The fact is that people have never been that impressed by job titles, at least not in my lifetime
No one's ever been like "oh wow you're a software engineer? That's so incredible"
Mostly if they're impressed, it's because it pays well and they assume I'm pretty rich
I'm not. I do really well compared to my peers, yes, but ultimately I'm still living the same kind of middle class lifestyle my parents had while my Dad worked at a tool store and my Mom worked part time at nonprofits
m463 · 22h ago
(I know this isn't quite what the article is getting at)
Job titles are important to some people, not to others. I think it's usually insider vs outsider.
To an outsider, "I'm a doctor" sounds impressive/interesting, but less so to someone in the medical profession.
Working in software doesn't confer social status and never has. Money, maybe, but not status.
Lawyers' wages are badly depressed, supposedly, yet "I'm a lawyer" instantly confers better social status than "I'm a software developer" or even "I work at Google". Doctor, professor, those are jobs that come with a little or large bump in social status. "I'm a software developer" is like "I'm an accountant"—neutral at best.
glimshe · 21h ago
I'm a "computer scientist" does a bit better than "software engineer" if you want to sound smarter. The distinction doesn't matter for most people.
nunez · 15h ago
There was definitely a time when saying that you worked at Google as an engineer confered massive social status. That's the whole reason why the movie The Internship exists!
almosthere · 1d ago
The article is about how the entire paradigm may flip- software engineer is a low class person, locksmiths and fabricators are the new software engineers.
bluefirebrand · 1d ago
My point is there's a difference between "economic class" and "social class"
Software Engineers are still, pretty generally, viewed as a low social class despite being a pretty solid economic class
The idea that the paradigm may flip is only really about economic class. A locksmith may make more money than software engineers soon, but they will still be low social class
That likely won't change
burnt-resistor · 18h ago
PSA: Kids, become a doctor not a lawyer, dentist, or an engineer. If you want to be rich, become a real estate broker. If you hate socializing, become an anesthesiologist or a perfusionist.
jfinnery · 1d ago
Pretty sure enough (doesn't need to be a high proportion of them, really) office workers can re-train as e.g. locksmiths or plumbers fast enough if the money is really there that a substantial bump from this effect will be short-lived.
Hell, I'd kinda rather do something like that, if the money were as good, and I'm already reasonably handy. Pretty sure I'm far from alone, and again, it only needs to be a few percent of laid-off office workers able & willing to train into blue collar jobs to flatten any price spike.
The idea that anyone but capital's going to benefit from this, if any of it plays out the way AI-maximalists think (separately, I think that's mostly BS, but do think this is going to provide the activation energy for another wave of off-shoring instead of hiring back US workers when the AI tools prove inadequate) seems so naïve that it's hard not to read it as deliberate propaganda.
almosthere · 1d ago
The funny thing about the story is that the tradesmen that show up with an investment property isn't doing that well either. Even though in the story the locksmith asks for $750 - he's only taking home $25-35/hour. The check/card is for the company he works for. And that money will be paying his salary for a few days until the next uber expensive lockout.
In no reality is someone going lock-out to lock-out making $750 for themselves. That business, like software, is also captured. Captured by capital in advertising no individual can match.
It's just like a BTC miner. Very few people on HN will go out and buy a BTC miner box hoping to get 1 BTC in a few days - the competition is maximized to a point where each earned BTC just barely paid for all the upgrades. The fact is, that most of the BTC is mined in China and so it's just a giant siphon of money.
pavel_lishin · 1d ago
I think a lot of us software engineers dream about having a job where we work with our hands, and plumbing and woodworking seem to be especially common dreams.
But if you talk to a plumber, you'll quickly learn that while it's a respectable job that can earn you a good wage, it's also hard on the body, and often wildly unpleasant. And that's before you get to the fact that you're often your own boss, which means dealing with disgruntled or difficult customers, sometimes while you're also doing the physically uncomfortable and unpleasant task.
