I Joined SS 6.5 years ago. I'm still alive. Discussion/AMA

[enditplz]

I know you in US - you and I are Americans going by the phrasing... but where in the US? To the extent you can specify...
And quoting myself responding to the OP's reply... "people I know from the "tech world proper" would be a bit older or younger. All those folks are going strong...at least on linkedin... Principal Engineer Siri at the big A, UI evangelist at the big O... most of these are "hard core" people... with papers, patents, mostly PhDs... how is life for those guys? These were all not just STEM people, or even generic coders, but highly specialized - Computer Science, Biomed, Computer Engineering and such types."
San Ramon, San Mateo... all Valley types. A couple of VLSIs in Austin.
How is life for these guys now?

If you're in the top 1% of the tech world and highly specialized, you're doing great and are probably filthy rich and will be highly sought after. For the majority though it is a rat race.

 

[raybd]

Everything I've read indicates that extremely well qualified mid-career tech people are doing very well in the age of AI. Basically it seems like they are able to leverage chatbots to automate things they would have previously had to do manually. But for entry-level folks, the opposite is likely the case: their services are unnecessary since everything they used to do can now be automated. The Economist wrote an article about this phenomenon a few months ago.

I think you're probably right that people with less enthusiasm for tech are being weeded out; I certainly fall into that category. Probably the bottom 50 percent or so who mostly do entry-level stuff but have a lot of institutional knowledge, are not needed so much anymore.

Basically, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

I can code but I was mainly an academic dealing with med diagnostics and such problems. The craziest science or tech book I ever read was Peter van der Linden's Deep C Secrets. Check it out on BT if you havent encountered it. These folks I used to know from the Valley, that I mentioned... they'd prolly read van der Linden and sing "Those were the days" Archie Bunker style.

 

[betternever2havbeen]

Now I'm trying to cobble together some sort of life after two years of unemployment and no real relationships. I don't know if I'll be able to do it. Honestly I still sort of wish I had killed myself in my 20s. But I'm going to try to keep moving forward in life. Because I've learned that the worst thing about suicidal ideation is that it stops you from preparing for the future, when you will (statistically) most likely still be alive.

This really resonates. Passive suicidal ideation is so awful because you can kinda fall back on it and think you don't have to try at life because "won't be here next year anyway"-then of course the new year rolls around and here you still are. Before you know it it's 10 years (more like 20 on and off for me) down the line and you've wasted so many years and are miles behind everyone else your age because you never thought you'd still be here.

I'm really glad to hear you're gonna keep trying in life even if it's only because going through with ctb is so hard. Two years is not that long in the grand scheme of things, you could just call it taking a break to work on your MH or figure out what you want to do in life. Wish you the best in moving forward and getting the life you deserve.

P.S-I'm sorry your friends don't return your calls anymore-that's very shitty of them!

 

[Time_To_Die]

I can code but I was mainly an academic dealing with med diagnostics and such problems. The craziest science or tech book I ever read was Peter van der Linden's Deep C Secrets. Check it out on BT if you havent encountered it. These folks I used to know from the Valley, that I mentioned... they'd prolly read van der Linden and sing "Those were the days" Archie Bunker style.

It's crazy how knowledgeable some software engineers are. Sometimes I wonder whether their brains are even human.

 

[Captive_Mind515]

If I could go back about 8 or so years, when my life was comparatively less shit and my suicidality less strong… I would definitely ctb back then. Without a doubt.

And now, things have certainly changed for the worse. But mentally I have changed too, as I'm much better able to endure my struggles and I don't get those extreme panicked thoughts of needing to ctb in some rash manner. I'm much calmer and more rational overall. I have matured quite a bit.

But my desire to die has only gotten more resolute and more pronounced in that time. It's not a question of whether I can endure this life, I'm fairly confident that I can… it's a question of whether I want to keep enduring it.

And I simply do not.

Philosophically, my mind is pretty much made up with regard to the question of ending my own life at some point in the future. That fundamental question is not dependent on success or achievements or any of the other benchmarks that most people would associate with happy well functioning people in society.

 

[raybd]

If you're in the top 1% of the tech world and highly specialized, you're doing great and are probably filthy rich and will be highly sought after. For the majority though it is a rat race.

Hmm. That does make sense. I think it is a flaw of both lazy-ass media and the HR think-tanks that put out reports and studies they use... give a very distorted picture. When I was a kid, there was a sudden rush of Y2K jobs - COBOL this COBOL that... IBM Mainframe, VAX Mainframe - an elder cousin from CT worked Wall Street that time. All he would talk about. And this was worldwide demand for like 2 years. All the print media and the budding web media were abuzz. Then Y2K was all fixed, the demand evaporated. And a whole lot of people were standing in line at job fairs. Again the media reported it breathlessly. And the wonks put out more statistics. It was all idiotic because the word itself is Y2K. Temporary demand. Like a gold rush. The gold will run out one day. Then some years later these clowns did the same thing with Web 1.0 and everyone was doing HTML. Then came dot-com bust. They keep doing this every few years. Hype the boom, Hype the bust. When the boom and bust weren't really that big. Genuine tech or science needs will never die out. Y2K was like a war economy boom. Of course you don't need so many tanks or fighter jets rolling out forever. Peace is the more natural state. So, yeah, when I would expect to see people really flourishing as science and tech advance so much, I keep seeing news reports of the decay in hiring... because these were unsustainable jobs to begin with - and that's never explained by the scribes or the wonks.

