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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

#731

Post by altmanaltman »

estearum wrote: post #727
Animats wrote: post #221

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…

Surprised no one has made the extremely obvious observation that it took literal centuries for printing technology to eliminate the trade of printers, which could not have possibly have employed more than 0.01% of people at its peak. Compared to the potential obsolescence of 40% to 60% of the US workforce over the course of 10 - 20 years? You can argue about whether the obsolescence is real or not, but if it is , the…

Yeah + the world was much different than it is today. It trivializes the risk by saying we have seen it before and we were okay when its a fundamentally different problem in many aspects.

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

#732

Post by rr808 »

andix wrote: post #416

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…

I think 15 years of asset boom has made enormous fortunes not just for billionaires but for regular middle class folks and especially anything tech or finance related. When your investments make much more than your wages, its hard to care about your career but this is the norm now for lots of people around me.

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

#734

Post by hn_submit »

LLMs are not going to put large numbers of software developers out of work. It may have some influence on copywriters, artists and musicians, but to which extent is unknown at the moment.

Most workers lament having to give up their cozy desk jobs and having to do work which currently can't be automated, like health care and service jobs like plumbers and roof repair men, construction etc.

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

#735

Post by andai »

andai wrote: post #313
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…

Well it used to be that the government's job was to keep morale high. At some point that seems to have inverted. The coalition-of-Molochs appears to be finding it much more profitable to make everyone want to kill themselves. (Not sure if that's a great long-term strategy, but they seem to have thought this through.)

I assume it had to do with the Malthusian panic (which was very effective, and remains a sticky meme, although for slightly different reasons now).

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

#736

Post by gaigalas »

You think IT professionals lost faith? You should look at teachers.

Hate to break it to you, but we're on a dark age, and this whole thing is just another unremarkable development that follows a trend that has been going on for about two centuries now.

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

#737

Post by duskdozer »

hellohello2 wrote: post #466
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…

Yeah I'm not sure what happened but Reddit in particular is beyond saving, and I'm not saying it was ever great. I think we simply don't know how to create online communities that make any sense yet. I'd rather have second hand smoke than any more algorithmic "engagement" maximization at this point.

You put it there yourself. The community can't be there to maximize engagement.

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

#738

Post by josh_p »

Foobar8568 wrote: post #660
josh_p wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mention the election cycle and things getting worse. I live in the US and I’ve watched in real time every sad, terrible decision made by the current administration and every sad terrible decision by what’s supposed to be the opposition party. It all makes me want to scream. And then I’m offline and my life carries on because none it has really affected my white privileged middle class tech worker butt. It all fee…

I don't live in the US, I live in Switzerland, and what happens in the US and Iran affects the world. And when I see this kind of shit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJ58s4bwzG0 ( bbc Donald Trump dons 'Trump 2028' hat and jokes about 'fourth term' ), I am like, what the fuck? Europeans as a whole didn't have much a great opinions of republicans but I don't even understand how a republican voter can vote for a russi…

The Republican Party is very good at propaganda. And the Democratic Party (the currently elected one, not the one the American people actually want), is happy to go along with a lot of it as long as they get to stay in power. We’re good at political theatre and pedantry here.

All that and a steady diet of “American Exceptionalism” started as early as kindergarten in our public schools deludes whole swaths of the country into thinking that all of this is somehow good for them.

I grew up going to public schools in the 90s and 2000s in a “blue” part of the country. As I’ve grown up into adulthood with kids, I’ve become so disappointed with my own education. It hasn’t gotten better and it’s worse in a lot of ways.

We homeschool our kids and don’t whitewash our history.

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

#739

Post by Gooblebrai »

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…

> how incredibly toxic the web has become

A reflection of human nature at scale?

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

#740

Post by Macha »

altmanaltman wrote: post #731
estearum wrote: post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprised no one has made the extremely obvious observation that it took literal centuries for printing technology to eliminate the trade of printers, which could not have possibly have employed more than 0.01% of people at its peak. Compared to the potential obsolescence of 40% to 60% of the US workforce over the course of 10 - 20 years? You can argue about whether the obsolescence is real or not, but if it is , the…

Yeah + the world was much different than it is today. It trivializes the risk by saying we have seen it before and we were okay when its a fundamentally different problem in many aspects.

Also fails to distinguish between “society came out of it fine” (generally true) and “individuals came out of it fine” (much more mixed of a track record)
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