9 ms·

TBH, it all feels like a huge gamble at this point. Neither skills, education, institutional ties, nor current employment can guarantee a stable foundation for

• schnitzelstoat 9mo ago
  I felt a lot safer when I was a young grad than now that I have kids to support and I can't just up and move to wherever the best job opportunity is or live off lentils to save money or whatever.
  • maciejzj 9mo ago
    Yeah, kids change the landscape a lot. On the other hand, if you don't have any personal ties, its easier to grab opportunities, but you are unlikely to build any kind of social network when chasing jobs all over the country/world. Either way, there is very little to no path toward "family + place to live + stable job" model.
    • reactordev 9mo ago
      This. At 43 I have friends that are all over the country now. Where I am I’m alone. Don’t underestimate the value of community.
  • abc123abc123 9mo ago
    True. This is one of the best arguments for not having kids. I could never imagine putting myself in that uncertain situation. Much better to reduce those risks, and focus on yourself.
    • SecretDreams 9mo ago
      Having kids is a personal choice. The stress of having to support them is real and it might mean, at times, you sacrifice more than you would have without kids. It's been entirely worth it for me and I cannot imagine my life without kids. But it's a deeply personal choice and I am not buying or selling the idea. I would just say nobody is ever ready and the fears around having them probably are more irrational than rational. But not wanting them because of how it might change your own life is a completely valid reason to not have kids.
      • s1mplicissimus 9mo ago
        I'm happy for you that you are in a situation where you can afford it. Many can't.
      • falcor84 9mo ago
        I agree with everything you said except for > the fears around having them probably are more irrational than rational My $0.02 is that if anything, the fears people have about how much their lives would be transformed are significantly lacking, and a lot of the "it's not so bad" advice is post-hoc rationalization. I mean, it's evolutionarily excellent that we humans choose to have kids, but it's very rational to be afraid and to postpone or even fully reject this on an individual basis. And as an industry and as a society, we should probably do a lot more to support parents of young children. I found this smbc comic about a "happiness spigot" to be the most poignant metaphor - https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/happiness-spigot?utm_source=perplexity https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/happiness-spigot?utm_sourc...
        • SecretDreams 9mo ago
          Ya, this is a fair callout. I moreso meant fears around being a bad parent. If anything, people experiencing those fears will be fine parents because they've got the consideration to already be thinking about doing a good job for their newly born.
  • swah 9mo ago
    There must be "dozens of us" with this fear right now. I'm kinda surprised there isn't a rapid growing place for us to discuss this... (Youtube, X account, Discord place..)
    • smeeagain2 9mo ago
      [flagged]
      • Archonical 9mo ago
        May I suggest that it may be your attitude about that piece of paper that is holding you back rather than the paper itself?
        • smeeagain2 9mo ago
          [flagged]
          • smeeagain2 9mo ago
            [flagged]
      • afr0ck 9mo ago
        I created my first Linux from scratch when I was a freshman in college in a third world country (not India). Fast forward few years later, I now write Linux kernel code for a living. Not sure what you did wrong, bud, to end up miserable like this.
        • smeeagain2 9mo ago
          [flagged]
          • tayo42 9mo ago
            This account can't be real
  • didgetmaster 9mo ago
    When I was single with no kids, I felt pretty comfortable leaving a good job to join a startup. I took a 50% pay cut to join when the risk seemed high, but the reward also seemed high. It paid off for me, but who knows if I would have taken that leap later in life.
  • Havoc 9mo ago
    I'm on the flip side of this - not exactly young but no dependants which is making me a little bit less nervous. Seems like the next 20 years will be a wild ride & it doesn't seem optional so lets go I guess
• rwmj 9mo ago
  Work on becoming Financially Independent. The best time to start was when you started your career, the second best time to start is now.
  • pepperball 9mo ago
    Yeah really seems like the only way to win (or rather not lose) is simply not to play. At this point I’ve realized I need to cast all other ambitions aside and work on getting some out of the way land that I own.
    • skeeter2020 9mo ago
      I'm older, aware, decently resourced and really trying NOT to play but it is still hard to accomplish. I'm married with 3 kids and even though I sit out much of the nonsense, your friends, family and community will keep pulling you back in. It's hard to do"not playing" without "not participating" and I don't think anybody should do that.
• RivieraKid 9mo ago
  It's been a cause of mild background anxiety for me for the past 3 years. One part is financial and the other is a potential loss of a comfortable and relatively high status job that I can get even with below average social and physical skills. I need about 4.5 years until basic financial independence, I wonder how does it feel to be at that point.
  • glemion43 9mo ago
    I'm more worried about the global impact. Will people still buy and sell houses? Will house prices go down because no one can afford them? Will house prices go up because so few will sell their assets? I would like to buy a small farm today without debt and cheap energy (upfront investment in solar and storage) but I need a few years more. Does the world can really change that fast? I don't know but the progress in AI is fast, very fast.
• Mountain_Skies 9mo ago
  And yet the current administration, like every other administration since the mid 90s, still sets labor immigration policy on the testimony of the tech industry that there is still a critical shortage of tech labor so the doors must be remain open for the 30th year of the temporary program that's only going to be in place until the tech companies have time to train domestic talent. If you have a problem with this, you're a racist Nazi who should be excluded from society. Left, right, up, down, they all agree on this, as does the vast majority of posters here. Their defense for this is that little down arrow since they have no other legitimate defense for the 30th something year of the temporary program to give them time to train the talent they claim doesn't exist in the United States.
