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If you were an average engineer destined to work in cookie-cutter roles in tech consultancies, would you still pursue a tech career, knowing that your job will

by spaceman_2020 4y ago

If you were an average engineer destined to work in cookie-cutter roles in tech consultancies, would you still pursue a tech career, knowing that your job will sooner or later be taken over by AI? Remember that careers last 30 years, and if you're the average engineer, you're more likely to fall into the 80% of the pareto half than the 20%. Can you be confident that AI won't displace you in 10, 15, or even 20 years? This doesn't apply to Stanford grads destined for high-tech roles in FAANG tier companies. I'm taling about the Idaho State grads who will work for IBM and Accenture and likely won't make the $500k salaries to retire from their tech roles in 10 years.

JKCalhoun 4y ago
> Can you be confident that AI won't displace you in 10, 15, or even 20 years? 1) No, but I am nonetheless skeptical of AI-takeover in general — I'm in the wait-and-see camp and so wouldn't be put off by the might-happens. 2) If one were AI-alarmist, is there any profession you can be confident will not be displaced by AI in 10, 15, or even 20 years? 3) Confession: I'm retired and no longer have any skin in the game.
- m_a_g 4y ago
  > 2) If one were AI-alarmist, is there any profession you can be confident will not be displaced by AI in 10, 15, or even 20 years? Many; Dentists, people that fix your AC, electricians, etc, etc.
  - post-it 4y ago
    If AI becomes capable of replacing the bulk of software developers, many trades will be replaced by a guy earning a little over minimum wage wearing AR goggles with an AI showing+telling them what to do and correcting their mistakes.
    - VLM 4y ago
      No need for the AR goggles, just hire day labor to work for a skilled tradesman as a labor multiplier, or try the old fashioned "here's a mobile phone do what your boss says" In the trades themselves, we've been doing this for centuries... have a master mason supervise the journeyman masons supervising the manual day labor. AI will not be able to compete with experienced personnel. In that field they've already dumbed down the entry level requirement to "pick up a brick and move it there" and it can't go much lower. On the other hand, if I were manufacturing survey equipment I'd worry about AR goggles as the competition.
  - sharemywin 4y ago
    I'm not sure on that. the the pieces seem to be there as far as hands that can manipulate rubix cubes and stuff, catch baseballs, boston dynamics robots agility, other humanoid robots. Do I think white collar jobs go first, yes. also, the dynamics who buys all the stuff that blue collars workers install and build? without a white collar workforce the demand for that goes way down, and the supply of workers goes up. Not saying it's going to happen just think other jobs aren't that far behind.
  - AdamN 4y ago
    Dentists are already 3:1 dental hygienists these days and I would expect AI can make that ratio 5:1 or 6:1. Technicians will also be enabled to be more effective with AI (faster diagnoses, remote diagnosis, predictive ordering so you don't have to come back twice with a special part, etc...). Also AI will drive higher reliability of the underlying equipment so the number of technicians needed will be lower.
  - foobarian 4y ago
    How in the world can AI replace an HVAC person or electrician? Will it braze copper for me somehow?
    - imtringued 4y ago
      The point is that you won't need an HVAC person, just someone who knows how to braze.
  - pbourke 4y ago
    Medicine, law, accounting, professional engineering. Notice something in common with all of these? With the exception of law, automation has already arrived in all of these fields (to accounting first, 1-2 generations ago) and there are now more people in each field rather than less. Answering my own question: each has a comfortable regulatory moat and competent professional society to defend it.
    - hgsgm 4y ago
      Law is highly automated at the low end where Rocket and Nolo displaced the "neighborhood lawyer". Same for accounting and TurboTax.
      - pcthrowaway 4y ago
        Yeah, but only certified humans can legally practice law. And they're also the group of people with the best ability to prevent changes in that legislation
- defrost 4y ago
  > 2) .. is there any profession you can be confident will not be displaced by AI in 10, 15, or even 20 years? Indigenous Ranger [1] [1] https://www.niaa.gov.au/indigenous-affairs/environment/indigenous-ranger-programs https://www.niaa.gov.au/indigenous-affairs/environment/indig...
- VLM 4y ago
