Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
IT

As AI Transforms Silicon Valley, Some Tech Workers Face Evaporating Financial Security (adn.com) 84

Posted by EditorDavid from the stopping-a-job dept.
The Washington Post describes a mid-tier executive at Meta as one of Silicon Valley's "winners" whose financial security suddenly "evaporated" as their workforce "pushed headlong into AI and heavy job cuts," creating a transformed job market. "Her ex-husband, a designer at Meta who was laid off in 2020, eventually gave up looking for jobs in his profession. He now lifts boxes at a warehouse." Layoffs.fyi, which tracks announced job cuts, counts more than 800,000 tech workers laid off since 2022, including large staff reductions in recent months at Meta, Microsoft, Oracle and Amazon... "There's this whole tranche of people who've been quite used to being among the most upwardly mobile in society who are all of a sudden saying, 'Now I'm the guy on the streetâs'" said Oliver Raskin, who founded Silicon Valley market research consultancy Signalcraft Insights and has surveyed attitudes in the tech labor force... "The rise of AI, especially, is bound to change the workplace radically," [said Georgetown University historian Joseph McCartin]. "But the way it's going to happen is similar to how technology transformed the auto industry." Ruth Milkman, a labor sociologist at the City University of New York, said that technology workers are getting a dose of what workers in other industries have long complained about: jobs that feel unsteady or rob them of autonomy. "Low-wage workers are used to it," she said...

Many layoffs at technology companies are probably a hangover effect from over-hiring in prior years, experts say. And they don't account for a spotty recent increase in hiring in the information industry, which includes employment of software developers and jobs in media and entertainment. Digging deeper, though, some economists say there are signs that Silicon Valley and other technology-reliant parts of the American economy have reached a turning point where they are growing without needing as many people. The notion was encapsulated in a recent talk that ricocheted through group chats across the tech industry: In it, a partner at the start-up incubator Y Combinator heralded a new generation of AI-first companies that will only need human labor for "novel situations," "ethical considerations" and "high-stakes moments."

Gad Levanon, chief economist at the labor research nonprofit Burning Glass Institute, said that the number of hours worked in the information sector has dipped since 2022, while the sector's economic output has increased by about 8 percent a year — more than three times the overall growth rate of the U.S. economy. He says the data reveals a sea change in industries, including technology and finance, toward doing more work with the same or fewer people — one that is spreading to other professional classes. "That's the new reality for white-collar and tech-exposed work: output up, headcount flat or down," Levanon said...

Raskin, who has worked in the tech world since the late '90s, said that even though the current moment feels unsettling to many, he's hopeful that it's an early chapter in an evolving story. "It's happened many times before," he said, "that something implodes and all these people lose jobs, but then that talent gets cycled into whatever the next thing is — into a new wave of prosperity."
In the article tech entrepreneur Anil Dash quips that Silicon Valley techies are "are guinea pigs for what tech dudes want to do to everyone."

As AI Transforms Silicon Valley, Some Tech Workers Face Evaporating Financial Security More | Reply

As AI Transforms Silicon Valley, Some Tech Workers Face Evaporating Financial Security

Comments Filter:

  • I'll be back as a consultant at triple the rate in less than 18 months to clean up the mess...

    • Re:Automate me away... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Sunday July 19, 2026 @11:34PM (#66247130) Homepage Journal

      There won't be any money to hire you after the bubble pops. We'll potentially enter a recession that lasts for a few quarters or perhaps a few years.

      AI fraudsters that tricked millions of middle class retirement account managers to invest in the wrong* AI companies are going to come out ahead of course.

      * I say wrong companies, because I don't believe anyone can pick the winners right now.

      • The AI bubble will hurt retail investors the most. A few VCs will lose their fortunes but most will skate. Masayoshi Son at Softbank might be forced out.

        • I don't really care what happens to billionaires.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by nyet ( 19118 )

            You do care because that money represents how much tech industry employers are willing to overpay you (using the money left over after they overpay C suite and management) to attract talent from going to other companies.