• chankstein38 9mo ago
  Amen. It's hard to live with hope right now at all. Programmer or otherwise we're constantly told we're all going to be replaced and the economy is a mess (US). Definitely a depressing time to be alive.
  • seberino 9mo ago
    Not sure that is warranted. AI will create exciting changes to society for the better. These times are uncertain but certainly not depressing.
    • SCdF 9mo ago
      I don't think with any confidence we can say it will be for the better. Or at least, not on balance for the better.
    • cess11 9mo ago
      "AI will create exciting changes to society for the better" Why are you certain of this?
    • vrighter 9mo ago
      it is depressing to me for exactly the same reason
    • bovermyer 9mo ago
      Prove your assertion.
    • plastic-enjoyer 9mo ago
      I don't doubt this, however, the question is if AI will do this in our life-time. The industrialization has led to prosperity in the long term, but initially it led primarily to the proletarianization of the people. Are you willing to accept a devaluation of your skills and a decline in your prosperity so that in 50 to 100 years there is a chance that AI will lead to a better future?
      • 9mo ago
• jmyeet 9mo ago
  I say this without hyperbole: we are (IMHO) on the verge of total systemic collapse. We've had 50+ years of deteriotating worker conditions and a massive concentration of wealth to like 10,000 people. The 1980s crushed the labor movement, to all of our detriment. The GFC destroyed the career prospects of many millenials who discovered their entry-level positions no longer existed so we created a generation that we're loaded with student debt, working as baristas. A lot of people on HN ignored this because the 2010s were good for tech people but many of us didn't realize this post-GFC wave would eventually come for us. And that's what's happening now. So on top of the millenaisl we now have Gen Z who have correctly realized they'll never have security, never buy a house and will never retire. They'll live paycheck to paycheck, barely surviving until they die. Why? All so Jeff Bezos can have $205 billion instead of $200 billion. I'm reminded of the quote "only nine meals separates mankind from anarchy". I believe we've passed the point where we can solve this problem with electoral politics. Western democracies are being overtaken by fascists because of increasing desperation and the total destruction of any kind of leftism since WW2. At this point, it ends violently and sooner than many think.
  • shimman 9mo ago
    I do wonder what will come next, it seems very unlikely that modern states can effectively be toppled and replaced by revolutions but maybe the nature of revolutions will change themselves. After all, it's not like the neoliberal paradigm was always so, it was systematically planned by elites in the 1970s and we're now proudly living in the society they envisioned (elites have wealth while everyone else struggles). The neoliberal establishment was definitely a revolution that impacted and destroyed many lives but it wasn't treated as such. I guess the next turning of the wheel will be similar too. Or maybe we all just have poor imaginations.
    • stanford_labrat 9mo ago
      at the dissolution and decentralization of empires feudalism in it's many forms historically seems to be the most common outcome. i would say that we firmly live in the American Empire with techno-feudalistic tendencies, but a historical event of such magnitude as the complete dissolution of the American state will probably see a reversal to a more traditional feudal system. Think Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates buying up and becoming the Dukes of the PNW. personally though i don't think we are at this stage yet or even close to it. until the federal government becomes COMPLETELY inept and the average citizen cannot buy food, this won't happen. yes market conditions are currently not the best but we are nowhere near starvation.
• AstroBen 9mo ago
  Fresh grads will be fine regardless. You're okay to start over from scratch at 25. 42 on the other hand is tough I feel for the mid-career people with families to support. Can't imagine how stressful that would be
  • _0l5x 9mo ago
    This is a fresh perspective for me. I'm around 25 and have been struggling with finding some kind of path towards making my career into something sustainable long-term, but never really considered the other side. I think the issue many have on my end is that they don't really have much of anything to stand on while they rebuild yet, whereas they might think that someone more experienced could pivot to business and people-oriented roles by leveraging what they have now. I know many people personally struggling to find work as it is right out of school, and many have student loans which exacerbate the situation. For a lot of people, starting from scratch is not realistically feasible in the near future unless they're content with being homeless for a while. Of course labor jobs will always exist, and a 25 year old would (on average) be much more physically able for that than someone older, so it goes both ways.
    • AstroBen 9mo ago
      Consider people in their 40s have.. A mortgage: if you were assuming a strong income that would continue, you very likely could be forced to sell your house and take a huge loss A family, kids: people relying on you Time: at this point you have retirement plans and financial deadlines you need to hit if it's to ever become a reality God forbid you have any health issues that cost $$$ which tend to come as you age. Can you afford to lose health insurance? If you think about re-skilling and starting off at entry level.. people don't really want to hire older beginners. Of course that's absolute worst case scenario, but I guarantee there are a lot of people there. I'd 100% choose living out of my car for a while. In your 20s you can upend everything and completely reinvent yourself. Time, minimal responsibilities and energy are priceless > could pivot to business and people-oriented roles by leveraging what they have now There's a reason that's really vague, right? Because who knows if it'll be available I don't think AI is gunna reach this point but who knows. It's not off the table
• SkyeCA 9mo ago
  > TBH, it all feels like a huge gamble at this point. Honestly? It does and I feel completely hopeless. I'm very, very angry with the world/life at this point to put it mildly.
  • block_dagger 9mo ago
    I think we all need to respond by being very, very flexible and open minded about how to contribute to society going forward. I'm on the back end of my career but I imagine it's terrifying for newcomers. Stay agile! We're all in this together.
• Havoc 9mo ago
  And not just SWE. If that falls then we're pretty close to societal upheaval because the difference vs other jobs is largely just better training data (github)