  How about IT, as opposed to software development? As long as we have human using computers, we'll have more skill humans helping the humans. We were told that inventing web search engines and giving kids ipads would completely eliminate IT. We see how that turned out LOL. From a financial standpoint, as long as the top 1% of "IT skills" population can make the other 99% of the company more than 1% more profitable, they'll never get fired, well, completely anyway. At big companies its a pretty low bar to surpass, and small companies can contract with MSPs. From a cultural / psychology standpoint, its pretty deeply ingrained that some folks are dumb/lazy/ignorant and thats OK, some folks have intense learned helplessness as a character trait, and some folks get really excited about forcing others to "do their work for them" WRT primate dominance. We as a culture will never avoid the appeal of BYOD, even with a miracle of 100% BYOD in IT, we as a culture would STILL hire cloud admins just so the job can be delegated if nothing else. The pay in IT in most of the country is ... microscopic compared to software dev. New grads or people with nothing but an A+ are not getting new Stanford grad software dev salaries, its more like $22 to $25/hr in most of the country for a new help desk jockey. And it's pretty boring work for 99% of the employees 99% of the time. However, if chatgpt can fizzbuzz better than humans, doing "IT stuff" beats starvation for us computer people. Its also worth pointing out that AI as a tool is just biased single answer web search. Web search more or less resulted in more employment. Seems likely this variation on the theme will result in more employment.
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  If you’re entering college right now, you’ll be around 33 in 15 years. We have no way of knowing what this tech will be like in 15 years. The iPhone was released about 15 years ago. Even the most prescient of us couldn’t have predicted how fundamentally that would change life, culture, work and business.
- pcthrowaway 4y ago
  Perhaps in the long run everything will be automated, but in the meantime there will be a progression of what AI can do, and software engineering might be "lower-hanging fruit" Any career with strong regulation is going to take longer to automate. Hands-on work as well. For example, there is strong regulation preventing computers from practicing driving/trucking/delivery, law, medicine, nursing, physiotherapy, and certified engineering Also, build me a robot that can do the following. I'll wait: construction, woodworking, metalworking, glassblowing, painting (painting houses), electricking, plumbing, delivery, service industry, cooking.
bombolo 4y ago
Oh please stop with this meaningless fear mongering. AI is a (not so good) tool. Yes it can write very short snippets that often make sense, but in no way can understand requirements, do debugging or maintain existing code.
- rippercushions 4y ago
  The ChatGPT 4 developer demo showcased literally all three of those. https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/how-to-watch-first-demo-chatgpt-4/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/how-to-watch-first-d...
  - spaceman_2020 4y ago
    According to HN, technology never improves. The first version of something is always the way it will ever be. OpenAI hasn't improved at all from GPT-3 to GPT-4, and all the billions flowing into this field will cause zero improvements in the next 30 years. This place needs to change its name to LudditeNews.
    - majewsky 4y ago
      The main concern of the luddites was not "technology = bad" like most popular caricatures of them, but that their livelihood was obliterated by the first wave of factory owners taking all the profits that were previously shared with the workers for themselves. Really they were pushing in the same direction as those who today are calling for machine taxes or UBI.
      - Sugimot0 4y ago
        Ehhh I'd argue they had more in common with socialists/communists, they were literally destroying the means of production in worker solidarity to improve their condition and bargaining ability. Marx even refers directly to the situation of the guilds in industrialization. The belief is that new means of production should be embraced, owned, and operated by workers to benefit the many and not just the few exploitative capitalists (which are those who own means of production). Instead of exploiting lay-offs and long shifts, and disregarding safety to save the capitalist money, the factory would instead be built and operated for the benefit of workers and society, prioritizing safety and sharing shorter shifts among a larger workforce to preserve jobs. From a socialist/communist perspective machine taxes and UBI are like cheap bribes to avoid the issue and preserve the exploitative system in place. The luddites probably would have felt the same had they been offered a pity sum or machine tax from factory owners to "offset" their condition.
vsareto 4y ago
>knowing that your job will sooner or later be taken over by AI? There's a few layers that make me not worried: - automation will shift jobs - an engineer is a generally smart employee (yes, even the average engineers), so the company will be a sinking ship if they have to eliminate jobs and get rid of people instead of moving smart people around - even if you do end up jobless, as a generally smart person, you can learn a new skill. Plus, now AI can help you learn more quickly. The catch is, of course, predicting which next job won't be replaced by AI.
stcroixx 4y ago
Not many can afford a career as short as 30 years, particularly average engineers making average salaries.
HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
Well, 20 years ago it would have been "can you be confident that Outsourcing won't displace you..." If you're the type of person to worry, you'll always find something to worry about.