            Without those billionaires throwing money at tech, hiring and salaries at all levels dry up.

            Be honest: for the amount of work most white collar tech employees do, they are overpaid. Billionaires make that happen.

            So its more like "I don't care what happens to overpaid tech workers' which is a

            • I wouldn't recommend a tech heavy portfolio right now. There is a time to ride the wave behind the biggest players in the market, which would be the bulge banks (like Goldman Sachs with around $2T) and not individual billionaires. And a time to step back and realize that most of us don't have an investment portfolio that can survive rash behvaior. So no, I don't care about billionaires, I'm not going to follow them anywhere. And white color compensation at tech companies has more to do with the money spilli

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        We'll potentially enter a recession that lasts for a few quarters or perhaps a few years.

        Given the incredible damage the US has done to all its relationships and to the global market, I doubt "a few years" will do it.

    • Probably. Quality is not bots' strong point so far and maintenance is almost always the most costly part of software.

      • Whatâ(TM)s the point of maintenance when AI can rewrite your entire code base in a couple of hours?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by 0123456 ( 636235 )

          That does seem to be the plan.

          "Sure the code is crap and no-one understands it, but if we're still working here in two years when we need to make major changes we'll just get the AI to rewrite it from scratch."

          Of course that completely invalidates two years of in-field testing, bugfixes and security fixes, but who cares? Just ship it and fix the bugs later.

          • Given that many companies do a terrible job of maintaining and refreshing their code base... and that even their production code bases are in perpetual beta... and even before AI they were doing things like discarding their legacy codebase and attempting to rewrite things from scratch (remember Sonos?)... an argument can be made that if you're going to churn out a shitty replacement, but can do it faster, that will still save you money.

            https://arstechnica.com/gadget... [arstechnica.com]

            "In May, Sonos updated its mobile app

          • Who cares about those bug fixes, security updates, and lessons learned when you are rewriting your code base from scratch?

            AI can produce high quality code when it gets a high quality input, ie a UML document and workflow diagram. A different AI agent can audit that code for memory leaks and other points of failure.

            Humans can test the functionality of the program and give feedback, which updates the UML specs and workflow diagrams.

            The code base then gets refreshed

            AI is to coding what the electric car is to t

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by allo ( 1728082 )

      Betting on making money by "cleaning up the mess" relies on both models not getting better anymore and people not building models to clean up the messes. Are you sure you want to bet on that?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Junta ( 36770 )

      For some, *maybe*, but keep in mind:

      I have met a fair number of folks making $200k+ who were supremely underwhelming. They would have a very narrow wheelhouse and *only* do things within that, single language, single framework, stuff like that. Even then, you ask them to do something that they can't find an example of online already and they would be lost. We had a scenario where work hired a few of these folks to replace the front-end work that our 'full stack' team had been doing, because we had more m

  • Pretty spot on... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Midnight_Falcon ( 2432802 ) on Sunday July 19, 2026 @10:49PM (#66247080)
    I'm also one of the "winners" of Silicon Valley fortunate enough to achieve complete financial independence a few years ago. If I wanted to return to the workforce today, jobs I used to have look like four jobs combined....because you have Claude you can do it all! Startup working hours are more brutal...some companies doing the dreaded 996, most just consuming your entire day into the evening at full nonstop bandwidth. My former employees text me all the time looking for new jobs, as work has gotten harder and pay hasn't gone up, but I hear of little to recommend to them. People are scared to quit jobs even as they get harder and somewhat more abusive. It's the polar opposite of 2021 where employees were demanding more of companies, higher pay, and changing jobs in droves.

    • I'm also one of the "winners" of Silicon Valley fortunate enough to achieve complete financial independence a few years ago. If I wanted to return to the workforce today, jobs I used to have look like four jobs combined....because you have Claude you can do it all! Startup working hours are more brutal...some companies doing the dreaded 996, most just consuming your entire day into the evening at full nonstop bandwidth. My former employees text me all the time looking for new jobs, as work has gotten harder and pay hasn't gone up, but I hear of little to recommend to them. People are scared to quit jobs even as they get harder and somewhat more abusive. It's the polar opposite of 2021 where employees were demanding more of companies, higher pay, and changing jobs in droves.

