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Re hype: Why is it that so many people are completely obsessed with replacing all developers and any other white-collar job? They seem to be totally convinced t

• ToucanLoucan 1y ago
  > Re hype: Why is it that so many people are completely obsessed with replacing all developers and any other white-collar job? They seem to be totally convinced that this will happen. 100% Because the only thing that gets the executive class hornier than new iPhone-tier products is getting to layoff tons of staff. It sends the stock price through the roof. It follows from there that an iPhone-tier product that also lets them layoff tons of staff would be like fucking catnip to them.
  • astrange 1y ago
    The job description of a developer is to replace themselves by automating themselves so they can get promoted/find a new more relevant role. That's the point of compilers and new programming languages. There's no such thing as taking people's jobs, nobody and nothing is going to take your job except for Jay Powell, and productivity improvements cause employment to increase not decrease.
• ivape 1y ago
  People really hate late stage capitalism.
• noitpmeder 1y ago
  Because developer and other white-collar job salaries are the top expense of most companies.
  • kulahan 1y ago
    Oh boy I can’t wait until we get rid of the highest paying jobs! Your response doesn’t explain why so many people are hyped about it, just why CEOs are.
    • fnimick 1y ago
      There's a lot of non-engineering people who are very happy to see someone else get unemployed by automation for a change. The people who formerly were automating others out of a job are getting a taste of their own medicine.
      • linotype 1y ago
        Of course that would cause a tremendous drop in demand for the services the schaudenfreuden folks provide, hurting them as well.
        • JumpCrisscross 1y ago
          > that would cause a tremendous drop in demand for the services the schaudenfreuden folks provide, hurting them as well You're correct. But it doesn't matter. Remember the San Francisco protests against tech? People will kill a golden goose if it's shinier than their own.
          • oytis 1y ago
            If this goose is also pricing others out of housing market it's not entirely unreasonable
            • JumpCrisscross 1y ago
              > If this goose is also pricing others out of housing market it's not entirely unreasonable It's self-defeating but predictable. (Hence why the protests were tolerated to backed by NIMBY interests.) My point is the same nonsense can be applied to someone not earning a tech wage celebrating tech workers getting replaced by AI. It makes them poorer, ceteris paribus. But they may not understand that. And the few that do may not care (or may have a way to profit off it, directly or indirectly, such that it's acceptable).
  • citrin_ru 1y ago
    White collar jobs as a white - yes, but even in software companies it is not uncommon when sales and marketing cost more than engineering.
  • mulmen 1y ago
    I don’t think software developer is a white collar job. It’s essentially manufacturing. There are some white collar workers at the extremes but the overwhelming majority of programmers are doing the IT equivalent of building pickup trucks.
• rpcope1 1y ago
  Notice how it wasn't and isn't a big deal when it's not in your own back yard (i.e. destroying blue collar professions); our chickens have just come home to roost. It's amazing the number of gullible, naive nerds out there that can't or won't see the forests for the trees. The number of ancap-lite libertarians precipitously drops when it's their own livelihood getting its shit kicked in.
  • phil21 1y ago
    One of the more annoying parts about being in the tech community was listening to the tone-deafness of these sorts of folks. Coming from a very blue collar background and family. It's difficult to have much empathy for the "learn to code" crowd who seemingly almost got a sense of joy out of watching those jobs and lifestyles get destroyed. Almost some form of childhood high school revenge fantasy style stuff - the nerd finally gets one up on the prom king. Otherwise I'm not sure where the vitriol came from. Way too many private conversations and overheard discussion in the office to make me think these were isolated opinions. That said, it's not everyone in tech. Just a much larger percentage than I ever thought, which is depressing to think about. It's certainly been interesting to watch some folks who a decade ago were all about "only skills matter, if you can be outcompeted by a robot you deserve to lose your job" make a 180 on the whole topic.
• rightbyte 1y ago
  No it is not just you. If true it would be beyond dystopic due to current political immaturity.
