How to find AI-conservative companies to work for? | Hacker News Reader

How to find AI-conservative companies to work for?

25 pointstossitawayplz12 comments

Is it even possible?

I don't completely hate AI, and leverage it to make things better but I don't like to use it for EVERYTHING.

At my current job we have outsourced our thinking, our design, our documentation, our sanity to it and I just can't do it anymore.

I'm considering getting out of tech entirely at this point I've been in it for almost two decades and I've reached my tipping point dealing with the way we're using it but fear basically every company hiring software engineers is doing the same thing (or worse.)

I'm ready to just be poorer at this point.

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Try companies in highly regulated industries with intense compliance requirements or where lives are at stake. They’re not universally AI-conservative, but they have more reason to be than your average productivity app SaaS.

Considered this actually, that usually means not remote too (which honestly is fine) but near me its mostly defense contractor related stuff which I am also not interested in.

Based on your message, I assume you are and want to stay in software engineering.

Having worked in regulated and very sensitive industries (banking and semiconductor), I can tell you adoption is slower but AI is still everywhere. Because those industries have many constraints, they have to think hard how to adopt it. So, you will encounter AI initiatives everywhere.

If you want to be part of those adoption initiatives but just want more thoughtful and slower adoption, such industries might be a good fit. If you want to avoid AI initiatives in general, I am not sure whether software engineering is the right function.

Sadly the ones conservative on AI tend to also be conservative on things like WFH or honoring the hacker manifesto. (Judging based on religion, national origin etc)

And where do we go from here? Law? Medicine? The trades?! Every path seems longer and/or more precarious, but I feel like I've had the same uncertainty as my friends who were writers and artists despite losing many a night (and many a partner) because I worked longer hours but ended up in the same precarious place as my peers.

At this point (despite being remote for 10+ years) I'd settle for non-WFH. I've looked into a lot of the trades to see if anything might be a fit for me, and like you, I realized I'd be starting all over (many require an internship/training period too.)

I can do contracting for an ex-employer too and considered that as I can do what I want how I want in that case but, it feels risky and there's health insurance complications because... US

They recently raised the enlistment age, so there's always the comedy option I could be the oldest man in officer's boot apparently.

But to be coerced into servitude after "doing things right" sits unwell with me.

I actually think the vast majority of companies outside of the main tech hubs are still AI conservative.

this reminds me of when i got into tech and people were shitting on those of us who weren’t using compiled languages or managing memory.

at the time they were making like 80-100k doing 5x the work/effort, and people like me were making 150k using “noob” languages and “not understanding the computer” and other basically slurs.

everything is a tool.

ai is a tool.

be intellectually honest for a second.

are you telling me your docs were rock solid and accurate?

i will bet my entire net worth that your docs were always out of date and new hires struggled for the first month to be productive.

is ai a perfect solution? obviously it is not. nothing is perfect.

but if you have ADRs you maintain that are up to date in real time, the next guy who comes in with his AI agent can be up to speed in minutes or hours.

we are still in year 3. for some people they are still in the crib when it comes to using ai. i still see people copy pasting code. that’s fine. i’m not going to call them stupid.

i myself struggled with ai and even asked why i should use ai a few months ago.

then i actually took the time to sit with people at the bleeding edge to understand their workflows.

i have my own startup. i cannot afford to lose customers or make mistakes. i also cannot afford to bring on exceeds expectations tier engineers yet.

we have mobile apps, web clients, backend with tons of event driven real time stuff, etc. IN PRODUCTION

i’m able to ship every day, while keeping good test coverage and up to date docs and ADRs.

plus i get to focus on software architecture. coding is over. manual labor is no longer valuable.

now you need to be a good architect and i think most people were bad at systems design and architecture. this was always the elite level people aspired to become a few years ago.

now everyone has to be a software architect. a good one is insanely valuable. even today.

if people are trying to one shot stuff they’re going to have a bad time. just like if you bring on a contractor and tell them “i need x y z” without telling them the 8 pages of background information and existing decisions and reasons. you’re just going to waste your time and money.

so yeah for me it reminds me how when i started there were people shitting on me for making more money than them while they did more work than me.

Midwest Tech-adjacent companies. They’re so far behind on AI that they are functionally conservative about it.

Try government, public sector, nonprofit…

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