain a sense of justice, curiosity and innocence once you let it go and out of sight. You cannot have either without the other two, and none of them come back once you misplaced them as something you don't need "for now", but something very cringe and sad can takes their place, and it comes with this conspiracy of not mocking one another, of pretending to be fully featured people, as they stumble and babble into the sunset.

[0] And I say "men" because this is very much a male issue. You don't hear many women talking like that, at least I can't even remember one.

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

#654

Post by lp4v4n »

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.…

The worst of all is that people will still argue that, in this day and age, labour has not been completely devalued and that you are wealthier than your grandfather.

That kind of story was not uncommon at all in the past, today you would have to be a literal multi-millionaire to have that lifestyle.

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

#655

Post by OroPla »

Can't say that I agree with the premise. It's not AI that has people feeling that their jobs are pointless. If your job isn't directly contributing to make the world a better place, which is most jobs, then you know it. And if your job isn't even producing anything tangible, then you know it, too. Same for when your job isn't at the very least benefiting other people in some way.

But that's where hobby's come into place. You can just pick up something you do for fun that makes the world a better place, or leaves something tangible or otherwise benefits someone you know.

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

#656

Post by AnthonyMouse »

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…

> Result of the strike: failure. 6000 printers were fired, but there were jobs for 670 new workers who used word processing.

The sad part is that it kind of does work from the other end.

Suppose you're a former press operator who can't expect to find any more work operating a printing press. Should you take a McJob? You have years of experience working with electric motors and hydraulics and pumps and industrial control systems. You might be better off to get a job in a trade. Study for the licensing exam and become a plumber or an electrician or the like. Except that you can't, because you're required to do a multi-year apprenticeship to get into any of those things no matter how much experience you have doing something similar. And you can't even get the apprenticeship to begin with because you're 45 years old and the union won't take you.

When a job is being eliminated by newer technology, the union has essentially no power because the employer doesn't care about workers going on strike when they're about to be laid off regardless. But when those laid off workers then want to get a job in another industry, the union there shows up to exclude them.

Which obviously sucks because then the union is screwing the laid off workers rather than some faceless corporation we might imagine or prefer them to be screwing.

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

#657

Post by johnnyanmac »

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 I could afford to go back to school for 4 years, I wouldn't be worried about finding a job right now. Besides, I hear entry level people are hit the worst right now. I better be spending half my time in college networking if I want a job. But.. Why not do that for my current field at that point?

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

#658

Post by vrganj »

NateEag wrote: post #592
tossitawayplz wrote: post #97

A lot of people truly enjoyed the craft and creativity of building something. That is being stripped away. The building is being outsourced now. In some cases, the design too. Everything they once enjoyed and took pride in is being done by machines now. That is not a good feeling. Imagine you are a master craftsman, a furniture builder. You sourced the wood, designed the furniture, built it by hand, took pride in you…

You have channeled a great deal of my anxiety, stress, anger, and sorrow with this comment. Every day at my job I search for a chance to write some fragment of code by hand, a place where just for a moment I remember the joyous struggle to be a craftsman. I have the sense that you're right - musicians, writers, illustrators, actors, animators - they largely seem to hate the way the genAI companies vacuumed up everyth…

I wonder if an indie games studio might be the place for both kinds of craftsmen to create unique rewarding quality work.

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

#659

Post by ludicrousdispla »

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…

>> it sometimes took forever to get your gas if the attendant was busy

Then the gas station owner could hire another attendant. Or your parent could pick a different gas station or a different time of day, free markets and all...

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

#660

Post by marginalia_nu »

purplemoonx wrote: post #590
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…

The fact you say "on mastodon" proves it's effectively centralized, just pointing that out

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, not really something I spend much time thinking about. I'm on a ton of different social media because I run a business and need to be where people are discussing my work.
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