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Comment by __alexs

16 hours ago

I feel like most engineers I talk to still haven't realised what this is going to mean for the industry. The power loom for coding is here. Our skills still matter, but differently.

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__alexs

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rglullis  16 hours ago

> power loom

When the power loom came around, what happened with most seamtresses? Did they move on to become fashion designers, materials engineers to create new fabrics, chemists to create new color dyes, or did they simply retire or were driven out of the workforce?

  • __alexs  16 hours ago

    There were riots and many people died. Many people lost their jobs. I didn't say this is good but it is happening. As individuals we should act to protect ourselves from these changes.

    That might mean joining a union and trying to influence how AI is adopted where you work. It might mean changing which if your skills you lean on most. But just whining about AI is bad is how you end up like those seamstresses.

    • rglullis  15 hours ago

      > Many people lost their jobs.

      On the other hand, a lot of those jobs were offshored to places where labor is cheaper. It would be interesting to compare how many people work in the textile industry in Bangladesh today compared to the US 50 years ago.

      > joining a union and trying to influence how AI is adopted where you work.

      Did the strong unions for car manufacturers in Detroit protected the long term stability of the profession? Did it ensure that the Rust belt was still a thriving economic area?

      > Just whining about AI is bad

      I'm not whining. I just think that we are witnessing the end of "knowledge workers" and a further compression of the middle class. Given that I'm smack in the middle of my economically active years (turning 45 this year), I am trying to figure out where this puck is going and whether I will be fast enough to skate there to catch it.

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William_BB  7 hours ago

> I'll make more progress than mentally wearing myself out reading a bunch of LLM generated code trying to figure out how to solve the problem manually.

Most engineers realize that there's currently more tech debt being created than ever before. And it will only get worse.

nunez  12 hours ago

No, I think many realize it, but it's easier to deny the asteroid that's about to destroy your way of life than it is to think about optimizing for the reality after impact.