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This is already a clusterfuck, but it's going to be so much worse in 10 years. We're going to have an entire generation trapped in the gig economy because their

This is already a clusterfuck, but it's going to be so much worse in 10 years. We're going to have an entire generation trapped in the gig economy because their education is going to be considered worthless, and even if it wasn't worthless, there won't be enough entry level jobs for anyone to get into. Senior people will age out and our entire society is just going to be hollowed out. And people wonder why I'm an AI hater.

piloto_ciego 3mo ago
The thing you're angry at, the thing that you're upset about? It's capitalism, it's the coupling of education with jobs, it's credentialism being overturned by new technology, etc. I think education is incredibly important, but I understand that I'm going to have to retrain myself a little bit. A college degree can no-longer be assumed to be a proxy for having put in the effort to deeply study something. Now what's the solution for this? I don't know, but we have made the mistake of conflating pieces of paper for expertise. And I say that as someone with 3 degrees. Thinking back to my time as a professional pilot before I medicaled out and pivoted into tech, the FAA really (for all it's problems) has a pretty good system to train and test new pilots. You have to have some hours with a certified instructor and some hours on your own. The tests to become a certified instructor are considered challenging, and many people fail. Then you take a written test, then you take a practical test. It's one on one. You and the examiner. And if you do not meet the standard, you fail. That's "ok." It's just fine to fail people who do poorly during a checkride. They go back, they get retrained, and they do it again. If you have a lot of failures during training, you'll have to answer for them in interviews later on, but often times there's a sort of holistic treatment to it. If you busted a checkride 15 years ago, and have since been fine, you'll be ok. If it's a recurring theme, you'll have a hard time finding a job (and that's the right thing, IMO). But the format of "Written, Oral Exam, and Practical Exam" is the "right" model for making sure people know wtf they are doing. How do we do that in tech? Hell if I know, maybe a proctored written exam, followed by an oral exam, then a project? But who knows.
- piloto_ciego 3mo ago
  replying to my own thread here, but this got me thinking, so thanks OP, but... can anyone here think of some better ways where we could decouple the education process from the work process? To me this seems like the main problem. It seems that we've decided that "get good grades == good employee" collectively. I know I'm a bad employee (which is why I work for myself now but that's another story), but I got great grades in school. I don't know, I just feel like school was rarely about actually learning / growing and was mostly about vocational work most of my time in undergrad, and I wish we could de-couple that some? But maybe I'm naive here...
  - SturgeonsLaw 3mo ago
    Make education free. I'd love to study something like philosophy or art history but there's just no return on that investment. Unless you're already wealthy, it doesn't make sense to drop five or six figures on a degree unless it's likely to pay for itself. Which is even becoming less likely with STEM, as we hit a confluence of higher education costs, fewer job openings, and AI as a competitor for work.
    - piloto_ciego 3mo ago
      I totally agree! And I think you're right! Education should be free.
      - rbanffy 3mo ago
        Another thing we can add is sealing grades. If you can’t use your grades as a credential, the incentive to cheat is reduced. This won’t solve the relation between getting a job and living - that’s a job for UBI and a comprehensive social security system.
        piloto_ciego 3mo ago
        Or, maybe we get rid of them. Like maybe the idea of having grades is kind of silly in the first place?
wuschel 3mo ago
Depends. Oral examninations will be more important as a test of skill now. During my university time, all main exams were oral examinations: One professor, one protocol keeper, and the student. Duration: 1-2 hours.
- UncleMeat 3mo ago
  Doing that for a class of 30is already a huge chore. Now do a class of 150.
ponector 3mo ago
But education is almost worthless now already. Nowadays pretty much everyone has a degree and then couldn't find a job and lucking real skills and experience. Ai is not a cause, it will simply speed up the degradation of the system.
- franktankbank 3mo ago
  Probably should just import more labor I guess
- malfist 3mo ago
  > Nowadays pretty much everyone has a degree and then couldn't find a job The unemployment rate in the US is 3.7%. 38% of adults in the US have a college degree. 38% is hardly everyone, and if nobody can find a job, then the unemployment rate should be far higher than 3.7%, which is basically full employment.
  - overgard 3mo ago
    I don't trust the unemployment numbers to be useful here because it's just measuring "do you have a job or not", not more important things like "does this job pay you enough to survive" or "do you have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet". There are other metrics that look really bad. For example, from google: "The labor-force participation rate shrank to 61.5%, marking one of the lowest points in recent years as potential workers give up searching for employment." So, unemployment might be artificially low because a lot of people just.. gave up. I know a few people like that, and life on SSI checks is pretty grim! There's also this bit: "The U-6 unemployment rate, which includes discouraged workers and those working part-time for economic reasons, sits at 8.2%" Lets say you graduated with a STEM degree and now you're working at starbucks or walmart. Congrats you're employed! Is that sustainable or good? It's just not a useful metric. It's like the super rich pointing at the stock market and going "we're not in a recession, the number is going up!" and yet real buying power and wages are declining for everyone except the massively wealthy.
  - ponector 3mo ago
    How about the relevant age group? Like 25-35 y.o. For sure 20-y.o. adults have no degree and students are not count as unemployed.
ryandvm 3mo ago
Yup. You can either A) ban AI (good luck) and teach students to understand CS fundamentals deeply - which will of course make them totally unsuitable for an industry that is demanding tokenmaxxing from every engineer; or B) embrace AI at the university and produce students that are nothing more than prompt "engineers".
- sph 3mo ago
  There is no win condition. Despite the usefulness claims of generative AI, it is a net negative on society and on education. Humanity will somehow make do and get used to it; but I doubt the upheaval we will have to go through the next X decades will have any silver lining other than “we made billionaires richer and exponentially increased wealth disparity” I honestly pity watching my fellow software engineers rush to adapt to this new dystopia, just to stay afloat a little while longer before they are truly obsolete. It is quite tragic.
cliglot 3mo ago
> there won't be enough entry level jobs for anyone to get into. You know, I was reading an article about falling labor force participation rates, and one thing was pointed out was there seems to be a supply mismatch. Plenty of jobs are available, they’re just shit, go nowhere, pay nothing in the facing of rapidly rising COL jobs. I suspect the only retirement I’ll ever see will have to be via a shotgun.
- archdang 3mo ago
  Our new RaaS platform, Retirify, provides a wealth of more creative ways to receive your own, personalised, brutal ending.

