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Ask HN: Not sure about the future of tech

21 points xblpob | 1 comments | 12 May 25 22:12 UTC | HN request time: 0.461s | source

The last few years working in tech have been pretty brutal and now with all of the AI hype in full swing I have never felt like more of a replaceable cog in a machine.

It’s always seemed like a little bit of a race to cash out as quickly as possible by promising the world, selling, then letting everyone else deal with the fallout but now it seems like everyone is seeing the door about to close in front of them so they need to extract every ounce of productivity from those below them to get out while they still can.

I don’t want to be treated like a component in someone’s vehicle that you just swap out for a new one after you’ve burned it out which is what my entire job feels like more than ever.

I’m not excited about “AI” and I think while useful to some extent it will do more harm than good as our monkey brains scramble to make sense of what it is and fight each other for control over it. Does anyone else feel like this? What are the alternatives for someone who still likes programming but doesn’t want to be doing it professionally anymore if it means I’m going to have to be harnessed to the front of the dog sled while my boss screams “mush!”

1. HenryBemis ◴[13 May 25 22:52 UTC] No.43978669[source]▶
> I have never felt like more of a replaceable cog in a machine.

Since forever I remember reading in the news that company XYZ 'let go' # thousands of employees in countries A, B, and from departments C, D.

I was working in a bank (one of the many) back in the late 00s and one morning the (open space) office was dead silent. It use to have 200+ people but that day it had 20+.

Apparently "Management" saw something coming (it was the 2008 crisis) and decided to cut costs asap, and the first to go out were the ~200 contractors (back then there was no 'remote' work, so everyone was in the office). I knew one of them, we grew up in the same neighborhood, and he was super angry because they asked them to simply hand over their laptops and walk out. 1 minute notice, and paid them in the end of the month for the rest of the month and that was that.

At _that_ moment I realized that shit doesn't just happens to others on the news, it happens to all of us, it's not an IF it will happen to you/me/anyone, it is a WHEN it will happen.

Brace yourselves, winter is coming.