> If anything, it should make me more optimistic, not less. If you have an idea, you can turn it into product within 30 minutes, no matter how complicated it is.
There is no product in that anymore because someone else could copy your product in the same time.
Give it some time and you'll be adding to that list.
AI has essentially stolen my career from me. I _liked_ having to solve complicated problems with software, I enjoyed having to get into the nitty gritty to get things done. I never really cared that much about the actual business problems I was solving, so moving up a layer of abstraction to be some sort of bastardized product manager/architect does not scratch the same itch.
OTOH, for solving problems I care about, AI has been a god send. I can achieve things that I would have never had the time for.
The amount of sympathy programmers are expecting others to feel about their problems has been kicked up a hundredfold now that its their jobs that have been threatened by AI. Their tribe feels pain more deeply than others, I guess.
My positive feelings about AI are marginal; my feelings about its performance and the power of the people who scheme to control it are very mixed. My negative feelings about the whining of the most coddled profession on the planet outside of finance are intense.
The problem is that making CRUD apps is not creative, and even if AI plateaus at mediocre, it will still replace a Rails monkey. If you are creative, AI has opened up a world of possibility and productivity, and you painfully feel the limitations and the stupidity of the current level of LLMs; but if you're a mechanic, it's over - I'm pretty sure that was the keynote at the last Rails con. Sorry. Hope you didn't spend all of your massive incomes on toys and rent.
Well, just wait then, lots of other professions will soon get to realize the same sort of pain, so you'll be able to be similarly dismissive and condescending to them, too.
A lot of people don't realize that the frontier AI companies are so focused on automating software development first because they are all racing to be the first to get to RSI. I don't know if RSI will actually happen, but many, many other professions will soon be in the same boat. Mathematicians have already felt the pain, and those mathematicians who aren't the few who have tenured professorships are certainly not (generally) some of the most coddled professionals.
But lots of folks low on the salary totem pole (copywriters, paralegals, etc.) are already being hit hard by AI and that blast radius will continue to grow.
My parents-in-law started their careers as management consultants. The job in their time was much higher prestige and much higher value than it was when I started my career; free flow of information over the internet and commodification of spreadsheets changed all of it. From my parents' generation, I know practical effects folks who became unemployable once movies went to digital effects; engineers who found their draftsmanship skills obsolete. Folks with near-photographic memories whose entire superpower was destroyed by computing. I personally grew up in a blue collar community that was income depressed because its labor became commodified, though that was due to mechanization.
The only thing I don't really agree with is where you say "My parents-in-law started their careers as management consultants. The job in their time was much higher prestige and much higher value than it was when I started my career." I still think of management consultants as some of the highest paid careers around, and getting a partnership track job at one of the Big 3 is one of the most desirable jobs (for MBA types anyway) there is, so I just don't know what you're talking about with this one.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that. I just meant that part of the unique feelings in the air for software engineers is that this is the first time we're facing this.
> I still think of management consultants as some of the highest paid careers around, and getting a partnership track job at one of the Big 3 is one of the most desirable jobs
There's plenty of other jobs the MBA type could get into these days which are also high prestige and there are now many more tiers of management consultants. The elite folks at McKinsey are still high prestige with high salaries, but your average Accenture or Deloitte consultant is both pay and prestige wise about the same as an average knowledge worker. Plenty of VCs, fund managers, and investors are high prestige MBA-types. The explosion of private capital means there's a lot of opportunity to manage private capital; private capital markets were just much shallower 50 years ago.
And? Who are these people that need all this sympathy from internet strangers? Grow the fuck up and go solve your own damn problems. I can’t stand these “I need internet strangers to tell me that my life is, in fact, hard” people.
its a tribalism problem, but one of trying to uphold the current tribe system while theres a pretty obvious new tribe system replacing it
AI has taken that security away from me
My lifestyle isn't super expensive, but I can't afford to retire or anything. I have a mortgage that I still owe money on
My comforting thoughts are, who is this all for, and what would happen if AI actually makes human labor redundant? Labs control the AI sure, but so much stuff is built around humans that it almost becomes comical to think it would be a bad outcome for a the average person.
Farms and land don’t cease to exist, houses/apartments don’t go up in flames instantly, people aren’t reduced to functionless sludge creatures as soon as they’re done being economic drivers. What’s the real plan? All the normal people die and a thousand or so chosen few sit around and watch AI videos and eat grapes until the heat death of the universe?
Nah, we’ll figure it out, perhaps it will be harder temporarily, and perhaps SWEs lose status before everyone else, but it will probably be okay overall.
Imagine what happens if landlords decided one day to collectively demand more money than actually exists in the total monthly income of workers. What would happen?
