The irony is that the subfield with active hiring is the one that will ultimately make the very work they are doing redundant.

The magic is gone and the intellectual challenge is fading fast. I saw the writing on the wall and am jumping ship to something decidedly non-tech 🙂

Well, I have no intention of hitting CTO/CISO, so no goat farming for me

I like the way you think.

I hope you're telling your boss that you're super busy though!

When I became a sysadmin 24 years ago, I figured the general public was still adapting to the rapid overnight advancements and integration into the tech industry. I assumed that as people figured out how to use software and computer technology in their daily lives, help desk support would practically disappear and we'd be able to move our efforts toward fully maintaining systems instead of customers.

I had no idea how resistant the general public would be to actually learning and understanding technology. We went from recommending customers avoid certain bad programs and hardware, to being forced to incorporate them into our infrastructure because the general public didn't want to give them up.

My professional opinion was overruled many times because someone higher up the food chain wanted to use a device or app that hurt our client base or mission parameters, but was familiar to them, so they wanted it included in our suite of tools.

I'm grateful to see a lot of public resistance to AI, even if corporations are doubling down on their investment into the technology. But I don't have any hope for the future of technology or the general public who use it daily. AI is just the latest excuse for people to not learn how to use technology efficiently.

I expected younger generations to be raised on this tech and be absolute wizards in its use, understanding it even better than I do! Instead, they were raised on slop and ad-riddled ADHD-promoting garbage apps that rotted their brains and prevented them from learning basic tools and functions. As a millennial, I've spent the better half of a decade teaching boomers how to use this tech, and then the next decade trying to reeducate zoomers on how to properly use tech and break their life-long bad habits.

I retired from the IT industry after only 20 years. Now I enjoy tinkering with technology in my free time. I always enjoyed teaching people how to use their personal computers and smartphones, but I can't spend another minute on a help desk, fielding calls from people who still don't know how to read error messages that pop up in their face. AI will be the death of the industry if integrated into everything and left unchecked. Maybe it'd be for the best.

It really doesn't suck at them. AI writes great code; I think we just want it to suck. It can't magically generate a new Linux kernel, but the small tasks I've seen it do have all been mostly above average. (I have also seen some complete garbage, yes, mostly above average)

I've been working in tech for about 10 years now as well, and I'm also just feeling tired. I'm a bit sad, because I like my job. I didn't study computer science or anything in college; I just got work in security because I enjoyed it. It's sad pretty much knowing it won't be the same. I don't really want to offload a lot of the work to an AI in the future.

I've been getting more into learning to weld and work with wood. In the next few years I'll probably consider starting a small custom furniture company.

I feel like this part of the conversation is drowned by the AI hype train and the AI hate train. The part where real people are seeing the real effects of a technology that is actually good, and is likely going to get better, and will have the potential for significant social damage to a large part of the middle class.

The magnificent steiner would have already ended both sides.

I have to track my time in 3 different system

Which circle of hell is this?

I'm the only "active tech" at my tiny local shop/"MSP".
I have two bosses who are each "owners" of the company and neither of them can fix their own workstations.

Neither can handle domain DNS changes. Neither of them can migrate mail. Neither of them have taken "support" calls for the last 5 years- instead they've transferred everything technical beyond "restart your PC" to me. I've seen a few people younger than me around who actually have basic understanding of internet DNS, TCP/IP, but for the most part I'm starting to think that after my generation, the internet will corrode, collapse, and die. I hope I'm wrong, UNLESS the internet continues being handled largely by 5 gigantic, evil corporations- in THAT case I hope it dies.

Your possible future sounds wonderful, I wish you every success with it.

If I could leave work and keep the same salary, I would...

As for what I would do, I enjoy photography ( https://metapixl.com/stoy ), I would probably buy a reliable car and start driving around europe taking photos of interesting places.

I might also start buying used cameras and set up a local studio called something like "snåljåpens fotobibliotek", or "The cheapskate's photo library" where for a monthly fee you can rent older but good cameras and equipment.

"Small tasks" are the key there. It can write a small script or spin up application boilerplate very well, but it really struggles with long-term maintenance and new features on a complex application.

I spend about as much time telling the AI "no, not like that" as it supposedly saves me from not having to type the code manually.

It does have some value, but I'd put it around a 10% boost -- not the 500% boost that senior leadership insists it can do.