Imagine dealing with someone yelling at you for doing something or being too expensive wrong while you're elbow-deep in literal shit.
jfinnery · 1d ago
From observing the career trajectories of the tradespeople I've known who likely match or out-earn me, yes, the ideal (and, from what I can tell, not terribly unachievable[1]) path is to be running a crew (or two... or three...) with your name on the truck(s) no later than age 35.
That does mean the job becomes management, sales, and customer relations, but it's management, sales, and customer relations for a trade you know well, which (this is my speculation here) makes it a bit easier to swallow than doing the same thing at office-bound bigco for some product you were only introduced to last week.
[1] I suspect, from also observing the crews themselves, that it's achievable because it's relatively easy for someone with a decent head on their shoulders, who speaks good English, and with the ability to show up almost all the time and to not come off as a flaky meth addict or lazy scam artist when talking to customers, to move up very fast in the trades...
[EDIT] In fact, in the linked story, it appears the locksmith's early-retirement-from-locksmithing plan might be to become a landlord. Also a fairly solid plan, and another that I've seen tradespeople follow—they have an advantage because they can achieve better results with less money on property maintenance, between their own skills, their connections, and having insight into what a good price and good work look like in other trades.
jancsika · 1d ago
In the 90s this same logic would have predicted that Napster would have ended record labels.
Edit: ...or at least flip the relationship between artist and label.
bradreaves2 · 1d ago
> This scene might feel like science fiction
This article is fiction followed by commentary.
If the anecdote were real, it would still be an anecdote: tempting to generalize, but wise to hold loosely.
The article is about how AI will lead to a labor surplus in certain professions, while other professions will retain employment.
The article compares this to the Black Death, where labor supply decreased uniformly. Labor was then able to extract concessions from capital.
Industrialization leads to a different outcome: capital captures more value initially, while devastating workers in the short-term. In the long-term, everyone benefits from higher living standards. Even if the article is correct about AI impacts, it doesn't explain why AI is different from all prior industrialization.
pavel_lishin · 1d ago
> This scene might feel like science fiction
A skilled tradesperson in high demand being able to afford an investment property is science fiction?
bluefirebrand · 1d ago
Yeah, it kinda shows that the writer is living in a bit of a white collar bubble, doesn't it?
Trades still make good money
subarctic · 1d ago
Sounds like the locksmith with his own business and investment property has a lot more financial acumen than she does. This article reminds me a lot of rich dad poor dad
cadamsdotcom · 21h ago
This article in 3 sentences:
1. AI is coming for white collar jobs; blue collar jobs gon be primo
2. This happened ages ago when a ton of people died at once and society had to cope
3. You should be afraid; but we have no solutions for you.
xenocratus · 1d ago
I've only gotten a few paragraphs in, but this seems like a pipe dream of someone working in trades. Who, exactly, starts calling up locksmiths more when their job is gone and they don't have much money to spare? A lot of people being out of a job results in deflation for trades, not inflation. There's also more competition for the jobs that are still available, so you effectively have two sources of deflationary pressure working together. And somehow that results in a locksmith being able to charge 3x. Sure.
pu_pe · 1d ago
I guess what the article is trying to say is that people with job titles like lawyer or marketing manager were formerly presumed to be wealthy or smart, and now less so. If that' the case, it's probably a good thing that they are losing their status. However, I think market saturation is a more likely cause than AI at this point.
amiga386 · 1d ago
> For the first time in generations, peasants could make demands. They could walk away from one lord and find work with another who offered better conditions.
A generally good advice is to not choose career paths based on how much they'll impress others.
androng · 1d ago
this is another AI hype article. if AI actually starts being able to act independently instead of being human supervised for everything then I will start to re-educate myself into something physical like electrician but that hasn't happened yet. Whenever I use Cursor for coding I always have to double or triple check all the output and test it manually.
kypro · 1d ago
I have to admit while I think this knowledge work automation push is all going to be a complete disaster for my own life, I do love that we're finally seeing the educated, "my job is more impressive than yours" class get knocked down a peg or two.