      Entering the Professional job force in the mid 70's, I've heard that story since then. The people who have had it worst are those who won't adapt.

      Lifelong learning is the key. I've changed workflows many times over the years, from Cable television system design to electronic design to Printed circuit process control to Process Camera to process chemist for an anodizing and anodyne system to Industrial Photographer to video production with 2 and 3-D work with Tape decks and frame buffers to non linear edit

  • Saving? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by innocent_white_lamb ( 151825 ) on Sunday July 19, 2026 @11:00PM (#66247096)

    A surprisingly large number of people don't seem to understand the basic principle of building wealth and financial security:

    Always live below your means. This way you can build your savings and create a financial cushion and if something happens you're not immediately out on the street with a suitcase.

    Furthermore, while it's very easy to increase your standard of living, and it's very difficult to decrease it.

    • As a Boglehead investor I agree 100 percent and would add: Don't lose your money to speculative investments. That said people who work at Meta as the article mentions don't get windfalls, they get high salaries. A basic house in the area can run $2mm, so they take out mortgages thinking they'll always be making over 300k. I, coming from a working class family background, knew better and waited to buy until I could pay upfront. The people I bought from? Huge mortgage they couldn't pay made them sell.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Reeses ( 5069 )

        Did you buy a foreclosure or something? Or just a straight buy with good timing?

        • Straight buy when mortgage interest rates skyrocketed. Shark exploding offer (expired in 24 hours, all cash, no contingencies). Nice house, not a fixer, desirable Bay Area location.

        • I timed the housing market and bought my place in San Jose for $365k. Or as a normal person would say, I got lucky and there is nothing that can be reproduced from my experience. Owning a home in the Bay Area is a kind of windfall for most people, and does not represent their hard work, intelligence, or skill at investing.

      • I disagree with this advice. I still choose to work, but I have financial independence, which came from stretching my finances to buy a house in the SF Bay Area some 25 years ago.

        The key changes that prompted me to buy a house was getting a green card, and a temporary dip in house prices from 9/11. I recognized the risk, but it paid off handsomely for me.

        • While you did buy at a historically great time and great location, the numbers still don't work out in favor of buying a house with a mortgage. For myself, I was in high school in 2001/2002; the next best opportunity was 2008 when I was a fresh college grad, so no such market timing possibility has even existed for my generation.

          That said, even with massive bay area home value appreciation (400-500% since 2001); it still doesn't beat investing the money. I understand for some a forced leveraged investmen

          • That said, even with massive bay area home value appreciation (400-500% since 2001); it still doesn't beat investing the money.

            I started with about $20k, not $100k. That was possible back in 2002. For most of the life of the mortgage, the after-tax cost of the mortgage, taxes and maintenance was similar or less than than the cost of rent would have been. Renting would not have provided a stream of funds to invest, over and above buying.

            I have also turned a similar starting investment into significant asset value through buying a couple of houses to rent.

            There is no way that I could have built up the same wealth without buying my h

            • That's pretty amazing even back then you could start so low, my understanding is only low-end fixers and entry-level condos sold for that much in 2002.

              I would argue if you ran the calculations on your rental houses versus investing in the S&P500, the S&P500 would surely win by a significant margin.

              Today though, or even since 2011, this strategy could not have replicated the same results. For most Americans, the ship has long sailed on leveraged real estate investments being such a great source

              • I would argue if you ran the calculations on your rental houses versus investing in the S&P500, the S&P500 would surely win by a significant margin.

                Again, no. The houses started out highly leveraged: not quite as much as my residence, but still very highly leveraged. It's possible that caching out a couple of years ago might have produced higher returns, but there is a lot of tax to pay when I cash out. I bought one house, then, after it had appreciated in value, I re-mortgaged it, taking some cash out and used that as a deposit on the second house.