Right, but I think we're kidding ourselves if we don't think it's going to get better. I have no doubt it will be able to magically generate a new Linux kernel.

Where do you think the steam deck breaks fine from 🤣!

It really doesn’t suck at them. AI writes great code; I think we just want it to suck.

Citation? I’m really asking because I’ve yet to hear about anything above a toy project that has had any verifiable success with AI code generation as a major component of their workflow.

As in a like for like improvement in code quality, security, bug occurrences and severity, developer efficiency, all that jazz, not just the standard "we've funnelled so much money in to this we are almost fiscally required to claim success"

its not a dig, i really want to see one so i can found out how it was done.

Claude commits to GitHub with the same name no matter who uses it. You can see every single line of open source code it has written (for GitHub only of course): https://github.com/search?q=author%3Aclaude&type=commits&s=author-date&o=desc. Look around as you please, most of it is just fine.

People that I know to be good developers have also shared their experiences with it and say yes, it has written good code for them. I've personally used ChatGPT to generate very mundane tasks and the code it output was more than adequate.

It introduces security bugs and subtle bugs at probably the same rate as a human (I have no "citation" there, just what I've seen). It needs to be "driven" by a human, yes, but it's not clear for how long it will need to be, and even if it always does, personally I don't want my job to be to "drive an AI".

Tech certainly is in a wierd spot. It certainly had lost its sheen much before that but luckily I actually like solving problems and helping people. What was frustrating when I was still working was it kinda felt like any time you were good at something you were pulled out. I literally had to refer people to my boss if they pinged me for them to authorize time with me or someone else from the team. When we had something working they often wanted us working on something else and leave the first thing to other folks. Thing is that means it lacks a lot of polish. Its like a really good poc. And again don't get me wrong I love doing poc's and quickly getting things going and would love to push off and go on to another thing before it gets tedius but usually its not being pushed to a team to finish it off instead its just. well. good enough and we don't want to spend more on this solution. anyway I have been unemployed for over a year so I would appreciated just being able to sink my teeth into something complex.

My goal is to pay off my house and then accept a lower salary as a trade off for more fulfilling work.

Microslop continues to be a pox on IT. I believe they are mostly at fault for the current state of things.

I appreciate the answer but that's not at all what i asked.

I have anecdotes and personal experience i could cite but that's not particularly helpful in a general sense.

Pointing to claude submissions in projects is actively less than helpful in this case because it only proves that single files in isolation look like they are well written, it gives no indication of overall project quality.

People that I know to be good developers have also shared their experiences with it and say yes, it has written good code for them. I’ve personally used ChatGPT to generate very mundane tasks and the code it output was more than adequate.

So in a very limited context the code generated for you personally was acceptable, that's great, i've found much the same, but that's a far cry from "AI writes great code; I think we just want it to suck."

It's somewhat my bad though, when i say "citation" i don't need a full research paper (though that would be nice) i'd like something a bit more substantial than a "trust me bro".

It introduces security bugs and subtle bugs at probably the same rate as a human (I have no “citation” there, just what I’ve seen)

That's a load-bearing probably, my experience has been the polar opposite of that, I’ve been involved in two major AI initiatives and both choked hard on security and domain bugs. That could very well be a project management or company specific issue, hence the search for successful projects to compare.

My quest continues.

I didn't say "trust me bro" and showing Claude submissions is sufficient for analyzing code in the context I believe it is good: one file at a time and one task at a time. This is also the same realm that a human is good. You are welcome to look at the project as a whole to determine the "project quality" as well: it's open source. But I'm not here to argue: I believe this tech that is barely in its infancy is already quite good and going to get better, and I'm already considering what it will do to my life. If you don't, that's fine.

I'll add here that I find it very frustrating to talk about these "AI agents" and their code output, because it's something we're all close to and spent a lot of time learning. The concept of "a machine" getting "better than us" so quickly, with the background context of an industry that is chomping at the bit to replace humans makes these discussions inherently difficult and really emotional. I feel genuine sadness when I think about it. If the world were different we'd probably all be stoked. I don't want the AI to be better than me, and I currently don't believe it is, but I think:

1. My belief doesn't stop the market. People do believe that it is better than me or at least good enough. This has a real effect on my life and the lives of people I know.
2. I don't see any fundamental reason it won't get better at development. Part of the reason it struggles with large projects is context: that doesn't sound like a fundamental engineering constraint to me, it sounds like a memory constraint. Specialization will also make it better and better I assume.
3. Even if it is never better than me, it will certainly be more efficient and eventually the market will consider my time better spent correcting its output or guiding it, removing the fun part of the work in my mind.