I come from a working class background and for years (decades I guess) my family (especially my dad) has been competing with mass low-skilled immigration, outsourcing, and automation. This has taken a huge toll on his mental health as from time to time he's struggled to keep afloat.
But did he get any sympathy from the educated knowledge class? Of course not...
Reskill! They say. We shouldn't protect inefficient jobs which can be done by machine / foreign sweatshop workers abroad.
Don't be a racist! They say. If you can't compete with the salary demands of hundreds of thousands of low-skilled migrants that's your problem!
Instead of embracing this we could of course have looked for ways to protect jobs or looked for ways to reeducated and compensate those impacted. But we didn't because that would have been bad for GDP. So we were horrid to those who were struggling and desperate for help.
Now we deserve the same. We work inefficient jobs which can be done faster and cheaper by computers running auto-correct. Yes, knowledge workers will lose their jobs, but remember the productivity boosts are going to be great! And that's all that matters right? Businesses won't need to hire armies of devs to build an app anymore like you don't need to pay someone in the US a decent salary to make your clothes or your car.
My advice – shut up, reskill and embrace it. Don't think you're special and deserve UBI. If you can't compete with auto-correcting machines thats your problem. Remember – unless you want higher prices we must embrace outsourcing, mass immigration, automation and AI. When you're struggling to feed your kids, remember this is good.
</rant>
Genuinely though, hope you guys are all doing okay, both today and tomorrow. And while not preferable, in this case the karma is at least deserved.
silverquiet · 1d ago
There's a lot here I feel I can respond to, and I can't help but agree with the sentiment; I've been saying something like that to people here for years and was dismissed. That said, I think most of the push to drive down labor standards is really coming more from the owner/capitalist class than anyone else. Obviously, they've got the most incentive to do so. What will vex me unendingly is that so many in labor vote against their material interests for reasons that are likely cultural.
kypro · 23h ago
Glad to hear you resonated with what I said. After I wrote it I thought I probably got a bit too heated...
On your point about the the owner/capitalist class, I think that should be assumed honestly. The thing that's broken in recent years is that the politicians decided that the old model of paying a lot for quality products that lasted and were produced domestically was a bad model when you can import cheap crap by exploiting foreign workers.
This idea that cost increases are bad because if the iPhone was built in the US by low-skilled labors we'd have to pay them a decent wage is hard for me to understand. We should want to pay more given the knowledge that we're supporting the employment of our neighbours and friends. Sure, GDP and productivity might not be as high, but it's not like they were so poor in the 1950s that people couldn't afford a good quality of life. In fact, in many senses the quality of life the average person enjoyed before this was far higher.
We seem to have traded a more equally prosperous society for one which is equally prosperous, but deeply unequal. And for whose benefit? Knowledge workers and CEOs. (In my opinion anyway)
AnimalMuppet · 1d ago
Off topic, but...
It occurs to me that your post used to impress people. That era ended, too.
That is, an AI can generate your edgy takes that used to give you reputation and karma, and can do so faster than you can. So your edgy takes don't impress people anymore, either.
(With "you" being understood as not necessarily the author, or the reader, but the kind of people who expected to be able to impress people by social media posts.)
volkk · 1d ago
Not sure if I agree that the flippening is happening solely due to AI taking jobs. I think it's a factor of many complex things happening all at once. Section 174 is a big one for engineering. Another is the fact that VC money has really dried up which affects the economics of tech. Companies spend less money now because there's a lot less free/dumb money and because of a combination of everything, we have layoffs. Some of these layoffs are fueled by future fiscal projections, but I think some are crazy bets on AI. And of course, some departments are truly replaceable by ChatGPT like copywriting, low level marketing, etc.
tl;dr a clusterf*ck of a lot of things.
dboreham · 1d ago
AI hype AstroTurf?
fideloper · 1d ago
I don't think AI is central to this article at all (altho, sure, it's mentioned)
starttoaster · 1d ago
The opening story is about how the narrator was replaced by AI, but trades workers cannot. And that doesn't strike you as setting up AI to be central to the article?
lpasselin · 1d ago
A lawyer can become a locksmith in a few months (weeks? days?). If the flip mentioned is really happening, isn't it temporary?
avidiax · 1d ago
I would guess that the locksmiths have some gatekeeping in just the same way that lawyers and doctors do.