    • Re:Saving? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Brain-Fu ( 1274756 ) on Sunday July 19, 2026 @11:38PM (#66247134) Homepage Journal

      You are right that many, many people don't understand these basic principles of personal finance management. It is not commonly taught in schools, and ignorance of this tends to run in families, along with irrational fears about investing (due to the same ignorance).

      BUT

      Economically speaking, we need it to be that way. If the vast majority of Americans lived frugally, saving some money for emergencies and investing most of the rest of their money in diversified stocks and bonds, spending only what they need to cover good medical care, healthy food and exercise opportunities, a sufficient but small house/apartment and transportation, and minimal luxuries....we would experience severe deflation and unemployment.

      When people don't buy stuff, businesses fold, jobs are lost. The major retailers have to cut prices, hence deflation, but they also scale back production to meet the lower demand, hence fewer jobs. The money that should be, in theory, highly mobile by virtue of being invested in stocks and bonds winds up stagnating too. Corporations hoard it up because they don't see profitable opportunities for it, bond rates go down because business loans plummet in the dry market. It gets quite bad.

      We see this happening in China right now, in fact. Exports are mostly what is keeping their economy afloat, and many countries are hitting them with tariffs in order to protect production within their own borders.

      Its a real catch-22. In order for the economy to thrive, we need most people to spend frivolously. Rejecting this trend is good for the individuals who do it, but only so long as they remain in the minority.

      • nice description of classic econ 101, which is a valid model over certain conditions.
        now is not that time.

        https://www.scry.llc/2022/06/1... [scry.llc]

        The real reason the System.pushes "savings" is to keep their fiat out of circulation to prevent inflation. Fiat money is about dangling a carrot now to get performance,and fifty years later you discover it's all vapor.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dvice ( 6309704 )

        While you are correct, there isn't actually any reason why it should be like that (other than human behavior). We could arrange everything so that everyone just works less, spends less and has more free time. People won't do this willingly, so you would have to use either law or taxes to force people to divide work. I am not sure if this is a smart thing to do, but it is an option.

        • What causes the Chinese population to save more isn't lack of work. It's lack of people. The current demographics are such that families have elders who are cared for by too few numbers of children and grandchildren. This forces the latter to save more aggressively so as to afford their extended families living and medical expenses.

      • If the vast majority of Americans lived frugally, saving some money for emergencies and investing most of the rest of their money in diversified stocks and bonds, spending only what they need to cover good medical care, healthy food and exercise opportunities, a sufficient but small house/apartment and transportation, and minimal luxuries....we would experience severe deflation and unemployment.

        Really no. The wealthy get most of the money. The wealthy spend less of the money. When the poor get it, it's spent about five times before it comes to rest in a tax dodge. When the wealthy get it, it's spent only about twice. What we need is for the wealthy to spend money like they pretend they do, in order to create jobs like they pretend they do.

      • Besides for all that, is the goal really to live like our great-(great?)-grandparents in the 1930s buying only what you absolutely can't make yourself and saving every penny for when things get worse? Sure it might work for a person right now, but if it ever got popular the economy would utterly crash.

      • This is well put. I'd also add that people are relentlessly marketed to to consume more to support that economic growth. People from the 19th or early 20th century might well consider the amount of psychological pressure we get to buy things to be a relentless propaganda campaign.

    • When real inflation is devouring your income. You have to live where the work is. Often you have to gamble living in high cost of living areas in order to build up the experience needed to have a functioning career.

      For years I've watched people I know confused and frightened because no matter how much they cut back no matter how rough they make their lives they never seem to be able to save any money. Some disaster is always pulling the rug out from under them and if they do start to accumulate savings

      • "... the way that the Federal reserve deals with that is every few years they crank interest rates. "

        What?
        That's absolutely the opposite of the data.

        The US has generally had - aside from ww1/WW2, and the explosive 1970s - an inflation rate of 3-3.5% since 1900.

