These always come with the assumption that most white-collar jobs weren't already mostly performative busywork.
Blue collar has plenty of performative busywork too
Readit Newsmmcromp commented on Blue-collar jobs are gaining popularity as AI threatens office work nbcnews.com/business/busi... · Posted by u/geox
mmcromp commented on Blue-collar jobs are gaining popularity as AI threatens office work nbcnews.com/business/busi... · Posted by u/geox
Whst makes you think we don't?
Because I'm from working class, rust belt and ive seen the reality the state of America blue collar, not just the "the guy who installed my TV said he owns his own business and makes almost as much as me working in software" fantasy.
I've also had a front row seat to "just learn JavaScript" go from great career advice to joke in the span of time it'd take you to finish a trade apprenticeship.
mmcromp commented on Blue-collar jobs are gaining popularity as AI threatens office work nbcnews.com/business/busi... · Posted by u/geox
Blue collar jobs are only going to be the go-to for as long as the labor supply is lower than the commercial demand, which I doubt will be long (if this is even the case now). It takes a non-neglible amount of time to train (or certify) for these jobs in much of the western world, which means that any bump in demand is met with a significant lag in supply. Once that supply catches up, the momentum of people saying "bro just go to trade school instead of college, plumbers/electricians/welders/dirt farmers make $100k" is going to dump thousands and thousands of juniors into a market that will very quickly oversaturate. We are witnessing this at an accelerated rate with software development and other tech jobs, largely due to extreme external factors (high interest rates limiting VC cash flow, Trump's hostile domestic economic policies[0], demonstrable downward pressure on employment mobility and wage suppression from big tech[1]).
The american "middle class" is still shrinking, but now it's shrinking faster than ever before, largely because the capital class wants more money, and there is one more stone to bleed. Creating a market of blue collar professionals who will be blackballed from white collar markets due to their educational and work histories (in tandem with the desired outcome of using AI workloads for these jobs in lieu of people) will raise the commercial value of these white collar services, while gatekeeping their entry and stagnating/lowering their compensation. The ladder is being set on fire.
0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44180533 1. https://equitablegrowth.org/aftermath-wage-collusion-silicon...
"AI will kill white collar, those people should just go into trades, they can become plumbers".
Great idea, except that's not how supply/demand works.
AI didn't create the need for more toilets.
mmcromp commented on Blue-collar jobs are gaining popularity as AI threatens office work nbcnews.com/business/busi... · Posted by u/geox
I mean, good? We need more tradespeople than we do office workers - and we need everyone in both fields to be paid substantially more than they presently earn, which will only come about through new business creation, something tradespeople dominate. Software engineers won’t power the green energy transformation so much as skilled electricians, architects, contractors, and builders. More finance people won’t replace aging and inefficient infrastructure so much as more road workers, pipe fitters, plumbers, and wastewater engineers.
I think the current (over)hype around LLMs replacing jobs wholesale is an excellent catalyst for this shift, but I also acknowledge that the pendulum was already naturally swinging that way after decades of over-prioritizing white collar work as the only means of joining the shrinking middle class.
What makes you think we need more trades people?
mmcromp commented on Blue-collar jobs are gaining popularity as AI threatens office work nbcnews.com/business/busi... · Posted by u/geox
My cousin was a software engineer for two decades. He got laid off and couldn't find a job for two years. He's now a mechanic.
How does he feel about that?
how long did his apprenticeship last, did even need one or did he have an "in"?
How does his pay relate to old software work?
How is the toll on his body?
Does he think he can keep doing it into old age?
I thought we moved on from this kind of dogmatic, limited perspective "wisdom". But I guess not?
mmcromp commented on PHP: The Toyota Corolla of programming deprogrammaticaipsum.com/... · Posted by u/secstate
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mmcromp commented on 'A black hole': New graduates discover a dismal job market nbcnews.com/business/econ... · Posted by u/koolba
I think people have exceedingly high-expectations due to make-believe social-media content.
What I see amongst all the people is that both skill and the quality of work decreasing. Which is why, arguably, AI _is_ taking over entry-level jobs.
High percentage of new generation spend their time on TikTok & Instagram, watching reels & stories of some popular/famous people, who tend to have some money (high chance of inheritance or rich family), posing as a "regular" person on the street.
Take this quote for example; “I told myself, by 26, I’d have my own house, I’d have my own family, I’d have my nice little luxury car. That hasn’t happened.”
This is an unrealistic by definition. I don't know what sort of thing a person needs to smoke to come to a conclusion that having _all_ of these, including a luxury car, is a norm for a 26 year old. By definition, if everyone has that _luxury car_, that car would not be a luxury item in the first place. Unless a person inherits a house, it would take at least 10 years (probably 30) to fully own one. One can probably buy/lease a car, probably second hand, but that's unlikely to be a `luxury` vehicle.
Another point is, while some people had adequate pictures/images posted, some did not even bother to put an effort to give a proper picture to the newspaper article. I am not a "wear a suit" person at all, but this attitude clearly shows how much care certain people put into actual work. Would you hire a such person who does sloppy job even at the job application? I would certainly not.
Sorry but the down turn in the job market is real and absolutely worst then people on this website want to realize. most are struggling, juniors especially.
The attitude of young people have nothing to do with that.
Helix is great and includes a lot of stuff out of the box (file pickers, syntax highlighting, linting etc) without any configuration or installing plugins (contrary to vim or neovim).
I would definitely use it but the main disadvantage is that some keybindings work differently than vim. I understand that the keybindings may be better that the vim ones but after years of using vim I expect "x" in normal mode to delete the character under the cursor or "d" to wait for the motion before deleting anything. When this does not happen I get confused and angry. I think this would be a problem with most people that are using vim; it's very difficult to change your habits especially since you can't ever escape from vim because of its ubiquity.
Thankfully, some good people have released evil-helix, a soft fork of Helix which introduces Vim keybindings https://github.com/usagi-flow/evil-helix ; I tried it and it works great so I'll totally recommend it to people that have my problems.
As a final notice, helix (and evil-helix) works great in Windows (cmd). No need to install rust or anything. Get the .exe and you're gtg.
For me, the issue isn't that I'm unwilling to learn new things. It's that I cannot use these keybindings anywhere else. Almost all online editors and workstations have some sort of vim keybindings. When I ssh into a Linux machine I can trust it has vim editor. It's like qwerty keyboard, I'm sure that there's better layouts but I just cannot discard the flexibility of being able to jump on most machines and be 99% productive almost instantly.