Horses and engines are in a tangible, corporeal domain. I almost feel like pivoting could be easier with that: the tools are still the hands. Also, pivoting might be easier especially when no one is in that space of repairing cars in a small village at the time. Low competition. I also think time allowed to pivot is much higher: automobiles were expensive and time to adoption is higher, I wonder how long it took to be able to make a living?

Data, numbers, programming, this is in a ephemeral domain. Competition is high, there are a lot of developers. Time to adoption is extremely fast. In the automobile era, someone may have had five to ten years to pivot. Now? Maybe a year?

Is it about making things? Maybe, but pivoting and making a career of it is not a straight path, and sometimes people get lucky in choosing the path.

Interesting historical read:

https://historycollection.com/10-industries-either-killed-cr...

>> Many blacksmiths added the mechanical skills needed to service and repair automobiles, particularly in smaller towns and rural areas. In short order, some of the more commonly replaced automobile parts, such as tires, were being stocked by blacksmith’s, others which were necessary to a vehicle’s repair were ordered by telegraph or telephone for delivery to the blacksmith’s shop. Blacksmiths and service stations soon had competition from the automobile parts store, another new specialty which blossomed along the popularity of traveling by car.

Jobs are a mean to make people consumers, not the only mean, but a significant one.

The ability to create more economic activity require both sides to catch up, so we will find a way to do so.

There are plenty of poeple who have inadequate work the world over because there isn't enough paid work to do, and most professions are servicing wants, not needs, so the demand is very elastic, with many people now multi talented and still not making ends meet.

2. Economics is a function of human behavior, not horse behavior. Economics is about coordinating human effort. Humans make economics, horses don’t. When economics change in a way that is bad for horses, the horses have no recourse. When economics change in a way that is bad for humans, the affected humans seek to change things.

But my college did not train me to get a job the first time. Indeed they explicitly explained to us that that was not their goal. That was helpful because up to then we did think they were doing job training.

What they actually set out to do was make us "smarter" people. In the sense that they taught us to analyze problems, work in teams, find creative solutions. They taught us about research and critical thinking, and logic and so on. How to hypothesize, test, evaluate, adapt.

You don't need to go back to college to learn all that again. You already know it. Skills are easily, and quickly taught and learned. That's the easy part. The hard part is approaching a job as a problem to solve- how and where to add value. Value people will pay for.

Look around you. See unmet needs. Figure out what you need to do to meet those needs. That's the real challenge we face going into this next era.

I would even recommend against going back to college unless someone has an extremely compelling case for a career change that requires it and the conviction to see it through.

I'm hesitant to give examples because I know every example I give will be met with objections from "But I don't want to do that job" or "What if that gets replaced by AI too?". Look around you and you can should be able to identify some adjacent roles where you at least have an understanding of what the works like and you could learn the rest by taking on gradually more responsibility.

There are a lot of jobs out there that aren't exciting, don't pay SWE level salaries, but nevertheless pay enough to support a family as evidenced by all of the people doing those jobs who support their families. Not every company or industry is interested in squeezing maximum efficiency out of their employees. I have friends in highly bureaucratic roles who care about their jobs and do it well, but their work is amazing simple and easy. It requires nothing more than being a responsible adult who can show up to the office and get things done. These jobs are everywhere and I don't think they're going to disappear.

I don't think SWE is going to disappear either, but it will look a lot different in years to come. If you can't or won't adapt to the new normal, one of those boring alternative careers might be worth pursuing.

I also think that will be the case. However, not all the jobs are worth being automated. Say, if you are a modern-day horse-riding instructor, I very much doubt the robots will come knocking the door to take your job. Not because they can't, but because the headache is not economically worth it.

People are more adaptable than horses and tech solutions usually require people to do some of the work. Dishwashers need loading and unloading. My robot vacuum still needs maintenance. Self-checkout means you do the scanning.

Amazon wants to get into drone delivery and there are cases where that might work, but the way news articles describe it, it’s not going to get a package onto my porch.

That's the real risk here is that we are getting to the point (probably already there for a lot of stuff) where you can just point it to your already existing codebase and tell it your problem and it can basically do it.. I mean I've tested that in practice, sometimes I'll have a clear direction of where I want to go or what I would do.. but I don't really give it any hints of how to solve the problem, and many times it comes up with a similar result or at least one that also works completely fine.

So I think part of the issue is that people like you and me I feel like are going to be so much less needed because an AI can just do it instantly for basically free.

Anyway, I know this is a slight hyperbole.. but it's also not. It kind of sucks to realize that a simple prompt can replicate your work 95% of the time and do it basically instantly.