[droopyEyelids]

You're talking about the distinction between doing something because you love it and doing something as a means to an end.

It's a funny distinction! Knowing something can be automated can take some of the fun out of it, but there are plenty of people who still do stuff for fun when they could buy the end result more cheaply.

For employers, though, it's all a means to an end. Go write for the love of it on your own time.

[layer8]

Except that many people don’t get into their profession as a mere means to an end. They chose the profession because they like it, and they want to spend their lives doing stuff they enjoy. Being employed just as means to an end is not worth the large amounts of time you spend doing it, if you can help it in any way. Let’s not normalize a dystopia here.

[shagie]

And else thread from a couple days ago... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35235534

> I was recently laid off, and I know a few other people laid off. I have years of doing projects and contributing to OSS and being a technically curious learner. I found a new job much faster than my peers who admittedly joined tech for the money and don’t care to learn or grow beyond their next pay raise.

There is a fairly consistent chorus of people getting into software development - not because they enjoy the intellectual challenge that it presents but rather because of the potential for the pay.

As someone who does enjoy software development (I chose this path well before the dot com boom), I believe that we over-estimate the number of people who enjoy it compared to just grinding through writing some code and if something else paid as well, they'd jump in a heartbeat.

[droopyEyelids]

The dystopia is already normal.

The firm can't really afford to care too much about why its workers entered their professions. The firm has to care about the cost of its inputs and margin lest it be devoured by a competitor or private equity.

[layer8]

This subthread started by welcoming that you can be more efficient by spending less time writing code and more time prompting an AI and double-checking what it produces. My point is that’s not an attractive outlook for many software developers, and as one of them I certainly don’t welcome it. From that perspective, the progress in AI may turn out to not a benefit for those software developers, in terms of job satisfaction.

The fact that companies may see that differently is beside the point, and I don’t particularly expect them to care for my preferences. I will however certainly continue to choose employers that happen to accommodate my preferences.