When it's your way of life that is threatened, it's hard to heed that lesson.
I think this is a very important point, in the past illiteracy used to be defined as people who couldn't read, in the future I think it's going to come to mean the people who can't or are unwilling to adapt and learn, we'll look down on them with pity like we used to all the people who couldn't read back in the 70s.
If you've worked in a factory all your life, and suddenly all the factories around where you — and your well-established, extended family — live are closed down, or moved overseas, or whatever, you're probably going to be a bit less sanguine about the situation.
The myopia of tech people will probably never not astound me.
Isn't it equally myopic to assume that factory workers as a class are unable to learn or adapt?
If you also can't move out of the place where there are no jobs left, that's an extra layer of fucked.
I made zero assumptions about anyone else's situation. I merely point out that the assumptions tech people make about job mobility are, on the whole, a lot less applicable if you aren't a tech person.
What tech people call "changing careers" tends to mean something like "Well, I do React now, but I used to do Rails." Trajectories like mine — I started my career writing C++, now I get paid for keeping people's PostgreSQL instances happy — are "uncommon", and mine happened gradually, over a few years.
What much of the rest of the US means by that is often more like, "Well I used to be a salesman, but now I'm a tool-and-die machinist." And those jobs are disappearing, too. (And all that leaves aside pursuing things that might require a certification or degree.)
Riding that level of cultural and social change is not something people know how to do, and might well look dauntingly impossible when you also have a family to feed. So to see people making six figures on the coasts talk down their noses about mobility and "intestinal fortitude" (from one of your comment's siblings) is, honestly, pretty galling.
If us tech folk looked at it truly thoughtfully, we'd understand exactly how hard the world is for most people, and how easily it could turn that way for us.
Every industry is all about competition, consolidation, and maximizing profit. The older this one gets, the lower the wages are going to be for your run of the mill programmer. The societal message that "everyone should learn how to program!" is ultimately all about lowering wages.
As regular ol' programming tasks become cheaper and cheaper, we'll keep adapting and doing more specialized work, right? So what there's no one wanting to pay you 6 figs for making CRUD apps anymore. Just learn some machine learning and away you go! A year goes by and uh oh, Microsoft just added auto-ML to excel at the price of 20$ a month. How long can your job last? Better change specializations again!
Maybe it wont happen in our life times, but the wealth we're all capturing in this industry WILL dry up and get captured. And eventually there will be a new technological revolution that fills a new pond somewhere else. There will be a whole lot of callousness until a vast sum of us have to finally make that long horizontal migration. People who change from actionscript to rust are making tiny vertical migrations in career. It's not at all the same thing.
I'm going to avoid the whole blue-collar vs. the economy argument on HN, for once, but I do want to refresh people's memories here: this has happened, in 2000. I lived through it; purely coincidentally I decided to leave the software industry almost exactly the night before the house of cards came down, and the funny thing was that having "programmer" on my resume got me turned down for retail jobs. They assumed I was overqualified and would leave as soon as a software opportunity presented itself. More than one potential employer said as much.
It really sucked and there was a lot of noise made about it on places like Slashdot. If you were an unemployed programmer then, you pretty much gave up after a couple of months and transferred to something entirely different. (Many seemed to move to law.)
Unfortunately the folks that experienced that don't speak up in these threads and everyone else on HN is too young to remember it.
It's funny you mentioned that a lot of people moved to law. That industry should make it painfully clear that no one is immune to this. When I was a kid the societal message was "want to make money? Become a lawyer!". Enough kids listened to that message that the industry is in shambles today.
I wonder what's next?
But I had some savings, collected unemployment, and had the help and support of friends (who also worked in tech, and weathered the .com bubble's popping more fortunately than I did) and family.
Not all — if even many — of those things are true for most of the rest of this country.
I mean, seriously: the fact that such a large chunk of the tech workforce couldn't find work in ~2001-3, or whenever, ended up going to law school it became A Thing people noticed doesn't seem to me a particularly valid counter-argument to the economic wreckage that is the Rust Belt.
Yes, it's a wonderful prima facie demonstration of career mobility being a thing that actually exists in the world, but it, specifically, is also largely only available to people who already have the knowledge and skills (to say nothing of connections) such that they're almost necessarily going to be better positioned for these kinds of situations.
