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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

#971

Post by zelphirkalt »

RobinL wrote: post #281
bjt12345 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question though - how are they going with that? In reality, I see a lot of the current unhappiness in the Tech industry is being triggered by their pointy haired bosses wasting millions on their failed AI strategies only to embark on more failing AI strategies.

One example: I've been working for a couple years (not full time) on a high performance FOSS address matcher: https://github.com/moj-analytical-services/uk_address_matche... Until recently LLMs have been really bad at this task. I always knew it was coming, but with GPT 5.6 they've suddenly become good. It's pretty clear to me that it won't be long before most of my work on this is rendered pointless because the LLM…

If your tool is deterministic, I would rather rely on it, than on LLMs for the task. So I don't think your work will have been pointless, when comparing against an LLM classifying things. Also there is value in something that is battle-tested compared to something just generated on the run, and there is value in something already existing and not needing to be generated or developed anew.

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

#972

Post by __rito__ »

pc86 wrote: post #75
lostaccount wrote: post #32

This is basically office space but for the modern era. Peter found happiness in construction work, but when something physical like that is your job… I don’t know. A lot of those guys have back pain, inflexible schedules, working in extreme weather, and the pay isn’t even that good. Is tech so bad? Or is the world of work broken?

> A lot of those guys have back pain, inflexible schedules, working in extreme weather, And a lot of them don't? A lot of people who work on a computer all day also have back pain and inflexible schedules. Hell, I'm sure a lot of knowledge workers in other countries work in places with no air conditioning, for example - not exactly "extreme" but not climate-controlled, either.

Dude...

It's totally, completely, fully different.

Have you ever worked as an electrician/plumber, etc.?

The amount of physical stress, sweat, exposure to bad weather, etc. are orders of magnitude higher than what you get as a tech worker, even in 38°C heat even without an AC.

Your comment reads like it's coming from someone who never ever worked physically even as a volunteer/for fun.

Any non-trivial amount of physical work will tell you that it’s many orders of magnitude tougher than working with computers.

The worst part is you gotta show up and work your ass off even when you have flu, or something like that, or you lose a day's wages.

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

#973

Post by flaburgan »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #970
flaburgan wrote: post #967

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It for sure is changing a lot in term of revenue etc., my "AI did not change anything" was about people suddenly feeling empty about what they do at work. If they were doing something that was fulfilling them, then the fact that they are now doing it with AI should not change anything regarding their motivation to accomplish that task. Of course if they get fired that has a big impact, but that is unrelated to how th…

>Of course if they get fired that has a big impact, but that is unrelated to how they feel about their job. I see. I guess in my case it's semi - related. I still have larger goals (goals AI can't really make obsolete that easily), but the past few years did make me feel a bit aimless about how to achieve it. It's no longer just "gain skills in industry, toil at my creation on the side, prepare to transition into bei…

I understand what you mean. Sorry to hear that. Virtual hug if you'd like one. Maybe that's an opportunity to put in the center of our work what is beneficial for us and society as a whole instead of what is profitable, but yeah before the current system collapses we still have to pay the bills. We can also build an alternate system on the side, but that is easier said than done.

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

#974

Post by estearum »

fragmede wrote: post #951
estearum wrote: post #817

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is?

> which could not have possibly have employed more than 0.01% of people at its peak. I was refuting your made up statistic.

Oh I see, you're claiming that 1.9 million people in the US were engaged in printing.

You're referring to a NAICS code set that includes both printing and the entire publishing apparatus around it.

At printing's peak, there were 70,000 people employed in actual printing in the US. There were lots more engaged in the business around printed goods, but those jobs weren't threatened by desktop publishing. In fact there are more of those people today than there were at the peak of printing, drawing a clear empirical line between those jobs that were destroyed by printing tech improvements and those that were not.

At its peak in the late 90s, printing was 0.025% of US people or 0.05% of the workforce, which (being unbelievably wealthy) would obviously be the extreme high end of print employment globally.

0.01% was obviously a complete finger in the wind estimate, but turned out to be a pretty good guess!

https://whattheythink.com/articles/52978-desktop-publishings...

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

#977

Post by smolder »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #892
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…

Just gotta stay safe and count your blessings. S178 probably did a good part in driving tech to be the canary in the coalmine of the new "forever layoff" model. That was a political decision that affected a lot of us. even if that wasn't, I'm sure you were hit by higher prices for everything We're all being hit, it just depends on a bit of luck and how financially ready we are to buffer the storm. Most people unfortu…

Can you be more specific about what S178 you're referring to? There were several results.

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

#978

Post by evan_a_a »

Havoc wrote: post #444

I'm not even a programmer (by profession, though hobby) and I must say I find the gleefulness in the article off-putting. That said I do think it is useful from a societal perspective that programmers are both doing this and getting hit. I'm not going to celebrate someone's job being threatened but in this particular case I think that symmetry is a major societal win for surfacing the question as to how are we collec…

Translator jobs aren't really getting wiped out according to the stats (in the US). Growth is still projected at 2% in the next 10 years.

They also have this to say about AI:

>Computer tools, including artificial intelligence (AI), are making the work of translators and localization specialists more efficient. However, many of these jobs cannot be entirely automated because computers cannot yet produce work comparable to what human translators do in most cases.

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/media-and-communication/interpreters...

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

#979

Post by wnolens »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #816
DeluluDon wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to daydream about homelessness until I did it for 6 years. You're surrounded by threats and your limbic system is in overdrive, deindividuation kicks in and takes a year of being rehoused before you're back to being the same person. Those daydreams generally stop after taking a hike or twenty over the weekends.

This is more than a fair response, and I apologize for using the term, because I really daydream about going on an extended backpacking trip with money in the bank, or living in a van and traveling around. Which is significantly different than the normal definition of homelessness.

I did what you dream of. It's fun for 3-6 months. But it's only fun - not an existential cure. That could only be found in friends/loved ones.

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

#980

Post by andix »

an0malous wrote: post #532
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…

Yeah something broke during COVID. One factor was the stimulus created enormous wealth inequality, people who owned assets before that live like gods now and people who didn’t can’t even buy a home. The economic policies since then have exacerbated the issue.

I think it started before 2020.
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