GoKawiilSorry Peter.
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I'm at a birthday party, and while most people here also work in tech, there's always a Guy with a Real Job. You know, a physical job, building some or other thing people need. And this Guy always asks some variant of the same question: aren't you worried AI is taking your job? I glance around and see a few faces turning around toward us, rolling their eyes ever so slightly before returning to their previous conversation. Yes, this question again.
They have a nephew who builds Shopify stores, they don't understand half the words he uses but he's in real trouble and says everybody in tech is. Is his nephew gonna have to learn a "trade"? Are we all?
Enough drinks in and I'll answer proper, because I don't care anymore whether others think what I'm saying is interesting or true. But usually I'll sigh and say "Sure, yeah a little. Most of us are. Would be stupid not to be, right?" to which they nod before moving on to a lighter topic, like whether we're going to nuke Iran or not.
The truth is, working in tech always sucked, and never really was what they thought it was.
My job, some people think, is to sit at a clean desk in a corner office, surrounded by open offices filled with long tables with MacBooks or Thinkpads. In my corner office, I devise perfect plans, that my perfect employees applaud me for. None escape my gaze, every decision is made, perfectly, by me, and every cent and minute is accounted for.
When the applause fades, my employees, or reports, or "my team" when I'm feeling jolly, start furiously typing. Typing typing typing. And not long after, perfect software is produced. It rolls off the collective assembly line, and like a first child, it can do no wrong.
Except, that's not what anything is like at all. Yes, I'm upset I never got a corner office, but I'm too busy panicking because I have no idea what I'm doing, nobody does, and the wheels just came off. The CEO says AI is making his buddy Jared's team so productive he was able to fire half of them, but like, as a brag, not a threat? I dunno, I felt threatened, but that's probably just my anxiety flaring up. Surely I can borrow a xanax from one of the several employees crying in the bathroom.
Imagine you take a job as a ship captain. You bike into the harbor on your first day, excited to meet your crew. You notice the ship isn't there, but Greg, the very excitable recruiter you spoke to, waves you over and assures you it's not a problem. You're strapped to a catapult and miraculously launched onto the ship. The previous captain started a fire because another captain explained internal combustion to him at Captainpalooza 2025, and he wanted to start iterating towards that. He was pushed off the ship, but took the manual with him. Wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the fact the entire ship was custom-built for him. The ship still has sails, but they're not connected to the mast, and the internal combustion engine semi-bolted to the stern still has parts scattered all over the deck.
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