Ask HN: Not sure about the future of tech

Business has always been about maximizing profits for the investors. Technology might change, but the profit focus remains.

Regardless of the industry, the workers are a fungible resource to business.

If you don't want to be an easily replaceable cog in the machine, then you need to develop domain expertise which allows you to solve high value problems. You then might become a gold-plated cog in the machine.

No it was not maximizing profit for investors. It was about having a successful business which will continue to bring money (which would make investors rich). But now it is c-suite are just trying to cash out by delivering good quarter get their bonuses and jump the ship imo.

> I have never felt like more of a replaceable cog in a machine.

Since forever I remember reading in the news that company XYZ 'let go' # thousands of employees in countries A, B, and from departments C, D.

I was working in a bank (one of the many) back in the late 00s and one morning the (open space) office was dead silent. It use to have 200+ people but that day it had 20+.

Apparently "Management" saw something coming (it was the 2008 crisis) and decided to cut costs asap, and the first to go out were the ~200 contractors (back then there was no 'remote' work, so everyone was in the office). I knew one of them, we grew up in the same neighborhood, and he was super angry because they asked them to simply hand over their laptops and walk out. 1 minute notice, and paid them in the end of the month for the rest of the month and that was that.

At _that_ moment I realized that shit doesn't just happens to others on the news, it happens to all of us, it's not an IF it will happen to you/me/anyone, it is a WHEN it will happen.

Brace yourselves, winter is coming.

Commoditized to the bone. AI will move everything to the jurisdiction that has:

- lots of electrical power (not necessarily green)

- lax data laws and intellectual property laws

- lax laws allowing experimentation with robots

This will be somewhere in the developing world. Tech is the new automobile industry, they just don't know it yet

Whats hilarious (in general, not directed at you personally) is that computers have been "taking people's jobs", at scale, for around 40 years now.

We didn't really care when it was factory workers, or payroll clerks, or switchboard operators. But now that it's going after programmers, now we care.

The good news is that there are a bunch of other jobs still left. And for a long time yet there are still lots of IT jobs that are safe.

To be fair, low-skill programming jobs have been replaced for years. Lots of them outsourced offshore. (Does it matter if your job goes to AI or a Bengali?). But today's systems are huge, and complex, and require a lot more than what AI can do (impressive as that is.)

Frankly, if you work at a place, and you look around the room, and all you see are cogs in the machine, and you dont want to be a cog, then you're already in the wrong place.

>We didn't really care when it was factory workers, or payroll clerks, or switchboard operators. But now that it's going after programmers, now we care.

Watching tech people slowly realize they aren't an elite class of philosopher kings but just labor has been amusing. Wish they could have come around to class consciousness before they ruined the world but I suppose better late than never.

It’s not wanting to be treated like some noble elite, just being treated like labor is fine. The problem now is instead of being asked to dig a ditch it a reasonable about of time, the company is making you dig that same ditch with no break, no lunch, for as long as you can. Then once you give out, they hand the next person on the street a shovel and they begin because if we get the ditch dug 3x as fast we can make more money

So, basically, exactly the way they've treated labor for hundreds of years....

If you are well connected, with various friends and acquaintances, have a discussion with them about what they do either for a living or for a hobby and you might end up getting a job in a profession you never imagined before, that you might actually enjoy it more than your current tech position.

Don't worry. Just quit, get a trades profession, get good at it and you'll never be out of job.

Being a building industry sub-contractor is lucrative. The biggest problem being clients / builders not paying on-time and sometimes going bankrupt. You need to be on your A-game in terms of collecting payment for work completed and not putting up with delaying BS.

Not sure about the US, but in Canada people have to go through a program, get certified and then stay as a low pay union monkey for many years.

I would probably do it if I am young, though.

there is a lot that is broken in today's Canada unfortunately. And yet still I see a looot of demand (and hi prices) for quality manual work

I came to hackernews to ask the question - Is being in tech even worth it anymore?

Any business is truly about value creation, I honestly think coding as leverage is getting pretty useless.

Tangible value creation is something I think we should be optimizing for. AI can't walk upto people and sell. You might be selling a service, a product or lemonade it doesn't honestly matter.

On a lighter note, I am thinking of getting into farming, everyone's gotta eat right?

I feel the same way! I left corporate and chose a non-profit where the mission aligns with doing something good. I suggest you do the same. You may not get paid as well, but if you choose carefully, some could pay decently. But at least you can wake up every morning and feel good that you're contributing to something good, not lining up $$ for corporate greed!

