What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers • Hacker News Board

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

#791

Post by estearum » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 3:16 PM UTC

bushbaba wrote: post #784

estearum wrote: post #733

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…

I doubt unemployment can even raise to 40% before the government and billionaire class is overthrown. The French Revolution was not an isolated event

And then what?

Suddenly everyone gets paid for doing nothing of added value?

We ban AI and similar ultra-high leverage technologies?

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

#792

Post by jongjong » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 3:19 PM UTC

I think the part that's hard to absorb is that software engineering was a brutal path. You had to restructure your entire identity, ego, personality, social relationships around that career choice. People didn't expect their career to last forever, but they thought it was a ticket out to gain autonomy.

Back in 2010-ish, many developers thought that, in the future, they'd all be running their own systems and servicing their own customers and making a good living like that (there would be enough customers for every dev). They didn't expect that the entire industry would be monopolized by a tiny number of companies, everyone using the exact same product, no alternatives or competition, and that the value of our labor would be artificially suppressed down to $0... This happened long before AI. AI is just the latest assault.

It's impossible for a solo developer to find their own customers nowadays. You could literally offer the same product or a better product for cheaper, but you won't be able to find a single customer because it's too centralized. The trust barriers are massive. Nobody has money to try anything except large corporations and they never try any product based on what it offers; it's all business networking.

It's like; the same conditioning which caused business people to pretend that Linux didn't exist for the first few decades has now spread to all non-VC-funded software.

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

#793

Post by mancerayder » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 3:26 PM UTC

Any finance tech workers? I spoke to someone from a Mag 7 recently, and he said, isn't it true that you guys are treated like second class citizens?

Yes, it's true. It's been true for a long time.

It's a bifurcated world where the people that made it big in finance /tech ended up climbing the corporate hierarchy. Even a "distinguished engineer" in an investment bank is a politically savvy project manager who goes home after work to code.

How people have lives outside of work, when work is meetings, is a mystery to me.

Are the rest of you joining the misery since 2023? We've been in this boat for a decade already.

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

#794

Post by a2ff6eeb0 » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 3:30 PM UTC

xlii wrote: post #85

Long long time ago people in tech were in tech because of the tech. Then, at some point, being in tech became a gilded profession and everyone: salesmen, artists, clerks etc. joined in. Not because they wanted to be in tech. They wanted gold. For years it was working, but right now things shifted. You can no longer just do the thing you learned for a job and continue doing so, because landscape shifted. So they're mi…

That seems backwards. I'm here for the money, and AI has turned the work into largely unskilled labor. I don't care if all I do is copy and paste between tickets, logs, and the prompt (and, that is really all I do). I'm expecting the gravy train to end, but right now things only suck if you care about doing good work.

Management is quite happy with the resulting output, and I'm fine with matching their energy. I can do things that I care about on my own time.

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

#795

Post by LogicFailsMe » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 3:32 PM UTC

tonyhart7 wrote: post #604

lelanthran wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know a class of tech workers absolutely fired up about the new Industrial Revolution, That's because they're thinking that they're still going to get paid $200k/y for typing in "Duh, Claude, make me an app, here the specs from the client, doh!" They aren't seeing that there is very little value to add when all they are, is an interface to a magic software-making machine.

You will get downvoted for saying the truth replacement would not happen overnight but they would decrease the amount of jobs required back then we need a team of 4 - 10 engineer for an project/app, now maybe we need 2-3 max

And yet the most unproductive work at FAANNG arises from huge bureaucratic turfy fiefdoms whose leadership games the productivity metrics to look busy. Broadly, workfare for ass kissers. And heaven forbid you work on anything that remotely resembles their dominions.

Counterpoint: reducing most of these metastatic organizations to 2-pizza level teams with AI would be positive across the board.

Countercounterpoint: But since the overlords of these fiefdoms are not stupid, just malevolent, they'll use AI to tighten their grip and terrorize anyone who dare oppose them. Basically, organizational Ponzi.