• ModernMech 1y ago
  The dream of many business owners is running their business with no products, no employees, and no customers, where they can just collect money. AI promises to fulfil this dream. AIs selling NFTs to other AIs paying in crypto is the final boss of capitalism.
• eastbound 1y ago
  > completely obsessed with replacing all developers I’m paid about 16x an electronics engineer. Salaries in IT are completely unrelated to the person’s effort compared to other white collar jobs. It would take an entire career to some manager to reach what I made after 5 years. I may be 140IQ but I’m also a dumbass in social terms!
  • ivape 1y ago
    Jealousy is absolutely a thing.
  • bcrosby95 1y ago
    That's cool. It sounds like most of us aren't making what you make. I don't make 16x what someone paid minimum wage makes, much less an electrical engineer.
  • cindyllm 1y ago
    [dead]
  • MyOutfitIsVague 1y ago
    The median wage for programmers is about 5x the average minimum wage. You're paid significantly higher than the average programmer.
    • throw1235435 1y ago
      Especially outside the US where having a 140 IQ isn't really enough to have a high wage. Only social EQ and high capital does that in most of the world.
  • lttlrck 1y ago
    You're an outlier and you must surely know that.
    • eastbound 1y ago
      I’m just a founder and that’s the dividends from a currently-lucky bootstrapped startup (and that will change). I may be an outlier but employee salaries are quite high too; still enough to be worth replacing — and AI is nowhere near humans, really.
• phil21 1y ago
  Same reason so many people got excited in the early Internet days of how much work and effort could be saved by interconnecting everyone. So many jobs lost to history due to such an invention. Stock trading floors no longer exist, call centers drastically minimized, retail shopping completely changing, etc. I had the same thought you did back then. If I could build a company with 3 people pulling a couple million of revenue per year, what did that mean to society when the average before that was maybe a couple dozen folks? Technology concentrates gains to those that can deploy it - either through knowledge, skill, or pure brute force deployment of capital.
• 2944015603 1y ago
  > Why is it that so many people are completely obsessed with replacing all developers and any other white-collar job? For the same reason people are obsessed with replacing all blue-collar jobs. Every cent that a company doesn't have to spend on its employees is another cent that can enrich the company's owners.
  • oytis 1y ago
    The general view in my bubble was that blue collar jobs are seen as dumb, physically demanding and dangerous, so we kind of replacing them for their own good, so that they can do something intellectual (aka learn coding). Whereas intellectual labour is kind of what humans exist for, so making intellectual work redundant is truly the end of the world. Maybe it's my post-communist background though and not relevant for the rest of the world
  • detourdog 1y ago
    I have no problem with replacing jobs with automation. The question to ask is the investment justified by the efficiency gains? I’m skeptical that this is a good use of resources or energy consumption.
• overgard 1y ago
  I find it weird and uncomfortable too. Like, why are there a bunch of people excited about mass unemployment?
  • Ekaros 1y ago
    It is not about mass unemployment. It is about efficiency. Producing the same thing for cheaper. Leading to cheaper products to buy. That is what allowed our current lifestyles. It is good thing. Now it is just coming to next area.
    • rightbyte 1y ago
      In a capitalist society?
      • Ekaros 1y ago
        It is the one thing I believe capitalism at some level works for. Invest capital to build something that gives competitive advantage over other capital. Buying newer bigger factory that allows producing more for cheaper to compete with others. With AI it is white collar work.
        • rpdillon 1y ago
          This is exactly it. I was talking to my wife about this this morning. She's a sociologist researcher, and a lot of people that work in her organization are responsible for reading through interviews and doing something called coding, where you look for particular themes and then tag them with a particular name associated with that theme. And this is something that people spend a lot of hours on, along with interview transcription, also done by hand. And I was explaining that I work in tech, so I live in the future to some degree, but that ultimately, even with HIPAA and other regulations, there's too much of a gain here for it not to be deployed eventually, And those people in their time are going to be used differently when that happens. I was speculating that it could be used for interviews as well, but I think I'm less confident there.
    • 1y ago
• jahewson 1y ago
  Because perceived existential risks capture people’s attention and imagination. If you’re a white collar worker then it’s a big deal to you.
