[kevmo314]

> Actually, what are we going to do when everyone that cares about the craft of software ages out, burns out, or escapes the industry because of the ownership class setting unrealistic expectations on people?

Nothing, I guess? There's an implicit assumption that software written by humans is a necessity. If the future finds that software written by computers is more profitable then that's just what it is. The universe doesn't owe us value on human-written software.

Even food is not able to escape this hole: it's not profitable to manually cultivate food anymore if you wanted to do that as a career.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Well, as someone who considers themselves to be a "software craftsman," I have come to the conclusion that the work I do will never be valued, and will always be considered "too expensive." Since I work for free, that's not an issue for me, but that's economically unfeasible for most folks.

The issue with an industry awash with cheap dross, is that it becomes prohibitively expensive to produce high Quality stuff. Anyone that tries, will get driven out of business. Some clever folks will figure out how to do "slightly better" stuff, and charge more for it, but a good way to go out of business, is to focus on Quality as a principal axis.

That's basic market dynamics. It is what it is, and is neither evil, nor good.

It does mean that only "niche" craftsmen, like myself, will produce anything of decent Quality, but will be unable to do so at scale, because we can't get a team together, large enough to do big things.

I guess the saddest thing, is that I have really wanted to help teach my techniques to others, but have found that no one wants to learn, so I gave up on that, many years ago.

[burlesona]

> The issue with an industry awash with cheap dross, is that it becomes prohibitively expensive to produce high Quality stuff.

This seems to be one of the brutal truths of the modern world, and as far as I can tell it applies to everything. There's always a race to the bottom to make everything as cheaply as possible, and the further the industry goes down that "cheapness" scale, the more "quality" loses market share, the more expensive "quality" must be in order to operate at all, and finally things that used to be just "normal" and not too expensive are now luxury goods.

Consider textiles, carpentry, masonry, machine tooling, appliances, etc. etc.

This doesn't feel like a good outcome, but I'm not sure there's anything that can be done about it.

[gallerdude]

I can see both sides of it. There’s a fancy bread bakery by where I live. I go infrequently, the bread is great. But it’s expensive, most of the I just want a cheap loaf from Target, as do most people.

Instead of broad employment of artisan breadsmiths, we have people doing email work, because it’s more economically valuable. If the government mandated a higher quality of bread, we’d be slightly richer and bread and slightly poorer in everything else.

[mercenario]

> There's always a race to the bottom to make everything as cheaply as possible

Not true at all. Apple and its expensive devices are the best selling devices in their categories.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Yes, but Apple has deep pockets, and a very mature brand.

I worked for a 100-year-old company that has one of the most respected brands in the world. I am quite familiar with what it takes, to make the highest-Quality stuff.

That said, it's downright impossible to start from scratch, creating high-Quality stuff.

[mercenario]

> That said, it's downright impossible to start from scratch, creating high-Quality stuff.

I'm not so sure. It is not common, but it seems that some companies actually start with high quality and only much after offer popular options. Just a random example is uber, at least here it started with only uber black and only after it was very popular it offered uber x.

Another counter example to cheap stuff is luxury clothing/purse/perfume brands. Actually, I'm not so sure if this is about quality or status.

[mooreds]

I've actually thought over my career that software is one of the last places for well compensated craftmanship. In the sense of solving unique problems for good pay. I think that was due to:

- the explosion of software needs due to the internet

- the scalability of software solutions (zero marginal cost for additional copies is a hell of a drug)

I still think that is true, but it may be fading away for many people. That said, the newer devs that I've met that have found jobs tend to find them at bespoke consulting shops (rather than product companies).

I think there will always be room for quality craftmanship in software, but it will be boutique, the same way that there is craftmanship for high quality furniture or cabinetry. ~95% is manufactured mass market and cheap, ~5% is high quality bespoke and expensive.

[pdimitar]

> It does mean that only "niche" craftsmen, like myself, will produce anything of decent Quality, but will be unable to do so at scale, because we can't get a team together, large enough to do big things.

Why can't you get a team together?

I dream of working on big and meaningful things ever since a teenager (and I'm 45 currently) but yeah, I can't afford doing it for free. I keep being a drone.

