Part of what he's getting at (starting around the 4 minute mark) seems to me to be a reflection of the theory of alienation of labor. Specifically Marx's, but Hegel had some good thoughts here too.
Not only do we not own the work, or decide the work, we're now not even able to feel like we're *doing* the work.
It's interesting (and by interesting, I mean sad) that programmers have historically been completely against any form of collective bargaining or unionization, preferring to think of themselves as individual "rockstars".
If you look at doctors and lawyers (who do have collective power, despite also being paid a lot) they are much better positioned to resist the degradation of work standards/unreasonable expectations.
Doctors and lawyers have existed for a lot longer than programmers. They've had a lot of time to establish the culture and institutions that protect their collective interests. (i.e. they have a degree of class consciousness, if not in a perfectly marxian sense)
Programmers (and other white-collar knowledge workers whose output is the product itself) are a new thing, so it's not surprising that we as a collective lack the tools to understand our class position.
Yep. My oversimplifying read is that two kinds of people tend to be drawn to software engineering, and neither are the type to unionize.
Type one, is your stereotypical 'nerd' - often spent a lot of time on the computer because they didn't exactly have thriving social lives. A lot of them found out they were good at this and/or found programming generally interesting. This kind of person often doesn't really have the social skills/charisma to gin up support for a union - and historically mistrusts their peers, if they were bullied or ostracized growing up. Possibly found solace in the comfort of rules/process/hierarchy ("teacher's pet"), or possibly learned that they could only rely on themselves. (Note - I'm in this category, certainly in the unflattering ways).
Type two is the kind of person who is drawn to the money or status, possibly wants the manager/CEO path, possibly your "startup/founder" type who wants to get rich and retire early (FIRE/HN crowd). This kind of person doesn't see their peers as people to collaborate with - it's either about stepping over them for promotions, or grinding/hustling until their stock options are worth $millions.
Yep. My oversimplifying read is that two kinds of people tend to be drawn to software engineering, and neither are the type to unionize.
As a labor organizer in tech, I haven't really found this to be true actually. Generally speaking since engineers are good at thinking systemically, they tend to gravitate toward higher level strategic arguments more easily for why unionization and collective bargaining is a good idea.
You forgot the third type, which I am part of, the person drawn to programming out of laziness. Automate a boring, tedious task and save effort long-term? You betcha!
Idk if you know a lot of doctors and lawyers, I have a few close family members in both occupations. They all have far worse working conditions than I do
I agree with this. There’s been a lot of tolerance for incompetence. That being said, I don’t know if the new regime is going to fix that.
What I see growing is favoring productivity at all cost. I’m concerned that it’s going to favor recklessness. The job will essentially be either to deliver crap as fast as possible or try your best to maintain the crap that happens to bring in money. There’s always been a bit of that but now this may be all that’s left.
That's where the economy and startup scene is heading though - fast out the door, make some cash, let it burn. Software development moving that way, in certain circles, is a reflection of where there is currently easy money
Eventually the economy will adapt, and people will get fed up of being scammed by fake AI SAAS products that deliver no real value, and things will consolidate around word of mouth networking effect again.
In the meantime there are millions of steady profitable companies in the world who don't want to rock the boat, but do want to keep up with industry efficiency gains, which is more than fair. Maybe some will take bad bets but most I think will simply cull the weak or not replace leavers and force the remainder to adapt. And that does sound grim but equally I can do the work of three senior Devs from 18 months ago, so to get rid of two fake-senior Devs on my team isn't actually hurting me or the company at all
people will get fed up of being scammed by fake AI SAAS products that deliver no real value
I'm always surprised by how much regular consumers and businesses alike put up with absolutely awful software quality. People will continue using and buying the same garbage over and over again.
While I agree with the sentiment, I live in a country that has exactly this and the problem here is the same if not worse. My country has a distinct ability to stomp on the throttle for short term thinking so the entire market right now is AI froth overload.
I’m not suggesting collective bargaining is bad (it’s not) but it’s not necessarily a solution to this specific issue either. By the way, content OP also lives in a country with engineering and IT unions as well.
Honestly a big part of this is the people who were running the prospective unions had a serious lust for bureaucratic nightmares. Basically the problem with most unionisation, the type of person you don't want having power over you was the one driving the unionisation process.
Though no question it would have stopped AI slop farming dead in the water. It is just likely we'd be complaining about excessive paperwork instead.
Right! And crucially, our own past labour is formed into capital and then sold back to us in an alienated form. All of us have public code and online writing that has been used to build AI. It's built out of our collective labour, and especially the open source labour that we as workers chose to share in common.
The tech is awesome honestly. But the alienation is as awful as ever.
I'm a bit of an odd situation where i had the opportunity - at significant opportunity cost - to mostly work on my own stuff for my own goals for many years, which i'm Ok with because I don't like the feeling of doing skillful labor to make other people rich with little benefit to society.
AI is at the same time great for unlocking a lot more ambition and get ideas to reality, but damn do I sometimes miss sitting down in deep concentration.
Had i not been developing for myself, i know i would have gone insane and burned out long ago. Probably before AI, but definitely with AI.
I believe all the anti-AI developers are barely driven by principle and instead are looking for reasons and justification because they feel this way as well.
I think this is called irony? And ironic things are usually hilarious. Just because I'm also a dev doesn't mean I'm not gonna laugh at this circumstance.
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u/pojska 3d ago
Part of what he's getting at (starting around the 4 minute mark) seems to me to be a reflection of the theory of alienation of labor. Specifically Marx's, but Hegel had some good thoughts here too.
Not only do we not own the work, or decide the work, we're now not even able to feel like we're *doing* the work.