The engineer, who posted anonymously on X under the username voxium for fear of reprisal from his employer, called his new role at an undisclosed company "soul-sucking."
The productivity of AI is high. Depending on the task at hand, let’s say it’s UI, he’s not going to produce the volume AI will.
I’m not saying using AI is smart long term. It will brain rot you completely, and you will lose meaningful skills. But these companies don’t care about developers’ maintaining continued learning or even retained learning. They just want to extract volume. But once they spit you out you’ll have no independent skills. And saying you can prompt bots good at a job interview won’t be enough because everyone can do that. Using AI is a kind of mental hazard, and no one is getting hazard pay. Unless the job is paying enough to retire in 5 years it isn’t enough. Continued development is a critical part of having sufficient compensation. And these prompt jobs don’t offer that. So people should quit them.
Consider for a moment that other people may not be in a position to simply “find another line of work”. Perhaps they have dependants, or medical issues, or any number of other situations that could prevent them from being able to retrain into another profession, or even to be able to switch employers.
You’re in a very privileged position if finding another line of work is something actually sensibly achievable.
Can confirm as someone who’s a programmer, I liked my job before AI, but it sucked all the fun from it :(
Just don’t use it? 🙁
Because I’m forced to? You think I’m given a choice by my boss?
Alright, hey, it was just a question. Maybe it was a possibility. 🤷♂️💆♂️
Does your employer monitor your use of AI? Maybe you can just spend tokens on bullshit and keep working normally/manually on the side?
The productivity of AI is high. Depending on the task at hand, let’s say it’s UI, he’s not going to produce the volume AI will.
I’m not saying using AI is smart long term. It will brain rot you completely, and you will lose meaningful skills. But these companies don’t care about developers’ maintaining continued learning or even retained learning. They just want to extract volume. But once they spit you out you’ll have no independent skills. And saying you can prompt bots good at a job interview won’t be enough because everyone can do that. Using AI is a kind of mental hazard, and no one is getting hazard pay. Unless the job is paying enough to retire in 5 years it isn’t enough. Continued development is a critical part of having sufficient compensation. And these prompt jobs don’t offer that. So people should quit them.
I would definitely not take a job that forces me to use AI. I’d rather find another line of work.
Consider for a moment that other people may not be in a position to simply “find another line of work”. Perhaps they have dependants, or medical issues, or any number of other situations that could prevent them from being able to retrain into another profession, or even to be able to switch employers.
You’re in a very privileged position if finding another line of work is something actually sensibly achievable.
Yup, no problem — I already was only speaking for myself when I was using “I” as the pronoun. 👍