Usually I'm the one in these threads arguing the position you're arguing, but I've decided that it's a pretty big waste of time to do so on HN.
It may take a couple more decades but it really does feel like today's Programmer will become yesteryear's factory worker.
A large chunk of what we're building is rebuilds, or maintenance, or minor upgrades. Every market is saturated. We keep ourselves busy building the same things, solving the same problems over and over, with the latest and greatest "stacks".
Post secondary education is churning out more and more programmers, and the available programming tasks continue to move towards mundane repetition.
I wonder if the new technological revolution you mention will simply be more globalization?
Manufacturing in China will eventually move to "cheaper" countries. Factory workers in today's established manufacturing centers around the world will want a better life for their children, and push them into STEM. We'll lose our jobs overseas. It happened here. It could happen there.
Perhaps it's already happening?
One would hope that the public would demand reasonable severance, assistance for relocation and retraining, et cetera, so that change becomes less dauntless. To reiterate the second point in this thread, history has shown that "digging in" is usually the exact opposite of what should be done.
It's not the solution, but it definitely is a solution.
Imagine you're a coal miner in Wyoming. You have two choices:
1. Get your local elected officials (who have tons of other constituents in the same boat as you) to put together some anti-competitive legislation that lets you keep your job.
2. You move to a new place, possibly with gov't assistance, uprooting your nuclear family, likely leaving your extended family behind (who you've lived near all your life), to do the same job, but probably for less because the supply of such jobs is shrinking but the demand is still high.
3. You spend several years retraining for a new job, living off gov't handouts while you're unable to work. After you're done, you still have trouble because everyone else is retraining for a pool of jobs that hasn't gotten any larger. (Remember, a lot of these places are one-industry towns and counties. If one industry goes away, you don't have much else to do.)
If I were in that situation, I would love to say that I would automatically jump at the chance for #3, or at least #2, but #1 is so so so much better for me and my family.
You do the math, and you don't have a lot of savings, and #2 and #3, if they even occur to you, sound really really scary: "I might lose my house and be unable to feed my family" kind of scary. So you do the only rational thing you can in that position: #1.
> One would hope that the public would demand reasonable severance, assistance for relocation and retraining, et cetera
Unlikely. Public sentiment -- especially of the kinds of people who live in rural areas that are most hit with problems like this -- are very much against gov't assistance for retraining (or, even "worse", gov't-mandated assistance from the former employer). Remember, these are people who believe in the American Dream so much: you work hard, and you succeed. Getting a gov't handout is dirty to a lot of these people. Allowing other people to benefit from such handouts is even worse.
> To reiterate the second point in this thread, history has shown that "digging in" is usually the exact opposite of what should be done.
You seem to be under the misconception that people tend to do what is best for the community (and even themselves) over the long term, when the short term looks scary. That... just usually isn't the case.
I'm not saying any of this is right, or ideal, or efficient, or long-term sustainable... but it's how it is. Some people don't have the time or resources to see or plan long enough into the future to make the right call in situations like this.
While in the beginning many jobs will be available, once the fields are established go away. Then those same people who retrained to be solar panel installers are either too old or to emotionally devastated to soldier on to another replacable skill set.
It's morally galling, yes. However, if we're talking politics, "Obey the free market or die!" is exactly what these very factory workers have been screaming at the entire rest of the country, in every single federal election year. This is what voting for unfettered capitalism means, and there's a level of moral gall in saying, "Capitalism for thee, social democracy for me".
Your home that a lot of your wealth is tied up in? Worthless.
It's not just like getting laid off by a company and looking for a job. It's about having a skilled career that suddenly is worthless.
Plenty of examples in tech. Ask your average >45+ year old getting purged from tech companies about "adapting". There are still DEC alumni floating around in their 60s in shitty contract gigs who cannot retire, but haven't had a "good job" since getting nuked by HP/Compaq.
Expecting the government to patch the syptoms of the problem doesn't fix anything, myopic we are or not.
> "Expecting the government to patch the syptoms of the problem doesn't fix anything"
So care to explain that a bit better? I think you just contradicted yourself.