        The last 25 years have had extraordinarily LOW inflation until the literal shoveling of money toward the public during COVID. ($5t in "assistance" including $1.8t in DIRECT payments).
        Couple that with an insistence on the radical increase in legal wage

        • Inflation has been kept artificially low in the numbers by excluding things from the basket of goods in order to make the numbers look better. Google it.

          Real income has been going down since the 70s. You can confirm that easily.

    • Kewl blaming the victim there, bud (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Somervillain ( 4719341 ) on Monday July 20, 2026 @01:22AM (#66247220)

      A surprisingly large number of people don't seem to understand the basic principle of building wealth and financial security:

      Always live below your means. This way you can build your savings and create a financial cushion and if something happens you're not immediately out on the street with a suitcase.

      Furthermore, while it's very easy to increase your standard of living, and it's very difficult to decrease it.

      Nice platitudes, but these workers are not anomalies. They may become the norm. AI is a big fucking mess right now. It (largely) doesn't work as well as most think and is far inferior to what is promised...but....if that changes, we're FUCKED!!! Once you can automate my job, you can automate anyone's! Are you ready for the financial apocalypse once every office worker's jobs is automated away?...every accountant...every lawyer...every engineer...every designer....1000s of professions I can't think of at the moment, which are the cornerstones of our middle class will be decimated.

      OK, so smarty pants...you retired?...you pivoted to healthcare??...welp...I hope your 401k doesn't include companies with huge number of customers impacted by the job apocalypse?...if you and your younger loved ones pivoted to hands-on healthcare, like nursing or doctor positions....well....do you work for free? Who is going to pay your bills when the economy collapses? You'll make it, but life will SUUUUUCK when you're relying on the gov alone to keep the lights on.

      Maybe you're special and open a restaurant or bar...same problem...who has money? OK, so now the layoffs spread from white collar workers to EVERYONE because so many relied on middle managers and accountants and lawyers and engineers as customers.

      So your tone-deaf comment about living beneath your means and building wealth? I hope you picked wisely...because if the white collar job apocalypse does happen, it's going to impact most of the Dow, most of the S&P 500, the real estate market, etc. This is scary stuff to be taken seriously. What is being threatened is like nothing seen in hundreds of years, if ever. I have enough to retire today....but yeah....I have a fuckton in stocks that are quite vulnerable....OK, I get lucky and cash out in time?...well...I have no clue what will happen to interest rates, but I can't imagine them doing anything but plummeting....so yeah, I was planning on have sustaining income....nope, retirement may be me just eating away at my savings at the exact rate I live....rather than watching it slowly increase, as I had hoped .

      • Maybe you're special and open a restaurant or bar...same problem...who has money? OK, so now the layoffs spread from white collar workers to EVERYONE because so many relied on middle managers and accountants and lawyers and engineers as customers.

        This is precisely it. I can't get my head around this hyped future where everything is so automated, productive and so easy to scale up, while at the same time there are no buyers due to mass unemployment.

        Permanent recession is all I see.

        • Western population DO have an economic choice. Consumers can opt to purchase daily-use items ( such as clothes & utensils & tools ) from local guild/craft networks rather than from "industrialized" multi-nation factories. That carries through even to cars, houses , "toys", food & medical providers . And of-course computer application/code and books. Not to mention DIY on a grand scale ( like WW2 home behavior ). The choice is (still ) freely availa
          • Some rare cars are essentially hand made and so are most airplanes. They all cost more than my house. One has to be close enough to the 1% to hit it with a rock to buy stuff like this.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Always live below your means.

      This is not necessarily possible, and even if it is, what kind of life is it living on ramen in a studio apartment never going out until you hit 40?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by dvice ( 6309704 )

        Go visit your friends. pick a board game or D&D and play with them. Or go outside and play some basketball or anything with them. It is almost free. There are a lot of things you can do with little or no money.

      • Living well doesn't mean living extravagantly, and living below your means doesn't necessarily mean living on ramen and never going out of your apartment.

        It can also mean taking nice vacations and eating wonderful gourmet meals.

        It depends on your personal situation and your preferences.

