Look, so... I'm going to tell you a little about my life and infodump here, but I've already lived chaos and loss of career, existential risk, and fear of death. I've "been there." I'm just some rando on HN, but yeah, here goes.
I was a pilot before I got into this tech stuff. For literally ALL of my life all I wanted to do was operate flying vehicles. I built my life around it. I got a summer job in school and paid for my first lessons by washing airplanes. I solo'd at 16, and got debt immediately out of HS to learn to fly. I lived flying, I thought about flying, I dreamt about flying. The only thing I wanted to do was keep flying (particularly smaller single pilot airplanes) and bop around Alaska and the world doing strange technical flying work. My college education? Based on leveraging my flying experience into eventually (you know, probably one day) flying in space doing the same thing - highly technical stuff with a tight crew. By the way, I didn't take a few years off flying to do it, I did it RIGHT alongside my flying career. I had to take time off to go take my last test for my first Bachelors and fly from my base to a place where I could get that last proctored. I was somewhat obsessed with aviation.
And for a long time I did that lifestyle and loved it. I met my wife, we started a family, and still flying was the main thing I thought about other than them. Sometimes that was surely to their detriment but thankfully my wife is a saint and could look past my hyperfixation. Along the way I had some other hobbies and passions too, but none of them came close. I mean, I liked computers, so I built some toy apps and learned some stuff, but it was never my passion. Then one day, I got sick and it eventually resulted in blindness. I recovered much of my sight - I can use a computer, etc. but barring borderline miraculous technical and medical advances, I'll likely never operate a flying vehicle again.
It wrecked me - ruined me even. I was a disaster for a couple of years. I didn't do anything wrong and yet the universe punished me anyway! I lost my identity completely, almost all of my friends were pilots - gone. Almost all of my technical skills were part of this one niche domain and suddenly they were worthless. Almost all of my life had been built into this and it was over now. And worse, there was nothing I could do to get it back. I was quite suddenly obsolete and unnecessary. Nobody cared about me anymore either - I was a has-been, a flight-less bird, etc. I very suddenly went from being "the promising guy in his late-20s early 30s with a bright future ahead of him" to "unusable burden." Not only was I physically battling illness and quite unwell, but mentally and emotionally the loss of identity because of my loss of my career had left me completely broken.
But... I somehow did crawl back from that. From the ashes I rose up and began again. I learned that I had kind of been an idiot before - I mean, I was good at flying, really good even, but so what? Now it was over! And I hyperoptimized a lot of stuff that didn't matter! I hadn't been caring for myself along the way, I hadn't been being a good husband and father. And a sort of key revelation I got out of this became clear: "someday" will come. Someday, you'll take your last X. Someday, all this will be over and it'll be done." That's how the universe works. Someday, you'll do your favorite thing for the last time. I flew medevac during my pilot career and I'd seen people die in fiery airport wreckage. Sometimes entropy wins. You need to make sure you enjoy the things you like doing along the way, because someday you won't be able to do them anymore, and it might not be through any fault of your own. You need to enjoy it while it lasts and enjoy your life! You have no idea when it might disappear.
So, I went to gradschool and pivoted into AI stuff. I really enjoyed it! My undergrad was in math and it was so fun to work on these projects! It was great even and gave me some modicum of the satisfaction I got from being a pilot. I studied computer vision because maybe I could get the robots to see for me; even with my vision messed up I could still use my mind. And I fought this terrible ailment! I underwent treatment every month during grad school. I spoke at the engineering department's graduation ceremony. I DID IT! I got a new career! I made it. Despite adversity and pain and suffering, I WAS ON TOP AGAIN! LOOK at ME and bask in my glory! "Look upon my works ye mighty and despair!"
But something was amiss, chatGPT came out while I was in grad school and despite people telling me I was a fool for thinking these things were worth anything, I had already had a life I'd lived where automation is prevalent. I already knew how to think about automation. I could tell from the moment it came out that it was going to be big. I remember a heated argument with a friend about this, "dude, I think we're kind of in the singularity, this thing is going to change everything!" "WTF are you talking about it can't even run a decent DND campaign for me? How is it going to figure out how to write code decently?!" And now here we are. At my thesis defense, I talked about how important these tools were going to be in the near future and how they were going to change everything. It was met with mixed emotions and incredulity. But in retrospect I was right. Not that it makes it better for people losing their identity now.
It turns out that like 13 years in an industry that heavily uses automation gave me some context that other people didn't have. And I'm watching people deal with the shock of this now. I'm watching people deal with losing their identities in real time, and I am sitting here like the meme of the man about to be hanged, "first time huh?"
And after school, I went to work and was almost immediately miserable. I could not stand the bullshit meetings. I could not stand the incessant and bureaucratic grind of working for a large 15k employee org. I couldn't get anything actually done. It took me months to do stuff that should have been an email. Not only that, here I am pointing at this tsunami that's rapidly rushing towards us and people shrug it off or call me an idiot. I get on the AI steering committee and even there, with the other AI people, the ramifications of this are not clear. The very clear end-state seems too fantastical to them and they don't really want to hear "you guys are all going to lose your jobs." So I quit after a couple of years.
I started my own business doing consulting and building tools for small businesses around the local area. And I'm much happier though this is much more volatile. But here's the thing you should know: all of this is transient. All of this is ephemeral. It'll all evaporate one day, wealth, youth and beauty won't last forever. I had to learn about impermanence in my early 30s, most people aren't forced to learn it until they're in their 40s or 50s. Things won't last forever, so enjoy it right now, and the things you think you want? Stability and a fat paycheck, etc. are kind of illusions. Your family and your health and satisfaction and enjoyment in your life are much much more important.
The bright side of this is while we will mostly all be unemployed in a decade or so (probably in practically every industry), we'll be able to actually spend some time enjoying life. Try to start that now. You're not going to outrun, out optimize, out perform the autopilot. You have to steer it. Give up some control and learn to ride the wave, you'll enjoy it much more.