A lot of people seem to be realizing that knowledge work is mostly pointless. AI might give us the pleasure of finding out what happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers.
No coders I knew in the 2010s were telling others to “learn to code”
Maybe it’s just because I’m on the west coast, or maybe it’s because I’m not that into tech, but I’ve seen it.
I went into bio/psych during college (graduated HS in '06 for reference), but never finished, and I eventually specced into caregiving for developmentally disabled adults. It only paid a dollar more than minimum wage, but it was highly rewarding until the agency decided they were going to start doing end-of-life care for some of our older clients. Even though science has known for a while that the gene that codes for the plaques and tangles of Alzheimer’s is on the duplicated gene that causes Down’s Syndrome, which causes 100% of people with Down’s Syndrome to develop early-onset Alzheimer’s, there was zero professional guidance on how to help them through it. I was working 60hr weeks, the insurance provided wouldn’t pay for more than a dozen trips to therapy each year, and was being physically assaulted at work by a 50yo guy who was seeing the hat man because Lewy Bodies.
Some “friends” were less than sympathetic, because if I wanted a good job, I should have just learned how to code like them instead of “caring about r****ds”. I hope they’ve all lost their nice jobs. If they’d said this to my face, I would have punched them and not stopped punching until my arms got tired.
I quit being a caregiver in 2018 after a car accident, and was just getting back into the workforce when the pandemic hit, but even through COVID, I couldn’t log into social media without seeing people patting themselves on the back for being smart enough to learn programming so they didn’t have to be be on the front lines.
Maybe it’s just because I’m on the west coast, or maybe it’s because I’m not that into tech, but I’ve seen it.
I went into bio/psych during college (graduated HS in '06 for reference), but never finished, and I eventually specced into caregiving for developmentally disabled adults. It only paid a dollar more than minimum wage, but it was highly rewarding until the agency decided they were going to start doing end-of-life care for some of our older clients. Even though science has known for a while that the gene that codes for the plaques and tangles of Alzheimer’s is on the duplicated gene that causes Down’s Syndrome, which causes 100% of people with Down’s Syndrome to develop early-onset Alzheimer’s, there was zero professional guidance on how to help them through it. I was working 60hr weeks, the insurance provided wouldn’t pay for more than a dozen trips to therapy each year, and was being physically assaulted at work by a 50yo guy who was seeing the hat man because Lewy Bodies.
Some “friends” were less than sympathetic, because if I wanted a good job, I should have just learned how to code like them instead of “caring about r****ds”. I hope they’ve all lost their nice jobs. If they’d said this to my face, I would have punched them and not stopped punching until my arms got tired.
I quit being a caregiver in 2018 after a car accident, and was just getting back into the workforce when the pandemic hit, but even through COVID, I couldn’t log into social media without seeing people patting themselves on the back for being smart enough to learn programming so they didn’t have to be be on the front lines.