I know the leftist in me is supposed to have sympathy for these people and get them to unionize. But only after I stop laughing and enjoying this moment. For years these fucks told the rest of us to “learn to code” and pretended like studying anything else at uni was a fucking waste of time.
GUESS WHAT FUCKERS. SO WAS CODING. Looks like we’ll be baristas together, only I’ll have three years of experience!!!
“learn to code” was always about increasing the supply of labor so they could reduce their costs.
The 2001 crash is a pattern. For years people would “Learn HTML” to get into jobs and others were encouraged to follow. The crash flushed many people out, and outsourcing of the early aughts devastated the whole profession. Today it’s “Learn to Code” and “AI” are the new hip terms of art. It’s all about slashing labor costs.
it’s more interest rates than AI or “learn to code”. most of the programming jobs were deeply dependent on VC funding for companies that never intended to make a profit. with the rise in interest rates, VCs stopped getting a continuous influx of cash to invest in these companies so they suddenly want their investments back ASAP. it’s why reddit is suddenly IPOing, for example. large companies can’t cheap debt to buy smaller competitors, so the only exit plan is to turn a profit - most of these companies planned to get bought out by a larger player. the larger companies are also struggling because higher interest rates mean their customers are spending less, so their bottom lines are looking bleak, hence all the layoffs since fall '22.
It’s going to have to get much much worse before engineers unionize. I am sorry to say my fellows do not occupy reality in a class sense and these layoffs are just a taste of what’s to come.
I also don’t encounter a lot of the “learn to code” types irl, if ever. If anything, i hear pushback on outsourcing and bootcamps. I wonder how much of that sentiment was actual engineers vs students online who hadn’t entered the workforce yet.
Most engineers I know are OK but not at all class conscious people.
I also have some bias here, I don’t live or work on the coasts so the silicon valley elistist tech bro musk worshipping cutthroat competitive culture you see at big tech is just not there. And those types tend to be the loudest shittiest dudes online.
Midwest here, most folks just treat it as a job like any other. Still won’t fucking unionize though, US propaganda is too strong.
for some reason techies who have never worked in the trades tend to be more “learn a trade” type guys
coding is a trade.
You’re an individual paid to use skill to make things that someone else profits from. You may be paid well but you’re also at the bottom of the ladder, having to do what you’re told, discarded as it suits the employer.
The only people I’ve ever actually heard say “learn to code” are like Cory Booker and co
Yes, I have been in software development for close to 15 years and I have never seen it this bad. Everyone seems to mythologize 2008 but I was working age in those years and it is just as bad now as it was then; maybe worse, especially seeing as we weren’t collectively in denial about a plague wiping out millions of the working population at the time. It has been almost 1.5 years since I was furloughed, and I don’t even get calls back anymore. Echoing sentiment elsewhere in this thread that tech workers are an especially clueless bunch as far as class relations, too; I have been attempting to organize for as long as I’ve been in this field and absolutely none of them want it. We had experienced the largest white collar labor leverage in living memory (mandatory remote work) that we just let them take from us because this field is all miserable men who can’t actually stand to be around their families and nonexistent home life. It would be remarkable if it weren’t fucking all of us over, and they all love it. Very bleak.
Everyone seems to mythologize 2008 but I was working age in those years and it is just as bad now as it was then; maybe worse
One point I’ve seen making that case that it’s not as bad as 2008 is that this time companies mostly aren’t shutting down, but instead just downsizing. Which is true, but I think part of that is just because the economy is more “consolidated” into large companies than before. Think of the Apple car or Metaverse shutting down and presumably laying off most of the people on those projects; each likely had at least a few hundred employees, which in 2008 could have been entire companies. Or AWS, which most of the western internet runs on at this point, if they layoff 10% of their employees that’s potentially thousands of engineers putting pressure on the rest of the tech labor market, yet on the surface it doesn’t look that bad since AWS continues to exist and “it’s just 10%”.
everyone should be a plumber so that anyone can fix plumbing on their own instead of paying others to do it. how will a person get food if everyone’s a plumber?
You have to understand, these arguments aren’t about solving macroeconomic issues. They’re meant to chastise people complaining about the macroeconomic issues, hey you individually could potentially do this one thing that would given you a comfortable life, ergo the macroeconomic issues aren’t real. It’s a modern day version of “let them eat cake.”
You can be the plumber. I’m currently positioning myself to be the town pipe layer, laying pipe in evey home.
The thing I’m noticing about trades is that the most successful businesses are the ones with multiple licenses under the same brand, so they’ll be an electrician, plumber, hvac whatever else all at the same time. It’s becoming more difficult to learn a single trade and then open your own business and make it big. Way easier for a company to go on say an electrical call and then ask the homeowner if they would like their AC checked while they’re there for example.
its gonna be really funny when generative AI fucks up a bunch of code and these people have to try and hire someone who actually has a clue but all of them have moved on to other industries.
Shoutout to my dad in 2020 who told me to become a blockchain developer because it was the future.
I am not a programmer at all, btw.