AI is hype. It does do some things, but about 75-80% of the AI business value is based only on FOMO and not any kind of metric or economic factor. So, unless there is some radical revolutionary improvement to AI just put that out of your mind.

Now, it seems your concerns are anchored on employment and not anything regarding technology. I have been laid off during my career and survived many layoffs. The first round of layoffs I experienced in the big brand web world was the same year I received a negative review. I kept my job while other highly rated people were pushed out the door.

Here is my learning about career sustainability:

* If you don't like what you do then all you are doing is funding a life style. If you both hate what you do AND do not have a shit ton of personal disposable income sitting in a bank account after 5 years its not worth it. Tell them to fuck off, take a hit to your income/lifestyle and do something else. You will thank me later. This one piece of advice will add years to your life.

* If you want to have a job that withstands all layoffs (aside from the business completely folding) do what is most needed. In my case I was a first year front end developer at Travelocity back in 2008 when the market crashed and before massive frameworks did your job for you. They couldn't hire front end developers to save their life. Its just like now in that most of the candidates were extremely childish or extremely incompetent, but now businesses looks the other way while colossal frameworks and tool sets do most of the work. I kept my job when others didn't because I was more valuable to the business, even with a shit annual review, than people who were cherished employees.

* If you want to be taken seriously on the job do only two things well: 1) guard your time and 2) take care of people. Be ruthless about these two things. If you spend 4 hours a week actually doing your job and the coworker next to you spends 40 hours a week doing their job you are 10x more valuable. This is counter-intuitive because they are working hard you aren't doing shit. Hard work is not valued. Delivery is valued. If you want hard work to be valued then get out of IT and becoming an independent contractor of a trade skill. If you are a narcissist your more competent peers will see through your bullshit. Seriously, learn to take care of people.

* If you want to get promoted do only three things well: 1) deliver what your boss asks of you, 2) measure things, and 3) demonstrate superior communication and organizational skills. I have seen this work in the corporate world and I have heard these exact things more than once from brigadier generals in the US Army.

this is my opinion and feel free to debate or whatever.

ai is the end of all knowledge work. phd level intelligence and reasoning is cheap and fast. its so good its economically non viable to NOT leverage it, and then it will be non viable to hire humans instead of orchestating AI. As we approach AGI any person sharp with ai tools and self motivated and with domain knowledge will replace entire teams. I expect huge big tech layoffs. The problem lingers is that no matter if ai cant do your job, it can do the job of a hell lot of people, and if all that people are unemployed and in gigs eventually the economy will collapse, doesn't matter if you are a writer or a HVAC, and see robots if you are the last. The issue isn’t just job loss, but the velocity of change. Capitalism isn’t designed for near-instantaneous obsolescence. Government wont do shit because this is a gazillion dollar industry and also they are still figuring out what's the internet. Jobs wont be created at the same pace they are destroyed, and AI will be able to take on those roles too. Companies will follow what shopify and duolingo did. even the pope is concerned, hence its name. AI will disrupt ALL industries. hell, even ai art is objectively better and cheaper than human art.

This is my opinion. Feel free to discuss or whatever.

> even ai art is objectively better and cheaper than human art.

Ok I’ll bite on this. I think this reflects an incomplete understanding of what art is, and why humans make it. Sure, with enough prior examples and a bajillion tokens, you can reference the likeness of all the greatest artists who ever lived, and create stunning representations. No doubt magical.

But are these LLM-dreamed works better than what humans make? I dunno man, I think it’s a different class entirely. It’s not right to compare the two and say one is objectively better than the other.

I have come to understand that humans create art from feeling, and those gifted humans use their own personal tastes and sensibilities to transform these feelings into a representation. A human artist can generally express why and how they made what they did. They can explain the meanings and symbolism, with deep personal significance.

Art, and most works dreamed from LLMs, does not come from human feeling. It comes from examples, distilled millions of times over. But the feeling is not there.

LLMs do not understand quality. They do not have good taste. However I do feel that a lot of people don’t care about this. People want shortcuts, and most likely that’s what they’ll get, and what will be incentivized.

i dont care about the backstory or the artist life. i consume the product, not the medium. if its good ill take it.

would you take a shitty bust sketch for $45 or make 1,000 far better generations with ai and your input? i think the latter is optimal.

thats my thought

if you are unable to acknowledge the feeling that art invokes in your human heart, or to recognize that a living tree simply feels better than an artificial one, then we must agree to disagree

LLMs are a tool, not a means to an end.