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Comment by nitwit005 | Hacker News Reader

> The AI is coming for that too.

Yes, but if/when that happens, it won't just affect software engineers. An AI that can do that can replace any white collar worker.

> People knocking out Jira tickets and writing CRUD webapps will end up with their livelihood often taken away.

I'm not sure anyone is actually working on those. People talk about spending all day writing CRUD apps here, but if you suggest there are already low code tools to build those, they will promptly tell you it's too complex for that to work.

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>Yes, but if/when that happens, it won't just affect software engineers. An AI that can do that can replace any white collar worker.

Yes. Yes, that's exactly what we're going to see, and more swiftly than people are generally comfortable with. What are we going to do with all those cubicle dwellers?

a new paradigm of 3 day work weeks. share the salary of the days off with those less automatable, and work to automate everyone. I wish some sort of dicussion like this could happen where the workers of the world get to see some of the gains of a new technology more immediately. If "the state" wants to maintain legitimacy and protect its citizenry (one of the primary promises of a state) to avoid a period of social unrest, the likes of which has been unheard of for several generations, I think something like this should at least be a part of the discussion.

I don't think it will happen. For one thing, it hasn't in the US since the introduction of the forty hour work week in 1940.

But beyond that, I don't think most people want a three day work week. They would rather work five days and get the extra money. I worked at a company that did government contracting. We had a couple quarters without much in the way of orders, so instead of laying people off like you'd normally see in that situation, the company decided to go to a four day week, with a commensurate cut in pay.

I was thrilled, as a young single guy, to get Fridays off. I rented a room in someone's house and hit my monthly nut in about two weeks. But most of the people I worked with hated it. Some of them quit. A lot of them both needed the money and also had no idea what to do with themselves on that extra day.

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