    • Metaphor: I once participated in a 10 km beach run. I prepared modestly. We arrived. It was taking place in one of the richest cities of the country. I wore a simple t-shirt, cheap running shoes. The others? Fancy sports clothing fancy specialized shoes. It was a bit intimidating.
      Race started. My god! The speed was way too high for me. I decided to conserve energy. As a consequence, I was one of the last ones in the race. Shame!? Wind was hard comming from the front. Sand slowed you down. Maybe simple sho

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Junta ( 36770 )

      Sure, if someone is in their fifties and has spent their career at $200k+, then your perspective carries weight, one might reasonably expect such a person to be able to retire or at least not sweat a big drop in pay. "Silicon Valley" standard of living may screw the numbers up (I explicitly declined an offer because I checked the real estate market and realized just how deep a cut I'd take in standard of living despite the "raise")

      However, if someone graduated with their CompSci degree in 2022, well, all t

    • Gen InstaMe's retort to your valid stance, was written in girl math. Also used to justify about 80% of the college catalog at our most liberal-ated Universities of Political Indoctrination and secure 90% of new car loans.

      Fiscal conservatism isn't just rare in America. Dave Ramsey is damn near considered an Enemy of the State for preaching responsible spending habits because American GDP now demands otherwise.

      How else do we explain the other end of that fiscal spectrum with teenagers approved for credit l

    • A surprising large number of people don't seem to understand the basic principle of survival in expensive cities and basic economics.

      Always live where it is possible to find a job. This way you have an income with which to buy food and pay for a place to live, that way you don't die of hunger or exposure.

      Furthermore, while it's very easy to spit platitudes from a long past era of financial security at people who work in a city where 50+% of your salary has to go towards rent even with multiple roommates, it

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      That is by intent. People in debt are far easier to control and exploit than those with reserves. Hence spending at your means or above is encouraged.

      That said, I have been doing exactly that for a long time. It is easy if you are smart and actually can still live reasonably well when you spend less than you could. It is easy in Europe with everybody covered by health insurance and education is essentially free. It gets very hard to do when you already struggle while spending at your means. And it seems tha

  • If you wanted to induce sympathy (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Sunday July 19, 2026 @11:38PM (#66247136)

    ...the article shouldn't mention the woes of someone who worked for Meta.

    When you work for a particularly evil company, you know what you're signing up for - screwing everyone over else for a buck. I'm not going to cry for you when you find out the company doesn't see a big difference between you and me.

  • I wonder how much it would take to cause a revolution.

    The labouring classes have been disgruntled for a few decades now, arguably resulting in a Trump presidency.
    If the same happens to the white collar workers, that would make a significant proportion of the American population who are not happy with the way the economy, and "system", is treating them.
    At what point do the masses start scaling the gates of the rich...?

    I don't imagine a literal surge of looting and robbery, but there might be more support for

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 0123456 ( 636235 )

      Deltas don't revolt, they walk away and let things collapse. Revolutions happen when the old elite becomes calcified and inept and a new elite takes over by force.

      Right now we're obviously at the 'calcified and inept' stage but the old elite have ruthlessly culled or co-opted any potential leaders of the new elite for decades so there's no-one out there in a position to stage a takeover. Hence that likely won't happen until after the Deltas walk away and nothing works any more.

      This is one reason that so man

  • "the number of hours worked in the information sector has dipped since 2022, while the sector's economic output has increased by about 8 percent a year".

    I told you so. :)

    https://www.scry.llc/2024/12/2... [scry.llc]

    "The real cause of economic depressions is the mismatch between production time and consumption time which occurs gradually as productivity rises. Governments then create make-work jobs in a haphazard attempt to maintain consumption (equilibrium). Eventually, the impedance mismatch leads to collapse and a ne

  • Same in Germany. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Monday July 20, 2026 @04:03AM (#66247326)

    Pretty much. I live in the Duesseldorf area which has/had it's own little NRW tech-hub mini silicon-valley thing going on. 5 years ago there were multiple really good meetups happening each quarter. An active Google Developer Group, regular well attended Web Development Meetups, a DevOps Network doing the same and even some regular exotic stuff like the pure functional algebrahic development folks meeting up and discussing Scala, Haskell, Elixir and other avant-garde topics.