JKCalhoun 4y ago

> Can you be confident that AI won't displace you in 10, 15, or even 20 years? 1) No, but I am nonetheless skeptical of AI-takeover in general — I'm in the wait-and-see camp and so wouldn't be put off by the might-happens. 2) If one were AI-alarmist, is there any profession you can be confident will not be displaced by AI in 10, 15, or even 20 years? 3) Confession: I'm retired and no longer have any skin in the game.

m_a_g 4y ago
> 2) If one were AI-alarmist, is there any profession you can be confident will not be displaced by AI in 10, 15, or even 20 years? Many; Dentists, people that fix your AC, electricians, etc, etc.
- post-it 4y ago
  If AI becomes capable of replacing the bulk of software developers, many trades will be replaced by a guy earning a little over minimum wage wearing AR goggles with an AI showing+telling them what to do and correcting their mistakes.
  - VLM 4y ago
    No need for the AR goggles, just hire day labor to work for a skilled tradesman as a labor multiplier, or try the old fashioned "here's a mobile phone do what your boss says" In the trades themselves, we've been doing this for centuries... have a master mason supervise the journeyman masons supervising the manual day labor. AI will not be able to compete with experienced personnel. In that field they've already dumbed down the entry level requirement to "pick up a brick and move it there" and it can't go much lower. On the other hand, if I were manufacturing survey equipment I'd worry about AR goggles as the competition.
- sharemywin 4y ago
  I'm not sure on that. the the pieces seem to be there as far as hands that can manipulate rubix cubes and stuff, catch baseballs, boston dynamics robots agility, other humanoid robots. Do I think white collar jobs go first, yes. also, the dynamics who buys all the stuff that blue collars workers install and build? without a white collar workforce the demand for that goes way down, and the supply of workers goes up. Not saying it's going to happen just think other jobs aren't that far behind.
- AdamN 4y ago
  Dentists are already 3:1 dental hygienists these days and I would expect AI can make that ratio 5:1 or 6:1. Technicians will also be enabled to be more effective with AI (faster diagnoses, remote diagnosis, predictive ordering so you don't have to come back twice with a special part, etc...). Also AI will drive higher reliability of the underlying equipment so the number of technicians needed will be lower.
- foobarian 4y ago
  How in the world can AI replace an HVAC person or electrician? Will it braze copper for me somehow?
  - imtringued 4y ago
    The point is that you won't need an HVAC person, just someone who knows how to braze.
- pbourke 4y ago
  Medicine, law, accounting, professional engineering. Notice something in common with all of these? With the exception of law, automation has already arrived in all of these fields (to accounting first, 1-2 generations ago) and there are now more people in each field rather than less. Answering my own question: each has a comfortable regulatory moat and competent professional society to defend it.
  - hgsgm 4y ago
    Law is highly automated at the low end where Rocket and Nolo displaced the "neighborhood lawyer". Same for accounting and TurboTax.
    - pcthrowaway 4y ago
      Yeah, but only certified humans can legally practice law. And they're also the group of people with the best ability to prevent changes in that legislation
defrost 4y ago
> 2) .. is there any profession you can be confident will not be displaced by AI in 10, 15, or even 20 years? Indigenous Ranger [1] [1] https://www.niaa.gov.au/indigenous-affairs/environment/indigenous-ranger-programs https://www.niaa.gov.au/indigenous-affairs/environment/indig...
VLM 4y ago
How about IT, as opposed to software development? As long as we have human using computers, we'll have more skill humans helping the humans. We were told that inventing web search engines and giving kids ipads would completely eliminate IT. We see how that turned out LOL. From a financial standpoint, as long as the top 1% of "IT skills" population can make the other 99% of the company more than 1% more profitable, they'll never get fired, well, completely anyway. At big companies its a pretty low bar to surpass, and small companies can contract with MSPs. From a cultural / psychology standpoint, its pretty deeply ingrained that some folks are dumb/lazy/ignorant and thats OK, some folks have intense learned helplessness as a character trait, and some folks get really excited about forcing others to "do their work for them" WRT primate dominance. We as a culture will never avoid the appeal of BYOD, even with a miracle of 100% BYOD in IT, we as a culture would STILL hire cloud admins just so the job can be delegated if nothing else. The pay in IT in most of the country is ... microscopic compared to software dev. New grads or people with nothing but an A+ are not getting new Stanford grad software dev salaries, its more like $22 to $25/hr in most of the country for a new help desk jockey. And it's pretty boring work for 99% of the employees 99% of the time. However, if chatgpt can fizzbuzz better than humans, doing "IT stuff" beats starvation for us computer people. Its also worth pointing out that AI as a tool is just biased single answer web search. Web search more or less resulted in more employment. Seems likely this variation on the theme will result in more employment.
spaceman_2020 4y ago
If you’re entering college right now, you’ll be around 33 in 15 years. We have no way of knowing what this tech will be like in 15 years. The iPhone was released about 15 years ago. Even the most prescient of us couldn’t have predicted how fundamentally that would change life, culture, work and business.
pcthrowaway 4y ago
Perhaps in the long run everything will be automated, but in the meantime there will be a progression of what AI can do, and software engineering might be "lower-hanging fruit" Any career with strong regulation is going to take longer to automate. Hands-on work as well. For example, there is strong regulation preventing computers from practicing driving/trucking/delivery, law, medicine, nursing, physiotherapy, and certified engineering Also, build me a robot that can do the following. I'll wait: construction, woodworking, metalworking, glassblowing, painting (painting houses), electricking, plumbing, delivery, service industry, cooking.