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

#796

Post by a2ff6eeb0 » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 3:33 PM UTC

flaburgan wrote: post #768

I don't understand those articles, especially, I don't see why AI changed anything. At least for me, the important quest isn't how you build, but what you build. If your product is meaningless, useful only to the company because what it does is futile, then the emptiness you feel is not coming from the fact that AI is "stealing your job". Don't quit to a farm with goats, find a way to distribute food which would have…

I wonder how long it'll be before you can ask an LLM to investigate, run surveys, and figure out what to build. It feels like it's not that far away. Hm, this may actually be an interesting business for someone to found.

It's definitely farther away for this than it is for coding, but 2 years ago it was also totally useless for coding.

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

#797

Post by hyperadvanced » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 3:42 PM UTC

miyoji wrote: post #783

cheschire wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did the remote thing before Covid and rejected it for many of the same reasons. Then Covid happened and so many people got to experience it and loved it. But I still hated it while I was forced to. Every time I told anyone that I personally didn’t like working from home, and was excited about the return to office that would inevitably come, I got SHOUTED at. Absolutely flayed for not being 110% in support of this t…

Commutes are uncompensated labor, so you're advocating for a pay decrease for both yourself and your coworkers. Pay me for my commute and I'll gladly work from wherever you like, just recognize that I would get more done if you weren't paying me to travel to and from work. If you don't pay me for the time I spend commuting, you aren't interested in paying the total cost of employing me and you can kindly go fuck off.

Salary jobs let you pick your price. How much more as a % of your yearly would it cost you to commute every day, amortized over your ~2000 hours of expected work at said office? 10%? 20%? For me, it’s probably 10% for the right gig.

Granted, the availability and pain in the ass of actually getting a new job today is suffocating, so it’s not like everyone gets to pick their dream setup anymore

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

#798

Post by hyperadvanced » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 3:55 PM UTC

rindalir wrote: post #230

I want to address something mentioned in the article about people wishing for for grounded occupations. I have a sheep farm and I could not keep it running without my tech salary. So I kinda view these as false escapes. Unless forced to or of independent means, who is going to throw themselves into the bottom fork of the “K-shaped” economy.

I have a friend who owns an organic farm (with a couple partners). They mostly scrape by and work long hours and there’s a lot of stress. People really really under-appreciate how nice the remote tech daily routine is: “I wake up, drink coffee, and solve a few abstract problems each day with an army of AGI bots at my fingertips, and for a high salary”. Compare to roasting in 95 degree heat and wildfire smoke to make sure your veggies don’t die, living in a trailer on the farm, and working retail in offseason/relying on GoFundMe to recover from the inevitable natural disasters.

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

#799

Post by jbs789 » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 3:56 PM UTC

geertj wrote: post #588

cheschire wrote: post #229

Earlier 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’m finding I’m able to learn more and pick up hobbyist projects easier w the help of Claude.

For the production stuff I still learn and watch it more closely.

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

#800

Post by stego-tech » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 3:58 PM UTC

Terr_ wrote: post #321

stego-tech wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, yeah. I got into IT because I loved working with technology, building communities and game servers and chatrooms and computers and the like. I got lucky that someone found me, my interest in these things, and showed me how it could be a career. Nowadays though, so much of my time isn’t spent building so much as debunking the latest grift, scam, or lie. It’s spent unfucking arbitrary vendor changes that didn’t…

> The technology of today does not enable, or empower To say much the same things stuff a slightly different framing: The promise of "personal computers", and then the internet, making your own applications, etc. was that they would democratize and spread certain capabilities so that everyone could have their tool which accomplished their goals to make their life better. One might even call it owning your own "means…

100% agree with your twist, there. I was speaking from the broadest possible sense, from local OS all the way to corporate internet infrastructure, but you're correct that one of the earliest promises was independence and intent separate from corporate dicta.