 

[Time_To_Die]

This really resonates. Passive suicidal ideation is so awful because you can kinda fall back on it and think you don't have to try at life because "won't be here next year anyway"-then of course the new year rolls around and here you still are. Before you know it it's 10 years (more like 20 on and off for me) down the line and you've wasted so many years and are miles behind everyone else your age because you never thought you'd still be here.

I'm really glad to hear you're gonna keep trying in life even if it's only because going through with ctb is so hard. Two years is not that long in the grand scheme of things, you could just call it taking a break to work on your MH or figure out what you want to do in life. Wish you the best in moving forward and getting the life you deserve.

P.S-I'm sorry your friends don't return your calls anymore-that's very shitty of them!

Thank you so much for this! I think this was exactly what I needed. I'm hoping you also find clarity about what you want to do next in life.

Hmm. That does make sense. I think it is a flaw of both lazy-ass media and the HR think-tanks that put out reports and studies they use... give a very distorted picture. When I was a kid, there was a sudden rush of Y2K jobs - COBOL this COBOL that... IBM Mainframe, VAX Mainframe - an elder cousin from CT worked Wall Street that time. All he would talk about. And this was worldwide demand for like 2 years. All the print media and the budding web media were abuzz. Then Y2K was all fixed, the demand evaporated. And a whole lot of people were standing in line at job fairs. Again the media reported it breathlessly. And the wonks put out more statistics. It was all idiotic because the word itself is Y2K. Temporary demand. Like a gold rush. The gold will run out one day. Then some years later these clowns did the same thing with Web 1.0 and everyone was doing HTML. Then came dot-com bust. They keep doing this every few years. Hype the boom, Hype the bust. When the boom and bust weren't really that big. Genuine tech or science needs will never die out. Y2K was like a war economy boom. Of course you don't need so many tanks or fighter jets rolling out forever. Peace is the more natural state. So, yeah, when I would expect to see people really flourishing as science and tech advance so much, I keep seeing news reports of the decay in hiring... because these were unsustainable jobs to begin with - and that's never explained by the scribes or the wonks.

Given that only like 2 percent of people work in agriculture, whereas in the early 1800s it was well over 70 percent, you'd think we would have moved past the age of "work or starve." More people almost certainly work in restaurants than in agriculture, and yet almost everyone agrees that fast food is unnecessary and harmful. So huge numbers of people whose labor isn't needed on farms now work jobs that directly harm their fellow humans. And all for... what, exactly? Because in our misguided notion of capitalism, everyone needs to work 8 hours a day? Sometimes I think the economy will collapse under the weight of its own illogicality.

 

[enditplz]

Hmm. That does make sense. I think it is a flaw of both lazy-ass media and the HR think-tanks that put out reports and studies they use... give a very distorted picture. When I was a kid, there was a sudden rush of Y2K jobs - COBOL this COBOL that... IBM Mainframe, VAX Mainframe - an elder cousin from CT worked Wall Street that time. All he would talk about. And this was worldwide demand for like 2 years. All the print media and the budding web media were abuzz. Then Y2K was all fixed, the demand evaporated. And a whole lot of people were standing in line at job fairs. Again the media reported it breathlessly. And the wonks put out more statistics. It was all idiotic because the word itself is Y2K. Temporary demand. Like a gold rush. The gold will run out one day. Then some years later these clowns did the same thing with Web 1.0 and everyone was doing HTML. Then came dot-com bust. They keep doing this every few years. Hype the boom, Hype the bust. When the boom and bust weren't really that big. Genuine tech or science needs will never die out. Y2K was like a war economy boom. Of course you don't need so many tanks or fighter jets rolling out forever. Peace is the more natural state. So, yeah, when I would expect to see people really flourishing as science and tech advance so much, I keep seeing news reports of the decay in hiring... because these were unsustainable jobs to begin with - and that's never explained by the scribes or the wonks.

Hmm. That does make sense. I think it is a flaw of both lazy-ass media and the HR think-tanks that put out reports and studies they use... give a very distorted picture. When I was a kid, there was a sudden rush of Y2K jobs - COBOL this COBOL that... IBM Mainframe, VAX Mainframe - an elder cousin from CT worked Wall Street that time. All he would talk about. And this was worldwide demand for like 2 years. All the print media and the budding web media were abuzz. Then Y2K was all fixed, the demand evaporated. And a whole lot of people were standing in line at job fairs. Again the media reported it breathlessly. And the wonks put out more statistics. It was all idiotic because the word itself is Y2K. Temporary demand. Like a gold rush. The gold will run out one day. Then some years later these clowns did the same thing with Web 1.0 and everyone was doing HTML. Then came dot-com bust. They keep doing this every few years. Hype the boom, Hype the bust. When the boom and bust weren't really that big. Genuine tech or science needs will never die out. Y2K was like a war economy boom. Of course you don't need so many tanks or fighter jets rolling out forever. Peace is the more natural state. So, yeah, when I would expect to see people really flourishing as science and tech advance so much, I keep seeing news reports of the decay in hiring... because these were unsustainable jobs to begin with - and that's never explained by the scribes or the wonks.

