If you are white collar then it's going to "disrupt" your field.

I work in tech. I got laid off last year. I wasn't at Alphabet or Amazon or anything. Much smaller company. But AI "optimization" has ravaged the tech industry and not just programmers. Admins, database specialists, network specialists, developers, you name it. Our job market is absolutely fucked.

In my county, a major metro area in the US (like, top 10) craigslist used to be the place to get real job postings. If it wasn't a recruiter then your odds of getting a callback from a job posting there is pretty high. There are plenty of postings for other fields like mechanics and tradesmen and so on. For the few tech categories: nothing in the last month. Zero postings. Not even recruiter ads. Literally nothing. It's a wasteland.

I've been told to "go back to school." I'll be 41 soon. I'm still paying off my computer science degree. It's worthless. What else should I go for? Accounting? HR? These are going to be taken by AI, too. Will it be a mistake? Sure. They don't care. They'll do it anyways.

When I got my degree my wife and I were homeless. We just got back out of the hole in the last 10 years. I was finally building savings. It'll be gone in 60 days. She was laid off on Friday. Her industry is in property finance. Another gutted industry. She has to change industries, too.

What is to be done?

  • Sleve_McDichael [he/him]
    ·
    28 days ago

    I’m in a similar boat. I was laid off last year from my white collar job and my responsibilities were doled out between several people using ChatGPT. It took me six months to find a new job, and it pays leas than what I made five years ago for the same title. I believe my layoff would have happened regardless of LLM use, but now companies have another reason to not hire someone with my skill set (translation and writing) because the robots can do it “well enough” (total dogshit)

    Already at my new job they’re talking about “integrating AI” into my work and it just feels like the noose is tightening again

    • LaughingLion [any, any]
      ·
      28 days ago

      Solidarity, my friend. Maybe we'll live to see the masses finally grow class consciousness and our retirement plan can be to die in the revolution.