@Routhinator@tenforward.social
Post #1720385
2025-11-16 16:47 UTC
Replies (28)
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@hugo@social.treehouse.systems 2025-11-16 18:11
@Routhinator@tenforward.social Valve noticeably didn't have any mention of AI in their hardware announcements. That cannot be an accident.
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@aspensmonster@tenforward.social 2025-11-16 22:25
@Routhinator@tenforward.social >I'm not sure how much longer I can keep helping drive the engine of the very destruction I want to put an end to. That feeling drove me out of the tech world entirely. I'm a nursing student now. 🤷
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@futurebird@sauropods.win 2025-11-16 22:28
@Routhinator@tenforward.social Can you just do it the right way and *say* it was AI. I know some people doing that.
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@rl_dane@polymaths.social 2025-11-16 22:43
@Routhinator@tenforward.social This is probably going to be about as helpful as a brick, but the only answer I see is: Live beneath our meansSave enough money to be able to afford to be jobless for a whileTell your boss "NO," and let chips fall where they mayCoordinate with other like-minded people I dunno. I've been out of I.T. for a dozen years. Not sure how you guys are staying sane right now, but I'm pulling for you! 💗
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@DaveMWilburn@infosec.exchange 2025-11-16 23:07
@Routhinator@tenforward.social maybe see if some stodgy firm in a heavily regulated industry is hiring to manage their legacy tech?
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@varx@cybersecurity.theater 2025-11-16 23:29
@Routhinator@tenforward.social I've been pretty public about my distaste for the tech at work. Apparently one of the higher-ups is pretty mad at me for telling other people how to auto-hide Copilot "reviews" on PRs. I don't think there will be any actual consequences, though. (Like you, I'm looking for another job, of course.)
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@rlcw@ecoevo.social 2025-11-16 23:48
@Routhinator@tenforward.social Contracting - you get to choose your own tools. Otherwise check out the larger Foss projects and technology NGOs. They are usually a good starting point. Also any industry that is a bit more obscure and slower on uptake on new tech: banking, internal industrial tools, stuff like that. Best of luck.
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@cazabon@mindly.social 2025-11-17 01:14
@Routhinator@tenforward.social Thank you for writing this. I feel exactly the same way, but I'm currently out of work, laid off just before the AI-induced stupidity went into high gear. Fellow Canuck here, too. My brother works for a well-known Linux company, and says that for each engineering job they post, they're getting between 1k and 2k applicants.
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@andrei_chiffa@mastodon.social 2025-11-17 06:26
@Routhinator@tenforward.social @dabeaz@mastodon.social wait until a chain reaction of AI bugs and uncovered edge cases blows the entire online stack apart; charge metric F-ton on money to rebuild it from dust with any for of trust into what you are doing.
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@saliaku@mastodon.social 2025-11-17 06:33
@Routhinator@tenforward.social even I need to find one.. 🫠
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@TomSwirly@toot.community 2025-11-17 11:18
@Routhinator@tenforward.social Man, I have no idea (as someone who's been in the field for over 40 years). I worry if I lose my current job I'll never get another one. And AI is almost directly responsible for my paycheck, even though I don't directly work on it.
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@rhempel@mstdn.ca 2025-11-17 11:31
@Routhinator@tenforward.social How close are you to retirement and do you have dependents? Sometimes you need to get noise cancelling headphones, hold your nose, and just get stuff done. If you are younger then start putting out feelers and be careful that your next step is to solid ground I've done some experiments with AI and I'm often surprised at how good the guesses are, and then not surprised when it totally messes up. I'll use my own brain, thanks very much. I'll write this code using BDD/TDD and I'll write the docs using Sphinx and PlantUML and I'll be able to tell you with confidence that MY stuff works. Oh, and take up woodworking or carpentry or plumbing or electrical trades.
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@whitemice@mastodon.social 2025-11-17 11:37
@Routhinator@tenforward.social I would recommend switching careers into the trades (plumbing, electrical, welding...). Welders make very good money. Nobody should start a career in tech in 2025; at least not in the United States.
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@deech@mastodon.social 2025-11-17 12:03
@Routhinator@tenforward.social I'm told slop clean up is lucrative but I have no direct experience.
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@adam@toots.adamu.jp 2025-11-17 14:02
@Routhinator@tenforward.social I think the uncomfortable conclusion is that it's going to take bold, principled, and lucky people to make those companies 😬
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@mathew@universeodon.com 2025-11-17 14:17
@Routhinator@tenforward.social Same problem here, looking at alternative careers I could slide into based on my skills and experience.
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@Johan_E_M@mastodon.social 2025-11-17 14:42
@Routhinator@tenforward.social no tip, just a 👏🏻🙏 to you!
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@thomasareed@infosec.exchange 2025-11-17 15:28
@Routhinator@tenforward.social @talkingmoose@mastodon.social It’s bad right now. I made the decision to exit from a tech career and start a completely unrelated business. Those sticking to tech are going to have to ride out this AI nonsense, then ride out the implosion when the AI bubble bursts. There are going to be some rough years ahead. Hopefully, it will get better at some point. I long for the days when just making something cool that people found useful was enough.