The current AI boom feels different from previous advancements in technology and makes me very skeptical of the future. Like way back then we used to have icemen, ppl who would deliver large blocks of ice daily. Then we created refrigerators that made icemen obsolete, but we created even more jobs for the economy like refrigerator factory workers and appliance repair technicians.

AI has been taking away jobs via automation so you would think that means we need more people in tech to push AI forward, but it's the opposite. AI is even replacing the tech workers, especially the junior ones and now the new grad from Harvard can't even find a tech job easily. Idk what's gonna happen now since so many companies no longer want jrs since they feel like AI coding assistants like copilot basically replace them. Experienced engineers are doing better, but technology moves so fast and you need to double down on being an expert in AI to even start competing for jobs now. Not to mention the rise in vibe-coding via tools like replit that allows non-tech people to build apps via text prompts only (although the code is crap and requires rework to be production ready). I'm working an AI job now, but my passion is gone. Only people who live and breath tech can survive in this field for long.

 

[raybd]

The current AI boom feels different from previous advancements in technology and makes me very skeptical of the future. Like way back then we used to have icemen, ppl who would deliver large blocks of ice daily. Then we created refrigerators that made icemen obsolete, but we created even more jobs for the economy like refrigerator factory workers and appliance repair technicians.

AI has been taking away jobs via automation so you would think that means we need more people in tech to push AI forward, but it's the opposite. AI is even replacing the tech workers, especially the junior ones and now the new grad from Harvard can't even find a tech job easily. Idk what's gonna happen now since so many companies no longer want jrs since they feel like AI coding assistants like copilot basically replace them. Experienced engineers are doing better, but technology moves so fast and you need to double down on being an expert in AI to even start competing for jobs now. Not to mention the rise in vibe-coding via tools like replit that allows non-tech people to build apps via text prompts only (although the code is crap and requires rework to be production ready). I'm working an AI job now, but my passion is gone. Only people who live and breath tech can survive in this field for long.

We didn't have just icemen. In the colonial age, we had people like the Boston tycoon who filled large ships with ice and lugged it to all the European colonies in tropical Asia, South America and the islands. But, that is how technology works. It's purpose is to fulfill needs. Once some needs are fulfilled, we just find new needs. Eventually, humans will be like the elves of LOTR - infinitely long-lived and dying only if violently killed. Which will force space exploration and colonization. This is all well known and inevitable.
So, I am not troubled by "AI taking away jobs" as the media puts it. It has to happen. And this has happened over and over in human civilization. As humans have always adapted, we must again. Like there were silent movie stars; then came the talkies. Most adapted. Only some faded away. Humans will just find new industries where humans are a must.
I don't think that is the problem with AI. The problem with AI is that what is now sold as AI is not really AI. I come from a background in cognitive science among other things. What they are doing now, is not the purpose for which the AI field was even created. They haven't solved the hard problem of consciousness. They haven't figured out human thinking to make machines actually think. Theory of AI, where the neuro, cognitive, philosophy and logic and the computing types all work together, has a long way to go. All they are doing is machine learning, or applied statistics. Finding repeated patterns and hoping to extrapolate a conclusion. The other thing that's happened is, they have gotten better at processing natural language. This is all pretty much faking intelligence and not simulating it. Whenever an app or a bot does something cute, it's like the Seinfeld episode where Elaine admitted to faking it and went "Fake!" "Fake!" "Fake!" Fake!" They just can't sell a lot of crap labeled "Statistics Inside", so they sex it up and say, "AI Inside". We can see the limitation like this: Let's say you are Beethoven. You have just completed the Fifth and are sitting down to compose the Sixth. You would try to go in much a novel way as possible, based on your composing brief. But, if there were an to mimic Beethoven. It's totally and precisely modeled the Fifth. The app then tries to produce the Sixth. It's necessarily going to derive it from the Fifth, or it would be a variation. It is not going to magically figure how Beethoven might approach a Sixth from a very different creative direction. Or, it can't model Beethoven but only specifically model Beethoven's process for the Fifth alone. But, the task of AI is to do the latter.
I don't know... I have been around for donkey's years and seen the field of AI start from virtuous roots in Philosophy and then take a couple of bad turns and turn into this data-interpretation-extrapolation mechanism.
I actually got recruited into the Ivy League quite young, without ever applying. But, I was around when they started changing what they wanted to see in AI....
It started with some MIT folks (new retired) try some redefinitions and claim "victory", then their counterparts in Stanford who were actually getting somewhere in doing it right also turned out... two blinks and two decades later... here we are.