Comment by apollo_mojave | Hacker News Reader

Comment by apollo_mojave | Hacker News Reader

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I agree with everything you said here. I mean this guy chose to be a movie critic -- probably the dyingest corner of a dying industry. And of course they can pay people nothing for this, because there are a billion people who would love to do that job, making it hyper competitive.

Your comment about automation also made me reflect on the nature of job competition in the future. Now we compete against each other, but soon, we may be competing with an algorithm that pound for pound we can't beat. What's the value add for a human?

This has been the case already in some sectors, like manufacturing...but it seems we white collar guys are going to be facing the music soon ourselves.

Also it makes me wonder what kind of job kids these days should target. Trades? Manual labor? Areas where regulatory structures will soon work as welfare-esque gatekeeping (medicine and law come to mind)?

There are a lot of jobs available now for young people in building trades, as well as related fields like oil and gas extraction. The USA is re-industrializing at a rapid pace due to concerns over national security and foreign supply chains. And Gen Z is relatively small so there are jobs available for those who want to work and are willing to move.

The down side is that building trade jobs will never pay that well because value generation isn't scalable. And the risk of a crippling injury is much higher than for movie critics.

The trades are certainly not the panacea that some think them to be, and they have significant downsides (you very rarely see a roofer over 40, for example, that work is incredibly damaging).

But there's certainly a demand, and we need to get rid of the stigma that "a plumber" is somehow a dumber/worse person than "a lawyer".

The trades do relatively quickly get into "google salary" range, but they will rarely if ever reach "google stock grant" range. 15 years into being a plumber and you're probably managing multiple plumbers and could easily be netting $250k/yr or more.

> Now we compete against each other, but soon, we may be competing with an algorithm that pound for pound we can't beat.

Welcome to the experience of the blue collar worker over the last few centuries. It doesn't seem like it's going all that well for them.

> According to legend, John Henry's prowess as a steel driver was measured in a race against a steam-powered rock drill, a race that he won only to die in victory with a hammer in hand as his heart gave out from stress.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_(folklore)

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