United States | News & Politics

Just learn to code

Those who can code, these days, are increasingly fearful about their own job prospects. Between large-scale layoffs at tech employers and the rapidly-increasing scope of tech work that "AI" can do (or at least assist with), coding, it's becoming clear, is just another type of labor that's about to be automated into a niche occupation. And tech companies are gleeful at the prospects ... got 1000 programmers paid $200K/yr+benefits? We can do something about that - just buy our Developer As A Service plan, with low, low usage-based pricing! You can cut headcount down to just 100 programmers, or only 50 on the DAAS Pro plan. Slash your labor costs, taxes, and compliance expenses; call today!

Software tech is just the first (white collar) sector to feel the pain of automation. It's already been commodified by "outsourcing" of work to low-cost countries, and automation, AI-based or otherwise, is just the next step to increasing shareholder profits and management bonuses. Ironically, it's developers themselves, so used to jumping on every latest hype-train, who are eagerly facilitating their own demise, trying to appease employers and appear more personally "productive" by integrating the latest "AI" this-or-that into their work. So many of these folks live in very high COL locations, like SF, Seattle, NY and Boston, have property in those areas, and have an identity to a great extent formed from the illusion of having "made it" in their land of tech giants. To go from being the envy of their peers and family, the "winner" with the million-dollar (or much more) house (and accompanying mortgage), private schools, and a garage full of the latest tech-on-wheels, to having no income, no other skills and experience, fading job prospects, little social support, and nowhere to go ... I think it's going to be ugly, for a class of people who aren't used to hardship and who've been sold the "upward mobility" bill-of-goods for many decades now. Suicide will be one way out of it all, likely an increasingly appealing way.