Very happy to work somewhere where sanity has triumphed over AI madness...
Where is that?
What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers
721–730 of 1001 posts
Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers
#722Yeah I came around to this too
Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers
#723Earlier quoted context omitted.
Were you chasing the feeling of successfully solving a problem? Have you replaced problem solving with LLM chats? Maybe instead of engineering, you’ve been subtly shifted into project management and hate that career. But it’s tough to engineer much these days. Instead I find I’m PM’ing the bots more than solving problems.
> But it’s tough to engineer much these days. Instead I find I’m PM’ing the bots more than solving problems. I’m genuinely curious about your perspective as I have almost the diametrically opposite view. I love chatting with the bots as they can build the thing I want, how I want it, much faster than I could. The output still feels mine. Maybe not line by line, but definitely architecturally. The speed makes me feel,…
>I love chatting with the bots as they can build the thing I want, how I want it, much faster than I could. The output still feels mine. Maybe not line by line, but definitely architecturally.
The output, in my case, feels just as mine as the toppings I tell my local pizza store to add to whatever they're about to cook for me. It's tasty, and fills my stomach, but I didn't make it. I ordered it.
Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers
#724Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many folks have talked about optimizing for engagement and while I do think this is a factor, I don't think this is the cause. HN has a pretty simple set of algorithms and yet it's largely followed the same trend of negativity and despair. I'm partial to what I call the "doomer effect". If you feel sad or disenfranchised you're just much more likely to spend time online talking. A person with a fulfilling social life…
I’m sorry if I am being uncharitable, but are you saying the solution to depression is that people’s friends groups (which the depressed person may not have access to to begin with) is to just like, bully them out of it? lol? Tell me you’ve never had a depressive episode without telling me. hint: the people with support groups in the first place are less vulnerable and bullying depression doesn’t really help, I could…
The devil is always in the detail with these sorts of online disagreements.
Let’s say you have a friend who is always miserable, always needs support, and turns every gathering into a therapy session for them and their problem. Let’s say you’ve been friends with them for say, fifteen years. Nothing has helped.
They never go and get therapy, they never go and do any exercise, they constantly do the same things over and over and still expect support.
Wouldn’t you stop wanting to hear them talk? Maybe even stop being their friend ?
What’s the limit ?
Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers
#725Earlier quoted context omitted.
there's no space for everybody. not even near. free market is inherently oligopolic for most cases..
Oligopolies are unlikely in a free market because as soon as you do anything interesting a million other people will copy what you are doing wholesale and you will have no advantage to see you rise up to form an oligopoly. We find oligopolies in our regulated markets because regulation, such as copyright, patents, tariffs, etc., legally hinder that competition from emerging. However, even if we accept oligopolies as…
Taking aside the fact that free markets are a myth, all we have to do is look at our current society and you'll see how utopic this view is.
In the real world, oligopolies are the rule not the exception.
Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers
#726Earlier 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…
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Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers
#727I think what happened is that a lot of the wrong personalities entered technology for all the wrong reasons. Some of us started in the 80s or 90s and got into it with personal projects and treating the PC as a hobby. It is satisfying to be able to command a hunk of metal and get it to do things. And it can do boring stuff really fast and repeatedly. And that alone was exciting. The majority of us would stay up into t…
>Unfortunately, as the industry grew, all the wrong personalities entered it. Project managers, product managers, scrum/agile masters, terrible mid level managers, talentless clowns, bozos, cheerleaders, jocks. The lot of them. The non-weird, non-geeky, non-obsessive, non-nerdy types. And then they co-opted the culture. They thought wearing glasses and wearing a backpack and carrying the latest tech devices made them "it".
Something in that sentence reminded me of the following Jobs' quote:
"Many companies forget what it means to make great products. After initial success, sales and marketing people take over and the product people eventually make their way out."
Capitalism suddenly gets gamed to the point where the quality isn't rewarded. I'm not just talking about software, but also hardware. There's a reason why planned obsolescence is a thing. In a way, software bloat is unplanned obsolescence.
Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers
#728Addressing 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…
> Aaron Horwath is the director of AI operations at a creative technology company where he is focused on implementing AI in a way that supports both humans and business.
Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers
#729Earlier 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…
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Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers
#730Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s great to care about the craft as long as someone else is paying for it. I think most software developers are waking up to the reality that they were always just holding business at ransom with their craft. Software is a grudge purchase for businesses. No one has ever cared about the craft except the craftsmen.
The patient with heart disease doesnt give a shit about exercising and eating healthy they just want the doctor to make them better. No business has ever appreciated my craft directly and why would they? Theyve just enjoyed the indirect benefits - speedy delivery of bug free features. Sometimes execs understood why they got that from one team and not another, mostly they didn't. The difference these days is not that…
You are correct on all counts. This is the IKEA phase of software development. Disposable shit. Need something new and ask an LLM to summon it into existence. I guess you could compare it to this hand-crafted desk I’m sitting at that my great grandfather built himself. He was a carpenter. It’s still here, decades later. To be honest, my next desk would be some IKEA shit, because it’s cheap and I can replace it every few years as fashion changes. But I get the emotional attachment.