    Companies were eager to pitch in and offer space and catering and I was out and about regularly, enjoying the food and free drinks and getting a hefty dose of nerding off with fellow devs and IT experts.

    That all has since completely dried up.

    Two years ago I sent out 50+ precisely targeted resumes and had a reaction quota of less than 10%, 5 actual interviews, 3 of them meh to sh1t, two interesting, one of which turned out to be a shady shoddy joint. I joined my current gig which is OK but has me earning 20k less than such a job should reasonably score. My colleagues are leaving left and right and I'm off the team end of September. The last 6 months my coding was basically 95% AI-driven. My last girlfriend has a limited contract and will be out of a job in September too. She bought a garden two years ago and is preparing to go all in on independent homesteading and growing her own veggies out in the easter German boondocks. Demographic decline is starting to show more and more clearly too all around.

    I'm not sure what I'm going to do about all this.

    I'm somewhat "lucky" in the sense that I live a flexible and minimalist lifestyle and that I'm technically an artist with a performing arts diploma, which is nice and fun but not really worth any significant monetary value. Inflation is palpable, even for a guy like me with some cash to spare and the excessive heatwaves and droughts aren't helping.

    A friend of mine has launched multiple businesses throughout the years and is struggling once again after finally gaining some traction a few years back. His liquidity is down to zero and he's just scraping by with the German IRS breathing down his neck. We're going to scout out some derelict houses in southern Europe and see if there's anything meaningful to do and gain there. We're both quickly moving in to a semi-prepper mode. If anything meaningful shall happen on the job market for me, I likely will have to downshift my salary once again and pick some IT janitor / helpdesk type position.

    Bottom line: There's a bigger shake-up moving in and I suspect there won't be any well-paying software-dev job for me on the other end of it. The bots are here and they're taking over. It's probably just that simple. That's the Age of Cyberpunk for ya, I guess.

    • We stopped doing those kinds of meetups 15 or so years ago. Most of the technology around SRE/DevOps, web development, game development etc. has kind of solidified in the bigger enterprises. I really don't care to listen to any faff about an esoteric language or new library or, heaven forbid, framework. I do enough thinking about work when I'm not trying to.
      I think we corporate-owned devs have seen enough of what corporations think about us to know we're not the golden children of technology anymore, the Fo

      • The Duesseldorf Media Harbour is special in the way that the folks there didn't just chat about exotic technologies but actually used them for mission critical stuff to very significant competitive advantages. For instance: The core of Trivagos money making machine is a sophisticated use-case of an event-sourcing Kafka setup. The Invision Callcenter Software folks right next door build their products in Elixir, an exotic modern PL with a hard emphasis on concurrency running on Erlang foundations.

        Regular mee

  • We are two-people software developer company. Finding work was never a difficult for us, it was finding and retaining employees. Now, that is completely gone with AI help. I think you can always find a niche and become independent.
  • ... like the dot com crash.

  • There's at least some evidence [ramp.com] that AI does not, in fact, lead to job losses. Now, that may be confirmation bias on my part because I'm a free market fanboi but never the less.

    Here's the thing though. I'm a software developer in the Santa Clara valley. No one likes layoffs. Everyone knows someone who's been laid off. Virtually every techie I know has been laid off at least once. Unless you're really, really new, you know this is a boom and bust business, and that even the very best engineers at the most sta

  • Getting sacked or fired now called "Evaporating Financial Security".

  • When you tell people with guns to go starve in a ditch until they are dead, because you took their civilization...they might not do that.

  • "He now lifts boxes at a warehouse."
    There are a ton of robots that can do that job now. If you get in their way, don't expect the 3 laws of robotics to save you. That's science fiction.

  • > that talent

    wrong assumption ...

Slashdot Top Deals

"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain." -- Karl, as he stepped behind the computer to reboot it, during a FAT

Close