But if somebody were to stretch out a helping hand and pay me to do the big and meaningful things I'll likely accept two days later.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

> and pay me to do the big and meaningful things

Ay, there's the rub...

It is a lot more expensive to do high-Quality work, than it is to do shoddy (or, to be fair, barely acceptable) work. You need to hire more experienced (expensive) people, and then, you need to hire better managers, because you don't want the usual crap managers in charge of them.

And then, you need to pay for the time they take, "polishing the fenders."

Once you have an established brand, you can do these kinds of things, but it's pretty much impossible to start from scratch (without deep, patient pockets).

[pdimitar]

Well money is always the rub. And many people, once they become better off, become stingy and paranoid and don't want to reinvest -- which I completely understand, especially if they didn't have rich parents and trust fund(s) and had to grind their boots off to get where they are. If I ever make it I know I am absolutely joining that exact group. I owe the world nothing -- definitely not after decades of abuse and zero appreciation.

> it's pretty much impossible to start from scratch (without deep, patient pockets).

Well, I was not referring to myself here, FWIW. I ain't ever going below $10k a month (not to mention that for any meaningful life plans $18k - $25k a month is much more strategically desirable) but I was somewhat referring to many certain techies here on HN who (1) have the talents and tech skills and (2) are very well-off and could work for charity wages for 5+ years without a problem (think $3k - $5k a month).

I am just very sad that these people, who are in a 10x better position than I ever was for 23+ years of career, did not group up and did not create the next-gen lab experience, the likes of which we haven't seen since the days of UNIX. :/

As for the rest of the world, the owning class are quite fine with what they already have -- they know tech currently is not 100% reliable but they are never making 5x the investment for what they see as a 10% improvement (which is exactly the part where they are wrong -- but these people can't think beyond 2-3 quarters ahead anyway).

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Yes, I have been fortunate to be in a position to pay it back (not forward). I'm nowhere near as well-off as a substantial portion of the folks here, but I have enough to live (humbly), and get the equipment I need to do my work.

But I also know that I am an outlier, and, quite frankly, an anachronism.

Just a little while ago, I made a new release of this app[0]. I talked to someone this morning, and realized that they had no idea that you could swipe the screen, to get to different times.

I added a small label to the bottom of the main screen, telling folks that they could swipe to see different times. I had to translate it to Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Brazilian Portuguese, which ChatGPT was ideal for (I don't think that I'd use it for bulk translations, but it was great for a "spot translation").

That kind of thing may seem silly, but it's also exactly the kind of thing that many, many apps don't do. It's quite easy to say that "any power user knows to swipe," but that often excludes a huge number of folks. Since I started hiding the main time selection control panel, swiping has become the main navigation technique.

[0] https://github.com/LittleGreenViper/VirtualMeetingFinder

[hinkley]

> it's not profitable to manually cultivate food anymore

It is if you stay niche. It’s called market gardening. It will never equal farm automation for employment or revenue, but it’s a thing you can do as long as not too many people do it. The same happened to woodworking, and manufacturing. What you see are shops that can remanufacture parts that have either aged out of the manufacturer’s warehouse or where the material is the expensive part and reworking it is cheaper and almost as fast as ordering a new one.

The consumer base of these is smaller, so the supply has to be smaller as well, but not zero.

[boogieknite]

this comment implies the real "other shoe" for which im waiting to drop.

im ok with nothing. if software dev is nearly completely automated to the point there are effectively no dev jobs then there is a much more important economic condition to address

im a basic state-school student who learned the memorable bit about Keynes regarding automating labor which still hasnt come to pass. at the time i kind of found it unbelievable we continue to work so much when then point of automation is working less, but i was a college slacker so any excuse to avoid work seemed like a good point to me.

to conclude this preamble: i have a sinking sense of momentum and my circles of midwit friends stare at each other like deer in the headlights with no idea on whats next after jobs dry up

my question: are there movements to prepare the society for the impending mass automation and layoffs? people still seem to want jobs, because society demands it, but are there movements by significant political or idea leaders to finally get off the work treadmill and go toward a Keynes-style chill out? i dont know where to start and any direction is appreciated

* i understand ai layoffs is a media scapegoat for the real issues with taxable R&D and interest rates. mass automation of jobs and real workforce replacement by ai is probably on a timescale 2x to 5x of the 10 year runway im expecting