You can point out that if everyone just stopped paying rent, their houses and apartments would still exist, and they could live rent-free as their landlords would have no money to spend on enforcement. Technically, this is not untrue. But it's not what would actually happen, is it? One person would be the first to default on their rent, and their landlord would use the money collected from all their other tenants to seize back that tenant's formerly rented property. No individual tenant would dare to be the first to stop paying rent, so they all continue paying rent, selling their stuff, taking out loans until there's physically no way for them to keep paying, and only then do they default.
I am strongly feeling I'm already redundant
‘Not having to work and being warm and fed’ is called being a pet. Some cats and dogs enjoy this life greatly. I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently.
I'm sorry for your loss, but welcome also to the real world. You had it better than most for a long while.
I know plenty of people in their late 40's 50's and 60's that were doing fine and who now have to compete with junior and Claude.
And sometimes just Claude.
Obviously they had no inherent right to income but still, people have obligations that need to be met and if they stop spending the economy is not going to be happy. Especially cruel because we have been telling everybody for decades that a career in software is stable and that there will always be a need for more people.
I suspect that when all this is over 1929 will look pretty good.
I don’t, necessarily; but I do know that if you’re not even trying, then you’re putting yourself at greater risk. This isn’t one of those developments that people can just stubbornly dig their heels in about.
Life throws obstacles at everyone. Learning how to dodge and weave is essential to survival.
> I suspect that when all this is over 1929 will look pretty good.
Oh come on. Let’s not be so dramatic, shall we?
We could also all put our gifts toward preventing the "new reality" you see as inevitable, and put you at greater risk.
The future isn't written yet. Your ability to predict it is an illusion. In aggregate, people whose job it is to predict large-scale economic events are worse than chance in their predictions.
Sounds good, but isn't supported by data. Tetlock did not establish that all experts are worse than chance.
> The average expert was slightly better than chance.
-Tetlock
This is sensible and pragmatic, but I think you're talking past the other commenter.
Obstacles presented by, for example, your boss, or your company's competitors, or your political system, are not the same as obstacles like heartbreak, natural disasters, emotions, illnesses we cannot yet cure.
> Learning how to dodge and weave is essential to survival.
A lot of people perceive that elites are throwing dodgeballs at them in order to increase their own profits. Saying "them's the breaks, it's just the way it is" appears to be deflecting criticism from those elites and that system.
It probably depends on whether you think we could actually feed everyone, today, if we chose to, or if you think e.g. human nature prevents that from being possible.
You'd have said the same thing in 1928...
Seriously: this is a massive problem that we are creating and given that the tools that make the problem require better tools to solve them I really am not all that happy about how this is going.
Hindsight is 20/20. Besides, what good is panicking? It won’t help with the inevitable; better to adapt and save for it.
> the tools that make the problem require better tools to solve them
You’ve found the opening :-)
I'm not worried about myself, I've had a lot of luck in my life for which I'm super greatful. But I'm also quite aware of the exceptional position that puts me in and how many people are not so fortunate that they could probably live on their savings for the rest of their life if things ground to a halt.
Most people live paycheck to paycheck, or they may have a few thousand bucks in savings at most. They've worked hard all their lives and simply were never in a position to save enough against this kind of eventuality because the deck was stacked against them.
Have a heart, and realize that barring a couple of unfortunate moves it could be you looking at your last 500 bucks with rent due and a couple of mouths to feed.
I agree, but I'd like to think these people come from a optimistic point of view.
A lot of people don't seem to understand that the "human in the loop" is exactly the thing the big AI leaders want to cut out as much as possible.
I’m sorry if it’s coming across that way. It’s not my intent, and I’m aware that many people are a lost paycheck away from a crisis.
But if you really think the right thing to do in response is to complain and commiserate, I don’t think that is helpful, either. I think it’s much better to encourage behavior that has a chance of being effective.
If you think it’s somehow wrong to encourage people to behave in such a way that has a better chance of setting them up for success, then I vehemently disagree.
> To effectively tell them... to adapt when that simply isn't an option is losing sight of the human angle.
You must have a pretty low opinion of people if you think they can’t adapt.
What if complaining and commiserating leads to fighting for political actions that lead to outcomes we like better?
That or swallow a bullet, we'll see. Haven't decided. We'll see how long my current unemployment lasts, and how long my savings last after that
Having been in this game for a long time, I get the negative aspects of the industry. They grind on me, as I believe they have for you. Choosing a different path is not an all or nothing proposition. Your knowledge, and you as a person, have value. I hope you find a way towards better mental health and wish you well on that journey.
>Your knowledge, and you as a person, have value.
This is the exact thing AI is threatening to take away.
What will it not replace, eventually?
Been seeing a counselor for over a year already
Went and made a doctor, guess it's time to look into medication
Thanks
Don't worry about me, I'll be fine. Been here before, just very unhappy to be here again that's all
I’m not trying to be contrary, just that doesn’t say a lot.