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 online it's like everyone is really angry and tired and sad all the time, and it's getting worse every year. This really took a nosedive during the pandemic, but looking back this had been going on for several years before. Every election cycle makes things worse too.
It's just been spiraling in a very dark direction for a long time. You have these blackpill depression cirklejerks everywhere. Astroturfing is getting worse every year. Like what Bannon did with gamer gate is an amateurish precursor to what everyone with is doing everywhere now. With AI you can even run these campaigns with a very small budget.
All the news is just outrage porn and non-stop predictions of impending doom. Used to be more tabloid territory but now I don't know if anywhere is spared. A lot of the focus now is on AI, but when it isn't the world is burning in some other fashion. Reading the news, we've been in a permanent state of crisis for years now.
This information diet just isn't good for your mental health. It isn't just tech workers, but they're probably more exposed than most.
Candide's closing remarks spring to mind. Tend your garden.
marginalia_nu
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 talking about the good days at the Burger King near the cable car turntable at Powell and Market. They thought they had careers.
Now they're struggling to survive.
Knitting is not the answer. This is a survival issue. Somehow I suspect the author inherited money.
Animats
This dropped off the front page in the time I read it, I assume because of the controversial gate that favors upvotes to comments (which I am making worse by replying to others). It is a shame, because this really resonated with me.
I've been working in tech for over 20 years now in various roles, and this is the least I have cared about it. I used to want to get better, and was constantly excited about learning new things just for the sake of it. Now I daydream about being homeless. I look around at all the meaningless crap I have accumulated, and feel shame that I didn't use that money to retire early.
I am surprised that remote work didn't get a bigger mention in the article. In a few weeks I will have been working from home for 12 years, and I believe it is the cause of most of most of my angst. At first, the convivence was such a relief, but it has become a trap. The effort of the commute, forcing me to go out every day and talk to human beings face to face, even just little things like making sure I was showered and dressed every day, they all felt like a burden at the time but they were good for me and I didn't realize it. Not to mention that it makes my house feel like work, and I now I hate it here.
I will say as an anecdote counter to the AI examples given in the article. I have a young co-worker who is very excited about AI and is using it way more effectively than I am. Talking to him gives me hope for the future, the kids will be alright.
But to the point of the article: I have many friends my age that are making less than half of what I do working objectively harder jobs for way longer hours, but they all seem so much happier than I am.
dec0dedab0de
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 miserable and they want to get back to knitting, pottery or whatever thing they want to do but not tech.
For people I know who are in tech for the tech nothing changed. There's new tech in town, one has to adjust, and it's still possible to discover new things and pave new paths. Tech was always shifting and I suppose people who worked in it for it always knew it, and it doesn't derail them.
xlii
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 collectively as humanity going to figure this whole AI situation out.
See translator jobs getting wiped out. Nobody even blinked an eye, it didn't spark any discussion, no deep thoughts were had. It did wiped out a bunch of people's lives and did NOTHING to trigger discussions around what are we going to do here.
Twitter connected programmers feeling the heat with a large audience may prove better to spark discussion
Havoc
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.
rindalir
"Knowledge work is mostly pointless" is the author's view, so his article (the fruit of knowledge work) should be measured by it.
Amd that sentiment is hardly surprising, coming as it does from a Director of AI Operations (his title on LinkedIn).
brushfoot
Currently, I have 3 main issues with AI, LLMs and so on. Generally speaking I am happy that I can use Claude Code and Codex to help building, fixing and maintaining software in my job. To be honest it is so helpful, I am less stressed bacause most of the time I can "find out" solution without asking collegues for help or I do not have spend a lot of time struggling myself. Yeah, if you understand what feeling it is that you know you can't solve problem then you will know what I am writing about.
But...
There are exceptions which make me bad feeling about AI, LLMs and so on:
1. Paid, subscribtion based payment model - you have to pay for tokens.
2. Local models are not "ready yet". You still have to own decent hardware and it will not be the same level of frontier models. I am big fan of local first, offline and "unlimited usage" compared to paid solutions. But probably I have to wait few or several years to get to that point.
3. Feeling "I did not do it myself". This is the most what could make bad feel. You "cheated". You did not write this great app or solve problem alone. You just did modern "copy and paste". You did not write or design this class, function alone by hand. And you know you probably could not do it without help of AI, LLM.
testerius
> The world does not wait with bated breath for product launches. A marketing campaign will not change the world. Almost no one will remember all the work we do.
It did at one time! I think that’s what’s so alluring initially about Workism. People waited with bated breath for the iPhone and iPad and its new versions. Those iPod commercials and the marketing campaigns for “rip. Mix. Burn.” did change the music world.
But the quote is also right. It doesn’t happen anymore, and I think that’s why the religion of Workism is especially vulnerable at this point.
In someways, it sorta feels like the article is cheering AI on? Like, it judges Workism, and goes on to say that AI shatters the illusion, but then.. that’s it? Deriving value from good work is pointless now and we should all just go volunteer?