[edwardbernays]

If you're in America, there probably will not be a chill-out. Look into the philosophy of Curtis Yarvin, whom has been cited favorably by J.D. Vance and Peter Thiel. We are heading towards techno-fascism. The working population which would have been furloughed is probably going to be redirected to the manual labor jobs currently being vacated by the aggressive deportation of "the worst of the worst" immigrant workers within our borders. The loss of these displaced people will necessitated a new underclass to work the fields, clean the chickens, etc. This underclass will be composed of prisoners-cum-indentured servants and slaves, which are legally provided for by the 13th amendment.

[boogieknite]

thank you for the recommendation and holy god this is grim

[edwardbernays]

It's grim but understandable in a way. I was writing quickly but I can expound more on any point if you want. I don't think we're locked into it yet, but if you read into Curtis Yarvin then you will see he was extremely prescient in the 2010s era. I refer to this brand of technofascist monarchism, self-branded as The Dark Enlightenment, as Yarvinism.

He is not the only one, but he is the most prominent. I've been considering starting a website to track things like The New Apostolic Reformation, The Seven Mountains Mandate, Curtis Yarvin, the two billionaires trying to get rid of the separation of church and State in Texas, and others.

There is a right-wing christofascist movement attempting to bulldoze democracy via technology. Peter Thiel is basically running the surveillance tech of our government. Look into what he's said about bulldozing government with technology. He knows his ideas are so unpalatable that he has to subvert democracy to get his ideas implemented.

This is the most prominent threat to our secular, freedom-loving, democratic way of life. It unfortunately receives very little air time.

EDIT: also look into this account's namesake, Edward Bernays, aka the father of modern propaganda.

[stego-tech]

Profit motives are a relatively recent phenomenon, though, and are often erroneously cited as analogous to efficiency gains (despite mountains of evidence to the contrary).

> Even food is not able to escape this hole: it's not profitable to manually cultivate food anymore if you wanted to do that as a career.

Does this not horrify you? That the foundational discipline of humanity - nutrition via hunting, gathering, or growing - is no longer a "profitable enterprise"? Something every human needs in order to survive, has been perverted and denigrated to the point that it is no longer profitable?

That should be horrifying. It should be the red flag that spurs action against a gross system of exploitation and goal misalignment. For all the crowing about AI misalignment wiping out humanity, we have actual economic misalignment leaving humans homeless, starving, and dying of curable illness not from lack of supply or demand, but purely from placing profit above all.

To see defeatists and fatalists jump in comments and say "that's just how it is" while prostrating themselves in worship to the almighty share price should infuriate us as a species, for these are humans who willingly accept their own demise at the hands of others rather than doing anything of value for their own self-preservation, let alone preservation of the species.

[RHSeeger]

> That the foundational discipline of humanity - nutrition via hunting, gathering, or growing - is no longer a "profitable enterprise"?

I don't understand this statement. These things aren't unprofitable. Doing these things a specific way is unprofitable. Growing food is most certainly profitable; but only at scale. Is it sad that a small, family farm isn't really a great way to make a living nowadays? Sure. But that's not a foundational discipline of humanity; "creating food" is, but there's lots of ways to do that.

And, honestly, if we _ever_ get to the point where we can fabricate food from raw elements (a la Star Trek), then that will be a little sad, too... but still "creating food".

[Freak_NL]

The replicator in Star Trek doesn't seem plausible to me any more. Flawlessly outputting a cup of Earl Grey?

The computer-based drinks machine onboard the Heart of Gold on the other hand… Trying to order tea there now sounds suspiciously like a bout of futile prompt-engineering; trying to goad an LLM into giving you tea, but ending up with something which is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

[wizzwizz4]

And if you phrase your question wrong, you have a chance of triggering a Chain of Thought process that gets stuck in a loop "analysing" some utterly irrelevant part of the problem (here, "why would anyone want to order tea?"), locking up important subsystems of other systems on the network in the process.

[bevr1337]

> Growing food is most certainly profitable; but only at scale

The agricultural practices you hint at only make sense in a boardroom. I'm sure it seems rational or logical, but it's not based in experience or ethics.

