This isn't new however. We've always been subject to these cycles. Expecting a union to mitigate cycles is a fantasy. All it can do is protect the mediocre that are displaced by the AI. We saw the same reaction when companies began to employ more contractors and offshore more work. The mistake is to believe that we are somehow experiencing something new. We're not. If you've ever worked in an environment where the management supported "top-ranking", it's similar, except it occurred once or twice a year. No one is guaranteed a job. What I see here are concerns from people whose primary job seems to be coding, likely most on the web based applications. These were always commodity jobs as Amazon told me a decade ago. The value that tech people bring are understanding the business, the problem, and proposing solutions. As of now, AI cannot do that effectively. Instead of hoping for unions to mitigate the displacement or shorten the work week, a better strategy is to figure out how to be irreplaceable. If you're slinging code for 40+ hours a week, you have ALWAYS been disposable.
And those that believe unions benefit workers, particularly in the tech space, are the same people that think life would be better under a collectivist form of government and that the minimum wage needs to be raised continuously. Unions had their place in early 20th century. Those conditions are in the past. If your "conditions" in a tech job needs improvement, get a new job. Anyone that went into tech expecting it to be like a 7-3 manufacturing job, went into the wrong business. I spent years working 60+ hours a week and loved it. If you don't, change careers.
The one thing about government regulation is that it is slow moving, both in initiation and resolution. In my career, there were the ATT, IBM, and Microsoft antitrust cases, all of which took years. In many cases, the market resolves the issue before the government does. The FTC as well as several states are going after Amazon currently, though it's not getting a lot of media coverage. Amazon will likely take a hit comparable to ATT in the 80s, e.g., the divestiture of the Bell system and Bell Labs. I wouldn't be surprised to see Facebook go out of business. The social media addiction lawsuits are proliferating and they've already lost in New Mexico at the state level. The AI companies are just beginning to draw attention, mostly at the state level. The federal government thus far has been slow and inconsistent. Throw in the use of copyrighted material for AI training data and the likelihood of politicians jumping on the bandwagon is high. Already, entertainment figures, authors, publishing houses, etc. are suing. I doubt companies continue to survive these lawsuits under fair use doctrine. And it's hard to see how Google, Microsoft, and others ultimately win any lawsuits that involve using private data to train AIs (despite their denials), e.g., GMail, GitHub, etc. This doesn't even touch the use of images and voices, which AI companies are routinely using as training data. All of this is chum in the water for politicians, regulators, and lawyers who can't resist grandstanding for media attention, regardless of the facts or outcome. As for the cloud itself? I suspect we'll see more pullback by companies using the cloud in the coming years as cyber attacks, outages, costs, etc begin to pile up, and risk premiums exceed cost savings for select industries, e.g., medical and insurance firms. Already you see a few companies popping up to support a move from the cloud. Will it happen? I have no idea. The bottom line, by all means, push your idea to the limit. Just don't lose sight of the fact that it's less a technical issue and more an environment/trends issue. Best of luck.
Unionizing tech workers will not save tech jobs. It'll only create an additional costs to the employees. We saw similar trends in the 80s when the PC started to displace the mainframe developers/users. The pool of available mainframe jobs shrank somewhat, while the demand for PC developers exploded. Every major technology change creates these displacements. The answer isn't to look for unions to save your job. It's to figure out how to pivot and still be employable. All unionization will do is cost you mosey and stifle innovation. I grew up in a union household as did my wife. Unions aren't the answer to any question in the modern world.
I'm not trying to discourage innovation. Your idea seemed to be based on an infrastructure solution to current technology. Perhaps I misinterpreted. And as a starting point, it may be a good venture. However, I would be looking for the next wave of opportunities to capitalize on. Obviously, Google succeeded Yahoo. Facebook succeeded the various bulletin board systems like Compuserve/AOL/Prodigy (though I still preferred the Usenet days). Amazon set out to be the Walmart of the web. While I doubt any of these companies will go away, they will become less significant over time. The high flyers today will eventually face significant competition or government action/regulation, though Palantir may get an pass. I had the privilege of working on two major industry changing projects, and though they weren't my ideas, they were still a rush. And code I wrote 30+ years ago that is still in operation. That's something many people never get to experience. I wish you luck. Just keep your eyes on the industry as much as the technology and be prepared to pivot. I hope you wind up with mountains of cash.