Can you pay for ad placement on Google Maps and answer locksmithing calls? Yes, probably. Can you join all of the professional circles needed to access all the manufacturer data, parts catalogs, etc. ? Not so easily, I'd bet. I would hope that not just anybody can pay a fee to a safe lock company and get the manufacturer's code, for example.
The fact is that people have never been that impressed by job titles, at least not in my lifetime
No one's ever been like "oh wow you're a software engineer? That's so incredible"
Mostly if they're impressed, it's because it pays well and they assume I'm pretty rich
I'm not. I do really well compared to my peers, yes, but ultimately I'm still living the same kind of middle class lifestyle my parents had while my Dad worked at a tool store and my Mom worked part time at nonprofits
Job titles are important to some people, not to others. I think it's usually insider vs outsider.
To an outsider, "I'm a doctor" sounds impressive/interesting, but less so to someone in the medical profession.
and then, I'm reminded of the sr71 story...
https://www.thesr71blackbird.com/Aircraft/Stories/sr-71-blac...
Lawyers' wages are badly depressed, supposedly, yet "I'm a lawyer" instantly confers better social status than "I'm a software developer" or even "I work at Google". Doctor, professor, those are jobs that come with a little or large bump in social status. "I'm a software developer" is like "I'm an accountant"—neutral at best.
Software Engineers are still, pretty generally, viewed as a low social class despite being a pretty solid economic class
The idea that the paradigm may flip is only really about economic class. A locksmith may make more money than software engineers soon, but they will still be low social class
That likely won't change
Hell, I'd kinda rather do something like that, if the money were as good, and I'm already reasonably handy. Pretty sure I'm far from alone, and again, it only needs to be a few percent of laid-off office workers able & willing to train into blue collar jobs to flatten any price spike.
The idea that anyone but capital's going to benefit from this, if any of it plays out the way AI-maximalists think (separately, I think that's mostly BS, but do think this is going to provide the activation energy for another wave of off-shoring instead of hiring back US workers when the AI tools prove inadequate) seems so naïve that it's hard not to read it as deliberate propaganda.
In no reality is someone going lock-out to lock-out making $750 for themselves. That business, like software, is also captured. Captured by capital in advertising no individual can match.
It's just like a BTC miner. Very few people on HN will go out and buy a BTC miner box hoping to get 1 BTC in a few days - the competition is maximized to a point where each earned BTC just barely paid for all the upgrades. The fact is, that most of the BTC is mined in China and so it's just a giant siphon of money.
But if you talk to a plumber, you'll quickly learn that while it's a respectable job that can earn you a good wage, it's also hard on the body, and often wildly unpleasant. And that's before you get to the fact that you're often your own boss, which means dealing with disgruntled or difficult customers, sometimes while you're also doing the physically uncomfortable and unpleasant task.
Imagine dealing with someone yelling at you for doing something or being too expensive wrong while you're elbow-deep in literal shit.
That does mean the job becomes management, sales, and customer relations, but it's management, sales, and customer relations for a trade you know well, which (this is my speculation here) makes it a bit easier to swallow than doing the same thing at office-bound bigco for some product you were only introduced to last week.
[1] I suspect, from also observing the crews themselves, that it's achievable because it's relatively easy for someone with a decent head on their shoulders, who speaks good English, and with the ability to show up almost all the time and to not come off as a flaky meth addict or lazy scam artist when talking to customers, to move up very fast in the trades...
[EDIT] In fact, in the linked story, it appears the locksmith's early-retirement-from-locksmithing plan might be to become a landlord. Also a fairly solid plan, and another that I've seen tradespeople follow—they have an advantage because they can achieve better results with less money on property maintenance, between their own skills, their connections, and having insight into what a good price and good work look like in other trades.