> But that's not a foundational discipline of humanity;

It is probably the foundational discipline of humanity. Cultivating and cooking food is what allowed us to do everything since.

[RHSeeger]

> Cultivating and cooking food is what allowed us to do everything since.

To repeat what I said before, more clearly

- Growing and cooking food is currently profitable.

- Growing and cooking food _a certain way_ is not profitable

- Growing and cooking food is a foundational discipline of humanity

- Growing and cooking food _a certain way_ is _not_ a foundational discipline of humanity

You specifically quoted a subset of what I said and called it out as wrong. Which is true, but also irrelevant; because it's not what I said.

[zimzam]

What are you talking about? Inexpensive food is a boon to society.

Cultivating food the 'old fashioned way' is incredibly labor intensive. We now have machines that allow us to cultivate far more food with far less labor.

For example, in 1900 corn took 38 hours/acre to plant/cultivate/harvest. In 2000 it took about an hour. The yeild per acre has also improved 3x-5x in that span, so the time per bushel has decreased to less than 1% of what it once was.

Of course the person spending 100+x the effort to grow corn will not be economically competitive - why would we want anything different?

https://www.lhf.org/learning-fields/crops/corn/

[mm263]

You are not making an argument you think you are making. We switched from one set of problems to another set of problems that didn't exist before industrial agriculture: soil erosion, pest explosion, entire harvests wiped out by disease because genetic uniformity, which means one pathogen can destroy everything - think Irish potato famine but now it's scientific and modern.

The mess of traditional farming - with its scattered plots, mixed crops, and local varieties adapted to every microclimate - was too complicated to tax and control, so they (that Xe talks about, *they*, the ones who stand to profit) bulldozed millennia of accumulated agricultural wisdom and replaced it with neat geometric fields of single crops that any bureaucrat could count from his desk. This wasn't just an ecological disaster waiting to happen (and it did happen - you not knowing about it doesn't mean that it didn't; maybe in the end you'll notice when our last species of corn dies out), it was also an epistemic catastrophe, a murder of local knowledge that understood why you plant these three things together here but those two things there, replacing it with the kind of simplified, one-size-fits-all stupidity that makes perfect sense in a government report and absolutely none in actual soil where actual plants have to actually grow.

Anyway, I recommend Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott.

[ArcTugboat03]

This is an excessively romanticized view of traditional farming. If you look at the astonishing death tolls from famine throughout human history, including in living memory, it is pretty clear why, for all its problems, industrial agriculture is still a far superior approach.

Food security requires food production at levels which demand industrialized agriculture, for better or worse.

[bevr1337]

Maybe a false dichotomy. For ex, modern transportation could have been in service to sustainable agricultural models, providing resiliency between communities.

[mm263]

You are missing the point. The point isn't that the legacy methods of agriculture are unequivocally better. They have their downsides, some of the downsides are pretty severe. The point is that abolishing traditional farming in favour of industrial agriculture yielded unforeseen costs, the ones that were never even hypothesized when we started scaling agriculture. Now with AI and agents, we'll reap those unforeseen costs again. The profits will go into the pockets of the owners, the unforeseen costs (which include the costs of switching from one system to another) will become the society's burden to bear, as it was with industrial-scale agriculture.

[doitLP]

+1 on seeing like a state. But combining small plots into mega farms did create more food. It just did so at the loss of variety and knowledge and local control and ultimately freedom as you say. See enclosing the commons in England in the 18-19th century

[BriggyDwiggs42]

I need to finish seeing like a state and will defer to your expertise, but this raised a question in me: why are we still limping along if our farming techniques are doomed like this? Did we never adapt in recognition of the flaws of monoculture?

[mm263]

We adapted, that's why the pesticide industry is so big. I'm not a great agriculture expert, but from my understanding it's an uphill battle against nature and we are winning for now.