I dunno, i clearly identify with those who loved work and now feel a bit lost, and yes i have been thinking about alternatives, but I feel like there must be knowledge work that is still valuable both financially and socially and also provides some sense of pride and purpose… if not, i fear the situation is much more dire than we are prepared for
mangoman
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?
comments (10)
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 online it's like everyone is really angry and tired and sad all the time, and it's getting worse every year. This really took a nosedive during the pandemic, but looking back this had been going on for several years before. Every election cycle makes things worse too.
It's just been spiraling in a very dark direction for a long time. You have these blackpill depression cirklejerks everywhere. Astroturfing is getting worse every year. Like what Bannon did with gamer gate is an amateurish precursor to what everyone with is doing everywhere now. With AI you can even run these campaigns with a very small budget.
All the news is just outrage porn and non-stop predictions of impending doom. Used to be more tabloid territory but now I don't know if anywhere is spared. A lot of the focus now is on AI, but when it isn't the world is burning in some other fashion. Reading the news, we've been in a permanent state of crisis for years now.
This information diet just isn't good for your mental health. It isn't just tech workers, but they're probably more exposed than most.
Candide's closing remarks spring to mind. Tend your garden.
marginalia_nu
I've heard homeless former printers talking about the good days at the Burger King near the cable car turntable at Powell and Market. They thought they had careers. Now they're struggling to survive.
Knitting is not the answer. This is a survival issue. Somehow I suspect the author inherited money.
Animats
I've been working in tech for over 20 years now in various roles, and this is the least I have cared about it. I used to want to get better, and was constantly excited about learning new things just for the sake of it. Now I daydream about being homeless. I look around at all the meaningless crap I have accumulated, and feel shame that I didn't use that money to retire early.
I am surprised that remote work didn't get a bigger mention in the article. In a few weeks I will have been working from home for 12 years, and I believe it is the cause of most of most of my angst. At first, the convivence was such a relief, but it has become a trap. The effort of the commute, forcing me to go out every day and talk to human beings face to face, even just little things like making sure I was showered and dressed every day, they all felt like a burden at the time but they were good for me and I didn't realize it. Not to mention that it makes my house feel like work, and I now I hate it here.
I will say as an anecdote counter to the AI examples given in the article. I have a young co-worker who is very excited about AI and is using it way more effectively than I am. Talking to him gives me hope for the future, the kids will be alright.
But to the point of the article: I have many friends my age that are making less than half of what I do working objectively harder jobs for way longer hours, but they all seem so much happier than I am.
dec0dedab0de
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 miserable and they want to get back to knitting, pottery or whatever thing they want to do but not tech.
For people I know who are in tech for the tech nothing changed. There's new tech in town, one has to adjust, and it's still possible to discover new things and pave new paths. Tech was always shifting and I suppose people who worked in it for it always knew it, and it doesn't derail them.
xlii
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 collectively as humanity going to figure this whole AI situation out.
See translator jobs getting wiped out. Nobody even blinked an eye, it didn't spark any discussion, no deep thoughts were had. It did wiped out a bunch of people's lives and did NOTHING to trigger discussions around what are we going to do here.
Twitter connected programmers feeling the heat with a large audience may prove better to spark discussion
Havoc
rindalir
Amd that sentiment is hardly surprising, coming as it does from a Director of AI Operations (his title on LinkedIn).
brushfoot
But...
There are exceptions which make me bad feeling about AI, LLMs and so on:
1. Paid, subscribtion based payment model - you have to pay for tokens.
2. Local models are not "ready yet". You still have to own decent hardware and it will not be the same level of frontier models. I am big fan of local first, offline and "unlimited usage" compared to paid solutions. But probably I have to wait few or several years to get to that point.
3. Feeling "I did not do it myself". This is the most what could make bad feel. You "cheated". You did not write this great app or solve problem alone. You just did modern "copy and paste". You did not write or design this class, function alone by hand. And you know you probably could not do it without help of AI, LLM.
testerius
It did at one time! I think that’s what’s so alluring initially about Workism. People waited with bated breath for the iPhone and iPad and its new versions. Those iPod commercials and the marketing campaigns for “rip. Mix. Burn.” did change the music world.
But the quote is also right. It doesn’t happen anymore, and I think that’s why the religion of Workism is especially vulnerable at this point.
In someways, it sorta feels like the article is cheering AI on? Like, it judges Workism, and goes on to say that AI shatters the illusion, but then.. that’s it? Deriving value from good work is pointless now and we should all just go volunteer?
I dunno, i clearly identify with those who loved work and now feel a bit lost, and yes i have been thinking about alternatives, but I feel like there must be knowledge work that is still valuable both financially and socially and also provides some sense of pride and purpose… if not, i fear the situation is much more dire than we are prepared for
mangoman
lostaccount