Another concern is how to weather the AI bubble. Right now, everyone going all in on "AI" reminds me of the 90s when companies like Exodus Communications, Level 3 Communications and others built out heavily only to see it all evaporate. Yes, eventually what these companies were doing became the cloud but none of them are active participants. I would argue that before jumping into reliance on current AI trends that one evaluate where on the Technology Adoption Curve that the industry is. I suspect we're still at the Early Adopter phase and the build out is based on a bit of irrational exuberance. Couple that with the growing backlash against new AI data centers and depending on current trends seems exceedingly risky. Everyone argued in the 90s that "it was different this time" as they are arguing today. It's not. It rarely is. Go back and read the history of the PC starting with Apple and moving into the 80s Compare that to today's market. Same with the emergence of the Internet. Where are companies like Prodigy, Compuserve, or the incubators such as CMGI. Sometimes people have ideas and can ride technology waves and make huge money. But at the end of the day, that's far rarer than "having a good idea".
Yes, I'm 70 and continue to reinvent myself. After high school, I blew up my undergraduate studies because my head wasn't in the game. I took jobs in my 20s that addressed what I thought of as social weaknesses. By my late 20s, through aggressive self study and a couple of college classes, I switched careers and entered the software development world. Again, a lot of time spent on aggressive self study to be competitive with established developers. Realizing in my mid-30s that my lousy undergraduate showing was holding me back, I re-entered school and subsequently completed two masters degrees, an MS and an MBA. The MBA granted me credibility with senior management and propped up my management career. I did that for a few years until I and friend of mine started a consulting/development business, which we did for about 8 years. At that time I was offered a job with a Fortune 500 company that was too good to pass up. Following a series of takeovers, my job morphed repeatedly until, at age 65, the last company bought me out. Now, at 70, I've been accepted as a freshman at a major university to study things for fun, not career prospects. The bottom line, you can always reinvent yourself. It's not always easy, e.g., going back to college while working 50-60 hours per week, but it can be done. All it takes is planning, sacrifice, prioritization, and deferred gratification. In the end, it can be transformative. But, it will always be a hard journey.
Fundamentally, if it comes from AI, I'm not interested. I would not rely on AI summaries, and certainly nothing identified as AI produced. AI is not creative in the human sense. I would never knowingly waste time reading something produced by a room full of monkeys banging on a keyboard. The same is true of AI produced code. LLMs are a malignancy that needs to be excised from society.
Simple, politicians are short sighted and do what gets them the most votes. They’ll get more votes by virtue signaling about the poor, the environment, or whatever the hot topic of the day happens to be. And it’s incredibly easy to rationalize. Since government spending is boundless, especially in the modern monetary era, hard decisions aren’t necessary. So politicians latch onto the same types of arguments presented in this thread and focus on pandering for reelection. In reality, yes landing on the moon is dangerous. Contrary to the posts here, the moon is incredibly valuable and thus ultimately profitable which is why private companies will likely beat the US back to the surface. An argument can be made that no one other than Trump would have pushed this as hard AND how hard would he have pushed without China’s growing space program? As for things like teacher salaries? Yes, in some places, they are abysmal. OTH, overall US educational quality lags other countries significantly. Higher teacher salaries must come from reforms, which includes reducing the bureaucracy surrounding education substantially, starting at the federal level and working down to the local. I live in a major US city where the superintendent of schools makes roughly 10x the average teachers’ salary, despite presiding over a failed school system. That is unacceptable.
I view hobbies as something that I derive value or pleasure from. I do not approach them from the perspective of “meaningfully contributing”. IMO, that sounds more like compensation for career dissatisfaction. I’m not being critical. I just recommend choosing hobbies that you derive value and meaning from, regardless of what the world may think of it. For example, a friend of mine, with high pressure tech management job, quilts in the evening. He says it helps him relax. Doesn’t matter if anyone likes what he does or wants to buy it. As for myself, now that I’m retired I delve into a number of areas, just for me, and absolutely have no interest in sharing them or being recognized for what I do. Good luck on your quest.
Doesn't mean a thing in the grand scheme of things. Nor does having a woman, a minority, and a Canadian. Those are irrelevant. It makes some people feel good and others virtuous, but it doesn't further the mission one iota. Show me technical accomplishments, regardless of the crew composition and the agencies involved. The crew can all be women or minorities, I don't care. I'm looking for progress and accomplishments, not virtue signaling.
Apollo 8 actually went into orbit around the moon. This flight is more similar to Apollo 13, hopefully without the life threatening problems. The risk on this flight is far less than on Apollo 8 obviously. Still, it's more than time for the US to step up and have an actual space program. The shuttle program and ISS fall far short of the trajectory of the US space program at the end of 1972.
It's good to see NASA finally do something beyond navel gazing. Nonetheless, calling this flight historic is a stretch. Other than flying a few miles further than Apollo 13, it will actually accomplish less than Apollo 8 did 57 years ago.