The government has no business anywhere near the job market. Go read about the subsidized corn market if you want to see their brand of job creation in action. For too long we've expected the government to take care of the needs of society when we should have been doing it as citizens.
Or drive through the Lincoln Tunnel or use electricity from the Hoover Dam.
Or fly from LaGuardia to LAX.
>For too long we've expected the government to take care of the needs of society
Maybe corporate welfare should be cut to the bone first.
The question is about whether or not someone has the intestinal fortitude to make it happen and see it through. Unlike tech where a complete career change could happen in a short time, not necessarily degrade your pay too badly, and not necessarily require relocation- this could easily be just too overwhelming for people, especially with families. The key is, there is nothing preventing an able minded individual from finding a means to support themselves if they're willing to go through lean times to see it through.
We literally packed up and moved back to the US (we're all citizens) because where we lived was bombed by US forces. We came back to the states with 3 kids, no jobs, and a lot of what we had was actually blown up.
Don't tell me you can't retrain. It's a matter of deciding to do it and figuring out a way to make it work. It's not EASY, you don't want to do it if you don't have to. There's simply nothing keeping you from doing it other than the fear and anguish associated with upheaving your life.
All of these will require you to seek out the opportunity, probably pick up some different skills along the way, deal with some BS trying to get a foot in the door, and likely a length of time where you've got to do something else to keep the lights on.
Back to my n=1 anecdotes, I worked more than full time at a local dairy farm and as a motorcycle tech to pay for university. My degree was in Computer Engineering, seemingly completely unrelated. I worked my ass off and admitted when I didn't know how to do something and sought help from those around me, but I also just tried. I just kept trying, that was it.
I had the luxury of not having to keep anyone but myself fed and the stamina that being 18 gives you. But all I did was drive to the farm down the road and ask if they needed help. Then I popped in to the motorcycle shop when I saw a help wanted sign.
My entire point is that people can try to change their path. They may not succeed, and it will very likely be incredibly hard and stressful- there will be obstacles and set backs, but you don't have to be special or smart or anything other than someone who's willing to try. To suggest that the vast majority of people can't do this is condescending and belittling to all of them.
I would agree that a lot won't even try, probably too afraid- which is totally different than being lazy or dumb. I would also posit that a number would come up 'short' in that they don't really get ahead of where they were, but maybe they're into a new area of work that will be more stable or safe. Then there's a lucky few who make it through the shitshow stronger, better off financially/socially, and with the self assurance that through their honest effort, all things are possible- if not always probable.
It took out the factory jobs, the service jobs that supported all of the people that worked there, and sent more than one county into such a downturn that it has still not recovered fully. Everywhere you look are empty buildings and homes as large sections of the community was forced to pick up and leave to find work.
I can't find it now, but there was a recent article about how, on the short term at least, a move to renewable energy will likely create more jobs than it eliminates.
electrical engine maintenance and solar panel construction.
It may be just me, but I am missing the vast overlap of similar skill sets between the two industries.
What you describe is similar to the transition between being in construction to being an electrician, a transition which I know a lot of working class people have done. I particularly once knew a man who had been, professionally: a construction worker, a truck driver, a security guard, a plumber, an electrician, a factory worker, a caretaker for the elderly and a private corporate driver. Yes, it is harder than going from C# enterprise developer to JS front end developer. It is more on the scale of going from electrical engineering into software. But it is viable. "Just learn to code", for example, isn't.
We should be, as a society, providing lots of help for people to accomplish similar transitions, rather than saying "oh, sucks to be you, anyone without masters level education is useless to our modern economy" or "oh well, we will prop your failing industry, even though it is killing us all, because otherwise you won't ever be able to get a job". There are blue collar jobs that will be around for a decade or two at least. Also, I am in favor of safety nets and UBI and free college education, but that doesn't preclude offering people structured paths back into useful work they can realistically take.
No, I am not.
The myopia of blue collar workers will never not astound me.
A lot of blue collar people can't imagine what they'd do if they could no longer get a job in their current industry. Severance is meager, pensions are drying up, and retraining assistance (if they'd even accept it) is virtually nonexistent. When faced with "progress" making your way of life and standard of living untenable, that gets really really really scary. I'd challenge you to remain entirely rational if your job -- no, your entire industry -- went away, the bank decided to foreclose on your house (which is now worthless anyway, because there are no jobs where you live), you were unable to feed your family, and you didn't even have the money to move somewhere else where prospects were better.