Edit: ...or at least flip the relationship between artist and label.
This article is fiction followed by commentary.
If the anecdote were real, it would still be an anecdote: tempting to generalize, but wise to hold loosely.
The article is about how AI will lead to a labor surplus in certain professions, while other professions will retain employment.
The article compares this to the Black Death, where labor supply decreased uniformly. Labor was then able to extract concessions from capital.
Industrialization leads to a different outcome: capital captures more value initially, while devastating workers in the short-term. In the long-term, everyone benefits from higher living standards. Even if the article is correct about AI impacts, it doesn't explain why AI is different from all prior industrialization.
A skilled tradesperson in high demand being able to afford an investment property is science fiction?
Trades still make good money
1. AI is coming for white collar jobs; blue collar jobs gon be primo
2. This happened ages ago when a ton of people died at once and society had to cope
3. You should be afraid; but we have no solutions for you.
Unless you were English, where the lords with the power passed laws (binding other lords) to override your obvious leverage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Labourers_1351
... and that led to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasants%27_Revolt
I come from a working class background and for years (decades I guess) my family (especially my dad) has been competing with mass low-skilled immigration, outsourcing, and automation. This has taken a huge toll on his mental health as from time to time he's struggled to keep afloat.
But did he get any sympathy from the educated knowledge class? Of course not...
Reskill! They say. We shouldn't protect inefficient jobs which can be done by machine / foreign sweatshop workers abroad.
Don't be a racist! They say. If you can't compete with the salary demands of hundreds of thousands of low-skilled migrants that's your problem!
Instead of embracing this we could of course have looked for ways to protect jobs or looked for ways to reeducated and compensate those impacted. But we didn't because that would have been bad for GDP. So we were horrid to those who were struggling and desperate for help.
Now we deserve the same. We work inefficient jobs which can be done faster and cheaper by computers running auto-correct. Yes, knowledge workers will lose their jobs, but remember the productivity boosts are going to be great! And that's all that matters right? Businesses won't need to hire armies of devs to build an app anymore like you don't need to pay someone in the US a decent salary to make your clothes or your car.
My advice – shut up, reskill and embrace it. Don't think you're special and deserve UBI. If you can't compete with auto-correcting machines thats your problem. Remember – unless you want higher prices we must embrace outsourcing, mass immigration, automation and AI. When you're struggling to feed your kids, remember this is good.
</rant>
Genuinely though, hope you guys are all doing okay, both today and tomorrow. And while not preferable, in this case the karma is at least deserved.
On your point about the the owner/capitalist class, I think that should be assumed honestly. The thing that's broken in recent years is that the politicians decided that the old model of paying a lot for quality products that lasted and were produced domestically was a bad model when you can import cheap crap by exploiting foreign workers.
This idea that cost increases are bad because if the iPhone was built in the US by low-skilled labors we'd have to pay them a decent wage is hard for me to understand. We should want to pay more given the knowledge that we're supporting the employment of our neighbours and friends. Sure, GDP and productivity might not be as high, but it's not like they were so poor in the 1950s that people couldn't afford a good quality of life. In fact, in many senses the quality of life the average person enjoyed before this was far higher.
We seem to have traded a more equally prosperous society for one which is equally prosperous, but deeply unequal. And for whose benefit? Knowledge workers and CEOs. (In my opinion anyway)
It occurs to me that your post used to impress people. That era ended, too.
That is, an AI can generate your edgy takes that used to give you reputation and karma, and can do so faster than you can. So your edgy takes don't impress people anymore, either.
(With "you" being understood as not necessarily the author, or the reader, but the kind of people who expected to be able to impress people by social media posts.)
tl;dr a clusterf*ck of a lot of things.
Can you pay for ad placement on Google Maps and answer locksmithing calls? Yes, probably. Can you join all of the professional circles needed to access all the manufacturer data, parts catalogs, etc. ? Not so easily, I'd bet. I would hope that not just anybody can pay a fee to a safe lock company and get the manufacturer's code, for example.