If you are white collar then it’s going to “disrupt” your field.
I work in tech. I got laid off last year. I wasn’t at Alphabet or Amazon or anything. Much smaller company. But AI “optimization” has ravaged the tech industry and not just programmers. Admins, database specialists, network specialists, developers, you name it. Our job market is absolutely fucked.
In my county, a major metro area in the US (like, top 10) craigslist used to be the place to get real job postings. If it wasn’t a recruiter then your odds of getting a callback from a job posting there is pretty high. There are plenty of postings for other fields like mechanics and tradesmen and so on. For the few tech categories: nothing in the last month. Zero postings. Not even recruiter ads. Literally nothing. It’s a wasteland.
I’ve been told to “go back to school.” I’ll be 41 soon. I’m still paying off my computer science degree. It’s worthless. What else should I go for? Accounting? HR? These are going to be taken by AI, too. Will it be a mistake? Sure. They don’t care. They’ll do it anyways.
When I got my degree my wife and I were homeless. We just got back out of the hole in the last 10 years. I was finally building savings. It’ll be gone in 60 days. She was laid off on Friday. Her industry is in property finance. Another gutted industry. She has to change industries, too.
What is to be done?
Massive sympathies comrade, that really honestly sucks. Not doubting you, but are you able to offer any more details?
As someone who works for a sizeable, multinational tech company, I’ve thus far witnessed absolutely zero disruption from AI to any teams anywhere in our company or my physical locality. There have been a couple attempts to replace services with AI, but they’ve been so unreliable that they’ve achieved nothing. Thus far its only been a tool akin to Google, requiring knowledgeable humans to use it, that occasionally helps code things up or parse data.
A large part of what I did was customer support for proprietary software. Over the years we’ve used systems to build a database of solutions to issues in our software. Now our company has an AI assistance helper using that database to assist customers. There are still live support agents to help when it comes to patient data plus our jobs had us doing a bunch of backend server and database management stuff. It didn’t eliminate all jobs in that department. It streamlined the labor enough to allow for layoffs. The other people on my team were all local and I was the only remote member. 15+ years at that company.
As AIs get less novel real-world data to use, significant AI collapse will be real in our time. They are fundamentally reliant on human experience, so yeah, as fewer humans do the job, the quality will dive.
I’m in a similar boat. I was laid off last year from my white collar job and my responsibilities were doled out between several people using ChatGPT. It took me six months to find a new job, and it pays leas than what I made five years ago for the same title. I believe my layoff would have happened regardless of LLM use, but now companies have another reason to not hire someone with my skill set (translation and writing) because the robots can do it “well enough” (total dogshit)
Already at my new job they’re talking about “integrating AI” into my work and it just feels like the noose is tightening again
Some trades will be automated away as well. I could see stuff like finish carpentry, and cabinetry going the way of the dodo. Panels/doors/trim will be cut by CNC, then robots will assemble. At some point i could see AI created cabinets, passed to an automated CNC, assembled and painted by robots, then given to a crew of two dudes who do nothing but installs. Paint and basic, non complex sheetrocking/taping/floating could be done by robots powered by AI. Eventually, some aspects of framing, and roofing, and maybe even foundation work. Not fully robot/AI but augmented enough that you no longer need a crew of 6 or 8 to rock/tape/paint a newly constructed home; instead a crew of two, or maybe three humans, to do the complex angles and stuff a robot cannot manipulate and refill the drywall banjo or reload collated screws when the robot gets jammed. Architectural drawings will be done by AI. Blueprints will be done by AI. I could see AI becoming the architect eventually.
service plumbing or new construction plumbing is probably far off if ever. Electric service work, and new construction too. Tile/flooring, HVAC, and a couple others that are similar enough that they aren’t worth repeating.
AI is coming for all of us, more or less. Not just tech jobs.
Yes. I’m thinking trades like laying down network cable or electricians. Nobody I know in fields like this are seeing any issues with AI on their paychecks. Ain’t no robots threating to take away the job of my engineer friend who installs pipe for the water company that hooks up to apartment complexes and business high-rises. His crew are still outside in the heat digging the ditch and getting muddy.
While automation and AI won’t directly replace tradesmen and physical laborers, the massive layoffs in the white collar sector will create millions of unemployed workers seeking work in industries that won’t be under threat from it. Wages will be driven down from the glut of available workers coupled with the shrinking middle class who employ their services. Much like climate change, capitalism will utterly fail to handle this transition.
They’re replaceing backbone net and database people with AI? Lol good luck when shit breals and there’s no one to call.
Look for operations jobs. A CS background is invaluable because IT either is less existant or gets du bed down to push broken updates. Human-Device Interface stuff. Utilities. They arent going to AI risk 10s of thousands of lives on AI pushing physical and chemical stuff that effects an entire community. You can use that degree for far more than what you were doing. They will train you too. Might have to work some odd hours but recession proof AI resistant jobsare out there and operations communities are aging out and need replacements.
You could always go the “consultant” route too and charge exeutives their first born for a power point presentation where you create a new acronym every couple years and tell them to tie their shoes.
I’m doing contracting work right now to clean up a SQL database for a manufacturer. But I can even see this going away eventually. It’s too repetitive and tedious and monotonous. Only thing about this is the company will never let an AI controlled by another company catalogue their databases. Plus, the number of people on the data side of the business is my friend and the contractor they hired: me. But this work isn’t enough to keep me going long term.
Also, I fucking hate it I hate it so much goddamn it is boring and sucks and I want to jump into a woodchipper at the thought this is going to be what I do for the rest of my life.
Also, I fucking hate it I hate it so much goddamn it is boring and sucks and I want to jump into a woodchipper at the thought this is going to be what I do for the rest of my life.
I also do contract work and my contract is now 7 years old but when they try to push me into an FTE role, I’m like “I’ll be working with you . . . forever???”