On the other hand, we have a ton of tech people around here who, because of their privilege, are unable to put themselves into anyone else's shoes, even for a minute. It's basic empathy, and seems to be in short supply sometimes.
On the whole, people whose job perks include the fully-staffed, all-day gourmet cafeterias, paid gym memberships (if not on-site gyms and massage therapists!), and six figure salaries for sitting in meetings, thinking kinda hard, and then tapping away at a keyboard for a bit (yes, I'm being reductive; so are you) have exactly fuck-all grounds to call out anyone else about "hard work".
I worked my way into IT and it was hard work.
How is this privileged ?
Exactly. It isn't. That you think your efforts are what was being described when the post up-thread mentioned "privilege" shows how poorly you understand the concept.
It isn't easy but it is possible. Pretending it isn't is for lazy people.
And yes... ask me what ghetto I climbed out of ;)
The things that you, personally, don't have to contend with on that climb are what's meant by your "privilege." Not how hard you worked. Not what you've earned, and managed to leverage that into subsequently, but the things that you have no control over, and about which other people have stories and judgements and whatever, which can — and do — materially alter the set of opportunities you'll experience your life — or, rather, they would, if you were subject to them. But you aren't, so you have that "privilege".
(Yes, I think it's a shitty name for the concept. But if you can just detach yourself from feeling like it's somehow "your fault" that you have these privileges, and look with more open eyes, you'll see that there's actually a real, demonstrable, even measurable phenomenon there, however strongly you might want to disagree with the verbiage.)
No-one's pretending these things aren't possible, so that's a nice straw-man you're building there. But apparently plenty of people are pretending that these things are exactly as hard for someone else with a different life and circumstances as it was for themselves — and that's not only demonstrably false, it's (IMO) disturbingly ignorant.
I work in tech. I can't imagine what I would do if I could no longer get a job in our industry. My wife left biotech and has struggled to find work.
Weirdly enough, we live in a city in Massachusetts, so the entire local, state, and federal government apparatus doesn't get mobilized to help us, because we're second-class citizens nowadays.
On the one hand I agree that bad policy is still bad even if it does end up saving some jobs, but it seems the economy is already so tilted in favor of white coastal urban voters that I find it somewhat hard to sympathize.
>we get insulted for our efforts.
While this is certainly disappointing, it is so prevalent on both sides I can't take it seriously unless you're willing to call out similar denigration of the rural poor by coastal urbanites.
The economy is tilted in favor of white coastal urban voters. The government is tilted in favor of white rural landlocked voters. All voters skew more relatively wealthy than non-voters, and indeed neither of our political parties tilt in favor of non-wealthy non-white people.
>While this is certainly disappointing, it is so prevalent on both sides I can't take it seriously unless you're willing to call out similar denigration of the rural poor by coastal urbanites.
While I do call that out, I think there's a difference: one kind of denigration comes from the permanent minority party, and the other comes from the permanently dominant party. I cannot name one time in my life when the Republican Party and its base of rural white landlocked relatively wealthy people did not set the national agenda, and I'm 27 years old.
Even when they "lost" elections, in the theoretical sense of no longer holding majorities, they used various procedural tactics to maintain their chokehold over the actual mechanisms of policymaking.
So as much as the economy has inflicted horrible suffering on that base, those rural white landlocked voters still maintain the actual power. They've been supporting policies that hurt people like them, but as they tell it, those are their moral values and their notion of dignity -- if people suffer, so be it.
I can't help but think that spending at least one summer picking oranges or unloading 18-wheelers would give tech people a little more perspective and some compassion for what most of the rest of the country has to deal with.
That's a bit weird. I'm only 27, and I painted some basements and did some yard-work back in high school to earn spending money. I thought that was normal.
"Unwilling."
Going back into your comment history it appears you have had some struggles along these lines, so maybe ixnay the condescending illiteracy angle.
Did you used to have any previous HN accounts, maybe from the period where you were being "upended?" Probably some gold in there, too.