piloto_ciego 3mo ago

The thing you're angry at, the thing that you're upset about? It's capitalism, it's the coupling of education with jobs, it's credentialism being overturned by new technology, etc. I think education is incredibly important, but I understand that I'm going to have to retrain myself a little bit. A college degree can no-longer be assumed to be a proxy for having put in the effort to deeply study something. Now what's the solution for this? I don't know, but we have made the mistake of conflating pieces of paper for expertise. And I say that as someone with 3 degrees. Thinking back to my time as a professional pilot before I medicaled out and pivoted into tech, the FAA really (for all it's problems) has a pretty good system to train and test new pilots. You have to have some hours with a certified instructor and some hours on your own. The tests to become a certified instructor are considered challenging, and many people fail. Then you take a written test, then you take a practical test. It's one on one. You and the examiner. And if you do not meet the standard, you fail. That's "ok." It's just fine to fail people who do poorly during a checkride. They go back, they get retrained, and they do it again. If you have a lot of failures during training, you'll have to answer for them in interviews later on, but often times there's a sort of holistic treatment to it. If you busted a checkride 15 years ago, and have since been fine, you'll be ok. If it's a recurring theme, you'll have a hard time finding a job (and that's the right thing, IMO). But the format of "Written, Oral Exam, and Practical Exam" is the "right" model for making sure people know wtf they are doing. How do we do that in tech? Hell if I know, maybe a proctored written exam, followed by an oral exam, then a project? But who knows.