I don't think my job is currently on the chopping block today: I don't do development I do security work. But I do think it will either be on the chopping block or fundamentally change sooner than I'm comfortable with.

Copilot’s braindead and flat out wrong comments on PRs are downright dangerous. Drives me nuts. Tired of explaining why it’s wrong.

Search is useless. All the useful blogs, sites and forums are dead or gone.

Watching people panic over losing their jobs for teams I support is depressing. We know what these KPIs and etc are for… and why they suddenly care about them.

Try to distract myself with other projects too.

I would love to leave tech. Desperately. But I feel that I have no other real skills, and I have a mortgage that I need to pay and a house to maintain. I do have savings, but it would probably only last a year at best.

I would love to do something outdoors. Like, maybe for WA state's park services. But I've heard that's super competitive and next to impossible to get into without first volunteering for years.

At this point tech is a hostile malevolent force.

It will become a more specialized, niche knowledge. It's similar to cars. In the 1950s, it was extremely common for regular people to know how to fix their own car. But as cars became more reliable and complex, fewer and fewer now know how. There's still a definite market for mechanics and mechanical engineers, but it's a specialty line. You go to college, or generally go through a manufacturer's training program.

What's going to change are the expectations and expertise going in. When Microslop wants new developers, or support staff, or whatever else, the candidates aren't going to be (as) familiar with it going in. They won't be able to meaningfully apply their knowledge of similar systems and products.

They'll have to bring back extensive company-led training programs.

This will apply to every large tech company, regardless of field. In your networking example, it would probably be run by Cisco, which isn't too different from how it is today.

I got laid off and now I'm working as a Door guy at some local bars. Im poor but happy.

This is my story too. I hate what tech became, so I tried to pivot careers. I did a few other things, but due to a long list of reasons, I’m back doing tech work. I’m no longer help desk or working directly for an IT department. More of an in-house advisor and consultant with light sysadmin work.

I used to brew my beer and now I build and use 3D printers. The physical world is more interesting to me than all those extra numbers today’s processors can crunch.

Id take it for minimum wage if there was a job here just to be doing something new and interesting.

Yeah, that feeling has lingered for years, and is now out in force

Time to buy a 3D printer and escape out of the computer out in the real world

omfg shut up

That can be a dangerous line of thought …..

Started thinking of my legacy and

• I’m divorced
• I’ve been bad at keeping up with friends
• I’m unlikely to have grandkids and am estranged from my only niece
• I live far from my family
• my kids can’t afford to live in my town
• I won’t be able to leave a house or other inheritance
• even if one of my kids has kids I’m not sure I can run around with them anymore

Everything I’ve done has no lasting value. I’ve always loved tech and can fix the problem of the day but a year or two later that’s no longer relevant

Microcontroller projects, CAD, and 3D printing were my model train. They got me away from the keyboard warrior parts while still feeding my love for tech and building things.

Honestly building a Voron kit felt like the first time I built a PC, where you know enough to do it but learn a lot along the way. It was great.

Wait until you get TPS Reports.

Its not fucking fun to be on the computer anymore. They changed it and now it sucks. It used to be so cool

• Conner O'Malley

I like to think your edit was changing it from "omg shut up."

The third?

Same. :/

I try to be as low tech as possible now. Most tech these days feels like it's trying to exploit me in every way it can.

I was where you were a few months ago. It's an awful feeling and I've been obsessed with computers for 28 years. This has been exceptionally difficult for me. I had a really rough year end where I was working on recurring critical defects for weeks. I caused most of them (proximate cause) but the state of the industry itself is what placed me in an impossible position where I was having to make things of poor quality that nobody likes.

Technology itself is not the problem. There is nothing inherently wrong with AI. The way it has presented itself to the world is because of greed and a feeding frenzy. The way it is and works now makes it a bad tool. A tool that does a good job 80% of the time is garbage. It's being shoved at us with little regard for us and the consequences.

But I am hopeful. I am using AI for my personal projects. It's not really a choice for me. For many years I've tried to get people to work with me on something; anything really. But it either didn't happen or fizzled out very quickly. These are ideas that I couldn't execute on my own, and now I can.