Raise your prices when it comes time to clean up the mess that they will invariably make. If they don't want to pay, look elsewhere. And skip the LLMs on your next job.
Anyone can get a "result". It's the quality of the result that matters. The intellectual journey of choosing the right algorithm, optimizing the code, etc. Software development should be a journey, not a goal. Once I learned that and started applying it as a manager, I found that team productivity and quality both rose. The result came from the process. Systems trump goals in nearly every endeavor in life.
I'm curious. Vibe coding seems to be all the rage on HN these days. And yet many that discuss it are unhappy. My question, seriously, is why did you go into the software development field if you were willing to surrender your autonomy to an LLM? I can't think of anything more demoralizing.
I was retired before the current "AI boom", but Visual Studio and the like were ubiquitous. The company I worked for tested developer applicants on a whiteboard - no auto complete, no documentation, etc. If one failed the whiteboard part of the interview, they weren't hired. I've talked to some of my former peers and they tell me that the whiteboard part of the interview continues and that those oriented towards "vibe coding" almost never make the cut. If they can't articulate a solution to a stated problem and outline a skeletal solution, they aren't hired. Personally, I don't care how effective one is at prompt construction, if they don't know how to design a solution, articulate it to a broad audience, etc., they have no business being hired. I realize many likely disagree and that's okay. Vibe coders could become this generations script kiddies.
There's far less to recommend Amazon than there once was. Service quality has dropped. Their recommendation engine was better 10 years ago than it is today, e.g,. recommending an item I've already bought or items in my cart isn't a recommendation. Using the USPS for final delivery doesn't help as "Prime Delivery" can now take a week or more to arrive here. And then the postal worker will do everything in their power to cram the book in the mailbox. I've returned about half of the books that I've ordered in the last year. Consequently, I've been ordering more through the local B&N and picking it up in store. There I can see the quality and condition before deciding to keep. And I wish poor quality book publishing was limited to Amazon. It's not. I ordered a new copy of Apostol Calculus direct from Wiley. It was expensive ($300+). It turned out to be print on demand as well and of such poor quality that many equations were illegible. It was "new" but unusable and I was able to find a used copy in fine shape. Fundamentally, in my view, publishers are killing the book industry. Eliminating mass market paperback drove up the price of trade paper as well as digital. Consequently, many books become "unaffordable" from a demand perspective, i.e., many of us are unlikely to throw away $25+ for a causal airplane read. We'll acquire it used later, or borrow it from the library, if we bother to read it at all. Further, with younger generations reading physical books far less often than their parents or grandparents, they've initiated a feedback loop that doesn't end well for the industry. Amazon doesn't care. Books aren't their driver anymore. So the reader draws the short straw.
I went through 11 takeovers in my career. I survived them all, some with promotions, until the very last one. It was within a couple of weeks of my severance that I was diagnosed with the Big C. That puts everything in perspective. Nothing really matters then except treating and beating the cancer. Focus on that. If in the process, this job doesn't work out, find a new one when you are in remission or cured. And decide what you want to do after that. I was nearing retirement anyway and decided I didn't need anymore of the corporate life. Not knowing your age, that may not be an option for you. What is an option for you is keep a positive attitude, eat right, exercise, and get treated. Yes, cancer is a serious kick in the pants, but you can't let it beat you down. If you do, it's far, far worse than it has to be. Yes, it's depressing. But, don't give into it. And remember that you aren't really alone. You'll likely sit in the waiting room before treatment with people that have a far worse prognosis. Certainly, I did. Which made me all the more determined to not give in to my darker thoughts. I'm five years cured, though life is irrevocably changed. It happens. Strive to be one of us.
I took the real MBTI test in grad school as part of the professor's research. Nothing online comes close to the real test. Despite the fact that it's not viewed as positively as it once was, I found the MBTI to be rather insightful and helpful to me personally. I've also taken the Big 5 as part of a professional seminar at work and didn't find it as helpful. It seemed to be biased in favor of extroversion, for example, while MBTI merely outlined the characteristics without attaching value judgements.
But, how is that helping you? It's akin to reading other peoples reviews. Shouldn't you watch the film and do your own critical analysis? Relying on the LLM self defeating.
