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?

  • Diuretic_Materialism [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    16·
    6 months ago

    Here’s my theory, AI will work well enough, just long enough, that companies will get used to not having to pay people. When shit starts breaking to the point they realize AI doesn’t really work, they’ll be too kush with their high stock prices and will be desperate to not go back and so will refuse to hire back people who can fix and and let the whole thing burn rather than concede they actually need skilled people. By then their pedophile fallout bunker will be done and they’ll all just fly to New Zealand and leave us to die.

    • xj9 [they/them, she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      5·
      6 months ago

      Its gotta be some evil delulu shit. AI is just not that good. There could be some improvements still, but its way to early to be rationally betting on it like this. I’m sure they are eager to retaliate against unionization and shit. Blame it on the recession, get bailed out, and hire us back at way lower salaries. Though idk where the US is going to get that money this time around.