So there is a way to find opportunity in chaos. And this is the phase we are in.

I can also see positive things coming out of this. I've seen quite a few total newbies who switched to Linux who said they would have been stuck without AI and given up.

The failure of this massive experiment will become the basis for new innovation. We should be perplexed at where we are now, considering how windows forms apps were easier to build 15 years ago than a basic web app is now. We accumulated a lot of complexity without our productivity increasing, instead we are in desperation trying to throw money and "compute" at the complexity.

AI kind of feels like asbestos to me. Too useful to ignore and too harmful to embrace. But I really think that from some unexpected corners we might see a new era for technology emerging. I am optimistic.

Let me give an example that matches my own discouragement and might also explain yours.

In the middle of last century, the woodworking industry that created fine furniture started experiencing a shift. Due to the sudden explosion of wages and wealth and population in the late 40s to 70s, products had to be made faster and cheaper.

One method was to lower the quality of inputs. Plywood instead of hardwood. Then fiberboard/chipboard instead of plywood.

We see the same system in play now, with AI automation and it’s gratuitous hallucinations. It is essentially garbage materials in order to save time and money.

But another method was also in automating the work. Whereas before craftsmen used hand planes and chisels, newer craftsmen used electric shapers and planers. And later, CNC machines stepped in to produce delicate and complicated designs in a fraction of the time - and frequently even more precisely and more cleanly - than anyone with a carving chisel could do.

And that is the part which is NOT being effectively duplicated in IT.

Sure, AI can automate the work, but instead of maintaining quality, said quality of work is also taking a nosedive in tandem with the quality of materials.

And that is what is discouraging me six ways to Sunday. It’s garbage on both sides of the coin, and not just one. There is no part of the equation in which I can still take pride in. It’s all depressive, disgusting slop that I would be ashamed to put my name to.

All the frontend frameworks like RoR and hearing how the startups were built on them was awesome. It just seemed more creative since schools were still teaching java etc. the good times ended and capitalism does it's thing again.

I gave a quick try of meshtastic and quickly switched over to meshcore, which has a much smarter routing algorithm that makes it more useful in cities. I'm also reticulum-curious. In the medium-term I'm looking at possibly putting up a solar "roompeater," which acts as both a "room" (basically allows asynchronous chat between two client nodes that aren't always online at the same time) and a repeater (basically a router). It has some disadvantages over running the two separately, but since I want both to have power in the event of a disaster, the cost savings of doing both on one node outweighs those for me right now.

Humans are the CNC machines in your analogy here. Basically we are left to clean up after the sloppy material inputs to get reasonable outputs. It's just that techbros don't believe that is (or at least will ultimately be) necessary and that AI can do this step.

The jury is already in on current tech (techbros are wrong), and still out on coming tech in this space, but it seems very unlikely (past experience with tech bros says they are hype machines and full of shit).

So what we land on with AI acting as the CNC is this pseudo facade where the furniture it cranks out looking OK from a distance, up close it's pretty garbage but while everyone is starting (or forced) to sit on the chairs, it looks like they aren't really load bearing...

now... apply this to IT, Medical, Financial, Military and any other serious application and you don't have to wonder why people are concerned anymore.

It's fun if you're running Linux.

As long as you stay on your local system and dont browse the web or any modern apps.

But as cars became more reliable and complex, fewer and fewer now know how.

There is also DRM and other shenanigans going on.

For example, just to replace your brake pads - something that most everyone should be able to do - requires, on most average modern cars made in the last 2-3 years, a $1,000,000 piece of software with a $6,000/mo subscription package.

Why? Because until the vehicle manufacturer authorizes that brake pad replacement, that vehicle will refuse to even turn on, much less move. It needs to obtain cryptographically-signed approval from the manufacturer for the work that had been done to it in order for it to even turn over the engine.

Now your average car owner isn’t going to have these means, so everything gets pushed off to manufacturer-authorized repair depots, invariably car dealerships, where everything can be nickel-and-dimed to maximum revenue.

This lack of repairability is one of three major reasons why I will never personally own a vehicle manufactured after 2006.

My first experiences with computers started when I was in Junior High around '79. It was a total nerd hobby, almost "underground ". Now I see it for what it is. Gadgets become necessities and we become enslaved to them. We have to stop chasing our tails