Looking back from the vantage point of 70+ years of life, and having seen many people experience this very thing, I think the key is to get to know yourself. That sounds cliche, I know. Up until now, you have defined yourself in terms of your relationships with other people: your family, your partner, your spouse, your work group, etc. Many of the folks I've known had never been on their own, never done their own laundry, cooked their own meals, and so on. When divorce hit, they were devastated. And socially set adrift. In a few cases, they responded by hooking up with the first person that gave them the time of day, which proved to be less than optimal. The more successful of those transitioning to being alone worked on learning who they were, what interested them, how to do the routine things that perhaps someone else did for them in the past, and so forth. One person I knew experienced this in their 40s. He prepared his first meal for himself at 46. After stumbling around a bit, he decided to throw himself into cooking, discovered that he loved it, and went to school to become a professional chef, giving up software development for cooking, less money but far happier. When we search for hobbies and connections, far too often we look where we've always been. For those of us in some computer related field, it may be programming, video games, and other tangential "hobbies". When we branch out, e.g., learn a musical instrument, take dancing or singing classes (great way to meet people), take up public speaking (Toastmasters), find a good gym, or any other pursuits, we discover things we never knew we loved and people from outside our usual social circles which up until then had been dominated by work relationships. Suddenly, one is no longer alone and forms friendships based on shared interests and mutual connection. Those friendships are more durable than most of the relationships one forms at work. And in the process, one may find a new romantic interest, or several. Bottom line, break out of your comfort zone, and try something new. And if you find that exceedingly difficult or even debilitating, perhaps seeking the help of a professional would be beneficial. No, none of this is easy, but it is a great opportunity to discover yourself, other people, and to enrich your life experience dramatically. Good luck.
I've been reading these threads for a while and the one thing that is clear from all of them is that the individual is CHOOSING to surrender their intellectual expectations to the AI. You don't have to make that choice. Further, a developer's value increases exponentially the more familiar they become with the industry/domain of the company for which they are working. No, no human will ever "write" code as quickly as the machine. Nor will any machine ever understand what to build for a given application. It has to be told. As for the continuing level of abstractions? While true, the best programmers didn't depend strictly on that abstraction. They sought to understand the machine. One fundamental problem that I encountered in my later management years was the number of people entering the field that had no business doing so. Consequently, many lasted only a few years before giving up and trying something different. I retired from the business after 40+ years and I knew plenty of greybeards that I would trust far more than any existing "AI" solution.
Just one more reason to abandon Microsoft. If ever Linux had an opportunity to breakout on the desktop, the proliferation of "AI" and privacy intrusion from the likes of Microsoft would seem to have opened that window. Yes, it would mean giving up some applications, at least temporarily, but the benefit in control and privacy makes that a fair trade off. Unlike the majority here, I don't want ANY "AI" features on my desktop, phone, car, or any appliance that I own. This is true of the "cloud" as well. Trusting corporate entities to have your best interests in mind is naive at best.
Awareness and ignoring are two different things. And I'm as far from a right winger as I can imagine. You on the other hand have shown your cards. No politician's word is worth a damn. Learn that and you'll be much happier.
As one who has spent substantially since Amazon's inception, Amazon in recent years has become an unreliable supplier in my area. Much of the product sold by Amazon is sourced from China and until recently Amazon did little to distinguish name-brand products from knockoffs. That's why companies like J&J weren't making product available on the Amazon site. Amazon Prime is laughable here, frequently taking a week or longer. The local Whole Foods is a mere shadow of its previous incarnation. Of course, most of the bookstore alternatives have been driven out of business. The B&N strategy is more appropriate to competing with Books-a-Million than the old Borders. Overall, Amazon seems more focused on its movie/TV business than it does what created it. And Bezos? Well, it's obvious that righting the ship at Amazon isn't nearly as important as being a jet setting celebrity with a new younger wife and playing with his space ahips. And BTW, I'm in a major city, not some rural town.
I would suggest that MS Excel should be replaced by VisiCalc. While MS Excel is more feature complete and capable, VisiCalc was the idea. Further, while you included products that run on the computer, you didn't include the computer itself and key figures like Turing, Von Neumann, This was dependent on the transistor and the folks around Claude Shannon. And the whole digital life we know today derives from things like the Apollo Program in the 1960s, Fairchild Semiconductor, Intel, MIT Instrumentation Lab, etc. And none of these electronics breakthroughs would have been possible without Quantum Theory and Relativity bringing us Bohr and Einstein and all their successors. Not to mention James Clerk Maxwell and his equations. And this is just the technology side of the question. Get into biology/medicine, etc. and the list explodes further. the double helix discovery (Crick & co), Harvey and blood circulation. The list is endless. Move into the government/political realm and the significance of things like the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, and the US Constitution cannot be overstated. It's all about what context you are positioning those "creations".
Start by recognizing that creating products isn't about writing code or using "AI" to write code faster. It isn't a question of patents. It's a question of identifying a need, creating a solution, marketing it correctly, etc. I see threads on here frequently that asks how one stays competitive with "AI" and what should they learn. The answer is and was always: learn the business/industry, learn to communicate, and learn to identify opportunity. That's worth many times more than the fastest coder. It's not even close.