piloto_ciego 3mo ago
replying to my own thread here, but this got me thinking, so thanks OP, but... can anyone here think of some better ways where we could decouple the education process from the work process? To me this seems like the main problem. It seems that we've decided that "get good grades == good employee" collectively. I know I'm a bad employee (which is why I work for myself now but that's another story), but I got great grades in school. I don't know, I just feel like school was rarely about actually learning / growing and was mostly about vocational work most of my time in undergrad, and I wish we could de-couple that some? But maybe I'm naive here...
- SturgeonsLaw 3mo ago
  Make education free. I'd love to study something like philosophy or art history but there's just no return on that investment. Unless you're already wealthy, it doesn't make sense to drop five or six figures on a degree unless it's likely to pay for itself. Which is even becoming less likely with STEM, as we hit a confluence of higher education costs, fewer job openings, and AI as a competitor for work.
  - piloto_ciego 3mo ago
    I totally agree! And I think you're right! Education should be free.
    - rbanffy 3mo ago
      Another thing we can add is sealing grades. If you can’t use your grades as a credential, the incentive to cheat is reduced. This won’t solve the relation between getting a job and living - that’s a job for UBI and a comprehensive social security system.
      - piloto_ciego 3mo ago
        Or, maybe we get rid of them. Like maybe the idea of having grades is kind of silly in the first place?

wuschel 3mo ago

Depends. Oral examninations will be more important as a test of skill now. During my university time, all main exams were oral examinations: One professor, one protocol keeper, and the student. Duration: 1-2 hours.

UncleMeat 3mo ago
Doing that for a class of 30is already a huge chore. Now do a class of 150.

ponector 3mo ago

But education is almost worthless now already. Nowadays pretty much everyone has a degree and then couldn't find a job and lucking real skills and experience. Ai is not a cause, it will simply speed up the degradation of the system.

franktankbank 3mo ago
Probably should just import more labor I guess
malfist 3mo ago
> Nowadays pretty much everyone has a degree and then couldn't find a job The unemployment rate in the US is 3.7%. 38% of adults in the US have a college degree. 38% is hardly everyone, and if nobody can find a job, then the unemployment rate should be far higher than 3.7%, which is basically full employment.
- overgard 3mo ago
  I don't trust the unemployment numbers to be useful here because it's just measuring "do you have a job or not", not more important things like "does this job pay you enough to survive" or "do you have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet". There are other metrics that look really bad. For example, from google: "The labor-force participation rate shrank to 61.5%, marking one of the lowest points in recent years as potential workers give up searching for employment." So, unemployment might be artificially low because a lot of people just.. gave up. I know a few people like that, and life on SSI checks is pretty grim! There's also this bit: "The U-6 unemployment rate, which includes discouraged workers and those working part-time for economic reasons, sits at 8.2%" Lets say you graduated with a STEM degree and now you're working at starbucks or walmart. Congrats you're employed! Is that sustainable or good? It's just not a useful metric. It's like the super rich pointing at the stock market and going "we're not in a recession, the number is going up!" and yet real buying power and wages are declining for everyone except the massively wealthy.
- ponector 3mo ago
  How about the relevant age group? Like 25-35 y.o. For sure 20-y.o. adults have no degree and students are not count as unemployed.

ryandvm 3mo ago

Yup. You can either A) ban AI (good luck) and teach students to understand CS fundamentals deeply - which will of course make them totally unsuitable for an industry that is demanding tokenmaxxing from every engineer; or B) embrace AI at the university and produce students that are nothing more than prompt "engineers".

sph 3mo ago
There is no win condition. Despite the usefulness claims of generative AI, it is a net negative on society and on education. Humanity will somehow make do and get used to it; but I doubt the upheaval we will have to go through the next X decades will have any silver lining other than “we made billionaires richer and exponentially increased wealth disparity” I honestly pity watching my fellow software engineers rush to adapt to this new dystopia, just to stay afloat a little while longer before they are truly obsolete. It is quite tragic.

cliglot 3mo ago

> there won't be enough entry level jobs for anyone to get into. You know, I was reading an article about falling labor force participation rates, and one thing was pointed out was there seems to be a supply mismatch. Plenty of jobs are available, they’re just shit, go nowhere, pay nothing in the facing of rapidly rising COL jobs. I suspect the only retirement I’ll ever see will have to be via a shotgun.

archdang 3mo ago
Our new RaaS platform, Retirify, provides a wealth of more creative ways to receive your own, personalised, brutal ending.