[AngryData]

I find that 38 hours per acre for corn figure a bit inflated as someone who use to plant 2 acres of corn each year using a 1901 corn planter and harvesting it by hand with my father. It never took the two of us more than a day to harvest the entirety of the corn, store it in our corn crib, and bundle all the corn stalks, while working at a fairly leisured pace. Tilling, fertilizing, and planting only took a day and only required one person for the first two, granted we did use a 1940 farmall tractor, but like I said its not like we were working at any real speed trying to get it done as if we needed it to survive. It was just a cheap and easy way to get corn to fatten up a cow or two before slaughter. It is also an absolutely miniscule amount of work compared to the amount of food it produced. Using 1900 corn yields (we didnt actualy weigh our own yields), it was over 3,000 pounds of corn, and it was likely much higher growing a more modern variety. Going by bulk grain corn prices at the local Tractor Supply the value rivals or exceeds the average local wage, and if it was sweet corn would surpass local wages multiple times over, so doesn't seem like a bad deal at all.

[stego-tech]

I was directly replying to the poster above me's own arguments in favor of "doing nothing". At no time did I denigrate inexpensive food, only highlighted that their own perspective that food production is unprofitable when it is in fact necessary for every human to survive, should horrify them.

That being said, if you're going to get on your data soapbox and try to tear down an argument I didn't make in the first place, then I will challenge you to "square the circle" between OPs argument that food production is not profitable; the fact 200 million children (and half a billion people globally) are malnourished; and that these stats are somehow acceptable in a world that collectively throws out a billion meals per day.

[kevmo314]

> are often erroneously cited as analogous to efficiency gains

Sure, I can believe that, but...

> doing anything of value for their own self-preservation

Even your own comment relies on some metric of value.

I agree that profit motives are not an ideal metric of value but as your comment suggests, we as a species do rely on some metric of value. I'm not infuriated until there's a better metric.

[sundaeofshock]

If we don’t figure out a way to keep people alive and relatively happy, the metric may become pitchforks per angry mob.

I used to wonder if a Butlerian Jihad was plausible or just an interesting plot device. Now, it seems more plausible every day.

[kevmo314]

Yeah that's totally possible but I suspect if AI really does take over software, the number of people who will riot over software quality is going to be dwarfed by the number of people who are happier that they can get their chats GPT'd faster.

[sundaeofshock]

What makes you think that capitalists will stop with software developers? If AI can truly eliminate software jobs, then most knowledge based jobs will be at risk of elimination.

Let’s be honest; capital wants to eliminate all labor, and damn the consequences. People are not going to willingly give up lives of comfort for abject squalor. This will not go well.

[kevmo314]

I don't think they will but I also don't think abject squalor is the way to describe artisanal work.

On top of that, I agree that capitalists continue to eliminate jobs but I also think they create jobs in other sectors. The reason I don't buy into doomsday scenarios is I don't believe they will eliminate all the jobs at once.

I only happen to be a software engineer. If I was born 250 years ago, I'm sure I would've found a creative innovation outlet through another industry.

[stego-tech]

> I'm not infuriated until there's a better metric.

That attitude is the equivalent of a frog in a boiling pot going, "I won't leave until you have a better idea of where to go."

Value is - and always will be - subjective. Whenever society forms a centralized definition of value, it is immediately gamed and exploited by those who seek profit and power. Currency and profit are extreme forms of Goodhart's Law, the civilizational equivalent to "Tickets Closed" or "Lines of Code Written" KPIs.

To demand objective measure of subjectivity is to fight a fool's battle.

[kevmo314]

That's fair but not a convincing argument if you're seeking to show that the pot is boiling. I don't believe it is and writing off the rebuttal is akin to "well it's boiling, just trust me".

[stego-tech]

> I don't believe it is and writing off the rebuttal is akin to "well it's boiling, just trust me".

Which would be a fair counter-argument to have if so many of you (and people like you) weren't also trying to drag those of us looking to escape back into the fucking pot.

If you want to sit and boil, fine, but for chrissakes let those of us who wish to try anything other than boiling alive go do that. Your staunch refusal to confront reality is your problem, but your insistence on harming others so you don't have to confront reality should be criminal.

[kevmo314]

> let those of us who wish to try anything other than boiling alive go do that

Ok? Who is stopping you? Nobody here is prohibiting you from continuing to write code by hand and doing whatever you wish. Certainly if you're going to assert that that's criminal, of course I'm not interested in your vinegar.

[th0ma5]

This also assumes that non human written code will be of any use to humans and no one has shown that to be possible, it is all humans patching it up so far.