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@bit101@mstdn.social 2025-11-17 17:15
@Routhinator@tenforward.social I feel your pain. If I were starting out, I would choose a different career. As it is, I'm in late career mode, so trying to stick it out. I feel sorry for those in early/mid career who are not on board the AI train.
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@f4grx@chaos.social 2025-11-17 17:49
@Routhinator@tenforward.social embedded. Like, very embedded. Stuff with weird RTOS and time critical functions counted in microseconds.
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@sauc3@hachyderm.io 2025-11-17 18:05
@Routhinator@tenforward.social Are you me? Because I feel like you just describe my nightmare from the last year. I worked hard to build skills, and now my company wants me to de-skill and demanding I use the slop machines. I will follow this thread closely!
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@JustinDerrick@mstdn.ca 2025-11-18 04:04
@Routhinator@tenforward.social Become a consultant that specializes in fixing AI’s mistakes. Historically, 40-60% of my work as a consultant was fixing other people’s mistakes, lack of knowledge, refusal to read the documentation, or simply accepting “return code zero!” as the end of their configuration work.
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@arcayr@gts.mischief.expert 2025-11-19 02:36
@Routhinator@tenforward.social i opened up azure's admin portal y'day for the first time in a while and immediately got an "ai scorecard" for "how well the organisation is using ai" and i think that's it, i think it broke me.
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@schrotthaufen@mastodon.social 2025-11-19 23:28
@Routhinator@tenforward.social @mcc@mastodon.social My plan is holding out for a few more years, at which point either the bubble has burst, or nobody understands their LLM generated infrastructure anymore. At which point companies will probably come begging for people who actually know what they’re doing to unfuck their stuff. (Kinda like the “become really good at COBOL, and fix code for banks, and insurances” plan b for people who like to code.)
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@sysadmin1138@ngmx.com 2025-11-20 00:35
@Routhinator@tenforward.social I honestly don't have a good answer here. I also avoided all AI tools. I got laid off last October and every place that got me past the resume-review stage was all in on proving my AI chops. All of them. Of which I had zero experience, and minimal willingness to skill up. Some of this is because I came up through Operations so am not actually a Software Engineer — I write code, but employers want people who think halting state problems are cool and have firey opinions on type-safety. Not actually being a SWE meant I had zero luck getting past the very first interview. So I retired.
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@grimacing@luzeed.org 2025-11-20 01:02
Unfortunately I think this frustration is part and parcel to the tech industry. Thats why I moved myself into trades. Becoming a Union Electrician might not be a bad plan to start on while you have the resources to reskill. There is a lot of overlap in both skills and pay potential... I know that's not an answer for everybody, nor the answer you were probably hoping for, but I am a handyman now instead of working in tech (though I did fix one of my clients computers the other day, lol) and I make a similar amount of money, I enjoy what I do a lot more and I don't have a boss asking me to find a way to automate my own position (which is what I saw happening a lot when I worked in tech). My friends and colleagues in tech always thought they were beyond reproach and didn't need unions because the company they work for valued them too much. I like to remind them of what they used to say now that a lot of them are being laid off. I imagine I will have a lot more competition for handyman jobs going forward with all the people I know from tech that are losing their jobs right now. Before AI it was just regular automation... But whatever the new thing is, it is always an attempt to make programmers as well as all workers in the chain worth less and programmers willingly take on the challenge, because... Well I don't think tech minded people always have a great capacity for true critical thinking skills. I suspect what you are noticing in your colleagues using AI and becoming worse at solving problems was always there under the surface. People don't like to dig deeper than what their boss is asking them to do. Most people don't even care why. The why always frustrated me in that industry. I think there was a time where new technology felt like unlocking a new level in life. Things changed a lot when we all got GPS built into our phones. That was a moment we can all look to and say our lives improved dramatically, we never had to be lost again (even that comes at the price of spontaneous discovery in meat space). Now unless it's something tangential to the fediverse I am just worried about how this, "innovation," is going to make my life worse. AI feels like it's gotta be the final boss. Right? I think all of the for-profit parts of the tech industry are fully under the spell and will be for the foreseeable future. Perhaps you could find a paid position in open-source tech, though it seems very competitive and likely to pay a lot less. I am sorry this is happening. It sounds really, really frustrating as somebody who has become disenchanted with working in tech themselves.
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@cferdinandi@mastodon.social 2025-11-20 12:56
@Routhinator@tenforward.social just know that you’re not alone here. I brought this up at work last week, and well sentiments were split, about half of my coworkers were equally AI skeptical. I’m probably one of the most anti-AI of the bunch, but was by no means alone.
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@glyph@mastodon.social 2025-11-21 05:59
@Routhinator@tenforward.social the ChatGPT For Algernon thing is absolutely real and incredibly distressing. Good luck. I hope you find something. I have no idea if there's even anything out there right now.