• olalonde 1y ago
  Most people prefer not having to work.
• jdietrich 1y ago
  I'm afraid that this might sound flippant, but the answer to your question comes through another question - why were early 19th century industrialists obsessed with replacing textile workers? Replacing workers with machines is not a new phenomenon and we have gone through countless waves of social upheaval as a result of it. The debate we're currently having about AI has been rehearsed many, many times and there are few truly novel points being made. If you want to understand our current moment, I would urge you to study that history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_Riots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_Riots
  • noncoml 1y ago
    Programers are going to be replaced by AI in the same way accountants got replaced by VisiCalc and engineers by CAD and mathematicians by calculators and software like Mathematica
    • cheschire 1y ago
      You mean the part where you only need 5 people doing the job instead of 50?
      • Legend2440 1y ago
        And yet there are more engineers and accountants employed than ever.
        • cheschire 1y ago
          And yet not keeping pace with the overall population increase of America. There’s also more companies than ever before.
      • noncoml 1y ago
        That’s not “replacing” programmers. More like increasing their productivity
    • olddustytrail 1y ago
• deleted 1y ago
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• crop_rotation 1y ago
  > Why is it that so many people are completely obsessed with replacing all developers and any other white-collar job? > They seem to be totally convinced that this will happen. The two groups of people are not same. I for example belong to the 2nd but not the 1st. If you have used the current gen LLM coding tools you will realize they have gotten they are scary good.
• throw310822 1y ago
  Nobody is obsessed with it. People are afraid of it. And yet, what will you do? Will you renounce adopting a tool that can make your work or someone else's work faster, easier, better? It's a trap: once you've seen the possibilities you can't go back; and if you do, you'll have to compete with those who keep using the new tools. Even if you know perfectly well that in a few years the tools will make your own job useless. Personally, however, I would find it possibly even more depressing to spend my day doing a job that has economic value only because some regulation prevents it being done more efficiently. At that point I'd rather get the money anyway and spend the day at the beach.
  • throw1235435 1y ago
    That's only possible if you as the worker are capturing the efficiencies that the automation provides (i.e. you get RSU's, you have an equity stake in the business as well). Believe it or not most SWE's and white collar workers in general don't get these perks especially outside the US where most firms have made sure tech workers in general are paid "standard wages" even if they are "good".
    • throw310822 1y ago
      I mean, if the state can pass a law that forces companies to employ a person instead of an LLM- then it can also pass a law that forces them to pay that person while the LLM does their job. Companies would prefer that for sure: instead of having to keep the worker and the bad performance, they could at least get the nice LLM performance.
  • lelanthran 1y ago
    > Personally, however, I would find it possibly even more depressing to spend my day doing a job that has economic value only because some regulation prevents it being done more efficiently. That's true for many jobs. The only reason many people have a job is because of a variety of regulations preventing that job from being outsourced. > At that point I'd rather get the money anyway and spend the day at the beach. You won't get the money and spend the day at the beach; you'll starve to death.
• miki123211 1y ago
  Because white collar salaries are extremely high, which makes the services of white collar workers unavailable to many. If you replace lawyers with AI, poor people will be able to take big companies to court and defend themselves against frivolous lawsuits, instead of giving in and settling. If you replace doctors, the cost of medicine will go down dramatically, and so will waiting times. If you replace financial advisors, everybody will have their money managed in an optimal way, making them richer and less likely to make bad financial decisions. If you replace creative workers, everybody will have access to the exact kind of music, books, movies and video games they want, instead of having to settle for what is available. If you automate away delivery and drivers (particularly with drones), the price of prepared food will fall dramatically.
• mgraczyk 1y ago
  Imagine a world where there is 10x as much wealth and 10x as many hard problems being solved. Suppose there's even a 5% chance of that happening. It's clearly worth doing
  • kadushka 1y ago
    Depends on how that wealth is distributed.
  • sensanaty 1y ago
    10x as much wealth for whom? It certainly won't be for the people displaced by the AIs.