Hacker News Reader

Comment by wasmainiac | Hacker News Reader

> If you would like to grieve, I invite you to grieve with me.

I’m not against AI in itself, but the current implementation (read market) can eat my shiny metal … I got kids to feed and bills to pay. Yes AI was all about post scarcity. Hiring in our industry is already feeling the brunt of AI, where is the UBI? Where is our soft landing? I’m too old to learn XYZ skill if I get laid off, it will be life changing, and for what? For some rich person to be richer while simultaneously destroying the climate and my energy bill?

I would push back, but I do not know how. Hope for the market to pop I guess.

View on HN

> Hiring in our industry is already feeling the brunt of AI

AI isn't what is driving us to slow hiring down in the US. There are other reasons I have brought up multiple times on HN.

> I’m too old to learn XYZ skill if I get laid off

Sadly, you will have to.

My dad is in his 60s and has been programming and soldering since ZX Spectrums and apple ][s roamed the earth, yet he still keeps abreast on the latest CNCF projects, prompt engineering, A2A, eBPF, and other modern stacks.

Meanwhile I'm seeing people half his age flaming out and kvetching that spending some time further studying A2A, MCP, and other design patterns is insurmountable.

Software Engineering is an ENGINEERING discipline. If you do not keep abreast on the changes happening in our industry, you will fall behind.

And in fact, having years of experience is a net benefit because newer innovations themselves build on top of older fundamentals.

For example, understanding Linux internals helps debug GPUs that communicate via Infiniband that are being used to train models that are being orchestrated via K8s and are operating on segmented networks.

Our PortCos and I are not hiring you to be a code monkey writing pretty looking code. If we want a code monkey we can offshore. We are paying you $200k-300k base salaries in order to architect, translate, and negotiate business requirements into technical requirements.

Yes this will require EQ on top of technical depth. That is what engineering is. The whole point of engineering is to build sh#t that works well enough. It doesn't have to be pretty, it will often be MacGyvered, and it will have glaring issues that are tomorrow's problem - but it is solving a problem.

The name of the game for me is building “sh#t that works well” and I like it, and that means constant learning no doubt. I’ve done crazy sh!t like implementing Webservers with bash, accessed accessed by tunneling over uart, to configure laser driven HUD on a pair of glasses. All this was new to me but I did it and it works well within the constraints we were given.

Now AI is making us more efficient (with questionable quality) that means we need less people to get a job done, less people hired per project. I have personally experienced this, to a degree. Now if I get layedoff and I don’t meet the cut because there is more competition someone better or more desperate that me, I’m out of luck.

I can restart my career as an electrician, I studied a lot of electronics both professionally and personally, but I will be starting as an apprentice, that’s not putting food on my table.

> We are paying you $200k-300k base salaries

That’s nice, I earn far less than half that as a web dev in Norway.

> That’s nice, I earn less than half that as a web dev in Norway

Well, that's a different conversation then, and you raise a fair point.

I think it is fair for most Europeans to complain because your business community does not respect software and other engineering and IP driven disciplines.

The fact that Bangalore [0] tech salaries have caught up to Italian [1] tech salaries highlights that fact. But then again, you are competing against Czech [2], Polish [3], and Romanian [4] developers who are also members of the EFTA and whose governments provide massive subsidizes for tech companies to operate there.

On the other hand, if I see American SWEs complain I will get livid.

> I’ve done crazy sh!t like implementing Webservers with bash, accessed accessed by tunneling over uart, to configure laser driven HUD on a pair of glasses. All this was new to me but I did it and it works well within the constraints we were given.

That is great stuff from a technical perspective, but what I mean is making sure any development work you do is aligned with your employer, or shifting employers to one who is better aligned with SWEs and Engineering, such as my buddies from college who specialized in HPC and ended up doing simulation work in Equinor style ONG majors.

Alternatively, you may have no choice but to immigrate to Stockholm or London because there is some amount of network effect for software in both metros.

> Now if I get layedoff and I don’t meet the cut because there is more competition someone better or more desperate that me, I’m out of luck

Assuming you live in a city (an actual city) like Oslo and keep up-to-date technically you should be fine.

[0] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater...

[1] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/italy

[2] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/czech-r...

[3] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/poland

[4] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/romania

Yea most people earn far less than that in the US too, that’s just hacker news being out of touch

Software Engineering is an ENGINEERING discipline. If you do not keep abreast on the changes happening in our industry, you will fall behind. --- Lately it's more like swallowing big swathes of BS. Software and engineering are two very far away disciplines. This has nothing to do with engineering. You have to use cumbersome, non-human-centric things just to get a job interview. They don't look at you as a programmer. They look at you as an X or Y framework expert. So, you are not an engineer at all. You are more and more becoming a trained monkey who has to appease the feebleminded and work with mind-bogglingly idiotic and overcomplicated things.

> I’m too old to learn XYZ skill if I get laid off, it will be life changing, and for what?

If you're not already retirement aged, how is age stopping you from learning a new skill? This sounds like learned ageism.

It was said in the context of having bills to pay. Meaning that he is in deep and needs a high-priced developer salary to make ends meet.

Virtually all other careers that offer similar compensation have an old boys club gatekeeping the profession, requiring you submit many years and hundreds of thousands of dollars before they will consider letting you in. That might pencil out as a reasonable investment when you are 14, but once you are mid-career you'll never get back what you put into it.

Learning XYZ skill is something you can do at any age, and doing so will even get you an average paying job with ease. Learning the XYZ skill in the way that keeps the old boys happy is not a realistic option for someone who considers themselves old.

Generally from a financial planning standpoint 35-50 is typically the "grinding years" where mortgage, family, and other life commitments means that typically your career investment needs to pay off to make it through. In some ways it is the "danger zone" financially. Hard to change careers (not young enough), but not yet worked enough to retire with large expenses coming in. This isn't unique to software engineers either -> this is most people in most jobs.

There are also mixed people on these forums in different regions, countries, work experiences, etc. For example software in most places in the world had an above average salary but not extremely high (i.e. many other white collar professions would pay similar/more). For those people where it is a standard skilled role it probably hits even harder now than say the ones with lots of stock who can retire early and enjoy the new toy that is AI.

> where is the UBI?

I have a bridge to sell¹ to everyone who ever believed Sam Altman was serious about and ever cared about UBI. All his “career” was about himself, he couldn’t give a rat’s ass about anyone else. Only way he’d care about UBI is if that somehow would benefit him even more than the alternatives.

¹ Not really. Unlike Sam, I’d feel bad about scamming anyone.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com