bombolo 4y ago

Oh please stop with this meaningless fear mongering. AI is a (not so good) tool. Yes it can write very short snippets that often make sense, but in no way can understand requirements, do debugging or maintain existing code.

rippercushions 4y ago
The ChatGPT 4 developer demo showcased literally all three of those. https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/how-to-watch-first-demo-chatgpt-4/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/how-to-watch-first-d...
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  According to HN, technology never improves. The first version of something is always the way it will ever be. OpenAI hasn't improved at all from GPT-3 to GPT-4, and all the billions flowing into this field will cause zero improvements in the next 30 years. This place needs to change its name to LudditeNews.
  - majewsky 4y ago
    The main concern of the luddites was not "technology = bad" like most popular caricatures of them, but that their livelihood was obliterated by the first wave of factory owners taking all the profits that were previously shared with the workers for themselves. Really they were pushing in the same direction as those who today are calling for machine taxes or UBI.
    - Sugimot0 4y ago
      Ehhh I'd argue they had more in common with socialists/communists, they were literally destroying the means of production in worker solidarity to improve their condition and bargaining ability. Marx even refers directly to the situation of the guilds in industrialization. The belief is that new means of production should be embraced, owned, and operated by workers to benefit the many and not just the few exploitative capitalists (which are those who own means of production). Instead of exploiting lay-offs and long shifts, and disregarding safety to save the capitalist money, the factory would instead be built and operated for the benefit of workers and society, prioritizing safety and sharing shorter shifts among a larger workforce to preserve jobs. From a socialist/communist perspective machine taxes and UBI are like cheap bribes to avoid the issue and preserve the exploitative system in place. The luddites probably would have felt the same had they been offered a pity sum or machine tax from factory owners to "offset" their condition.

vsareto 4y ago

>knowing that your job will sooner or later be taken over by AI? There's a few layers that make me not worried: - automation will shift jobs - an engineer is a generally smart employee (yes, even the average engineers), so the company will be a sinking ship if they have to eliminate jobs and get rid of people instead of moving smart people around - even if you do end up jobless, as a generally smart person, you can learn a new skill. Plus, now AI can help you learn more quickly. The catch is, of course, predicting which next job won't be replaced by AI.

stcroixx 4y ago

Not many can afford a career as short as 30 years, particularly average engineers making average salaries.

HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago

Well, 20 years ago it would have been "can you be confident that Outsourcing won't displace you..." If you're the type of person to worry, you'll always find something to worry about.