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I don’t think kids should be insulating from AI. The examples in this article suggest for example that some people are dropping out of college and going into tr

I don’t think kids should be insulating from AI. The examples in this article suggest for example that some people are dropping out of college and going into trade schools. I get that society needs electricians and construction workers and new software graduates are finding it difficult to get jobs. But having had a moderately successful career building software, I tend to think there is a lot of scope for the $40 trillion white collar economy to be disrupted (re-imagined/made more efficient), so still see potential for software engineering demand to stay high over the next decade as the true ramifications of AI plays out. Am I biased/coping? Is this moving faster? Slower? - What should kids be aiming for according to you? Computer Scientist? Biologist? Finance? Construction?

crop_rotation 6mo ago
Even if people assume the worst impacts of LLMs on white collar work, there is simply not enough demand for electricians and plumbers for that to work, right now these professions work only because the number of people going into them is limited.
- selectodude 6mo ago
  And their elevated pay is a function of all the other folks making a ton of money in white collar PMC work.
- F7F7F7 6mo ago
  You sound like you're not a home owner. In populated areas it could take a week to get a electrician or plumber out. And contractors are hard to find.
  - asdff 6mo ago
    It takes a week because if you want it fast they charge you an emergency rate. This aspect of the tradesman is independent of demand and one of the perks of their lines of work much like over time in other fields.
    - Capricorn2481 6mo ago
      They charge you an emergency rate because they are so booked out it takes a week to get them.
  - sweezyjeezy 6mo ago
    Don't get fixated on plumbing itself. The point is if a bunch of people rush into any profession it leads to wage depression. Unless the amount of plumbing needed increases, the overall amount of money flowing to the plumbing populace is likely to stay roughly the same.
    - Capricorn2481 6mo ago
      > The point is if a bunch of people rush into any profession it leads to wage depression Eventually. Wage depression does not happen linearly. You're asserting that demand is maxed out and there's no more money to go around, and that's just not true. A lot of people just don't bother because tradespeople are famously difficult to work with because they are so overbooked.
  - tonyedgecombe 6mo ago
    Six weeks here (wealthy part of the UK).
- striped_hash 6mo ago
  Agree.
- dspillett 6mo ago
  Development is the same though. If things play out I see there being two classes of low paid developers in a decade or so: the first being the vibe coders who earn a subsistence wage because most people can do it (not everyone, there will still be a cost of entry, paying for the tools, which will exclude some groups), the second being the more “artisnal” developers working on the things that can't (yet) be vide coded and fixing up the problems caused by insufficient care by the vibers and those employing them. These will be low paid because while the work is important demand will be low and there will still be a fair few people with the skills and desire (they'll make ends meet between good jobs by taking on gig-economy vide-coding work themselves). There will be a lucky few still making a decent living, but a much lower proportion than now. I'm hoping to arrange retirement before things get that far… Failing that I'll do something else (I could be a sparky, though if all the youngsters are training for that perhaps that industry will gain a bad supply/demand picture from the worker's PoV too!) to pay the bills and reclaim dicking around with tech as a hobby.
time0ut 6mo ago
Optimistically, I hope it filters out the people who were only interested in it for the money. When I was in school, decades ago now, very few people went into CS compared to other majors. Everyone I knew going into it did it because they loved it. I would have done it regardless of the career opportunities because I want to build stuff. Interviewing candidates over the years since then, my experience has been there are still very few of those passionate nerds and a lot of people who did it for other reasons, like the money or similar. There is nothing inherently wrong with this. I don’t fault people for it. Maybe if we get very lucky, it will go back to a relatively few passionate people building stuff because it is cool?
- drivebyhooting 6mo ago
  I only went into SWE for the money. I initially pursued my real passion which was math and physics and got a cold water bucket to the face only after grad school.
  - KellyCriterion 6mo ago
    So you didnt tap your toe into a real dev environment before that second? :-)
- denkmoon 6mo ago
  Having an industry’s labour supplied only by those inherently passionate about it is a great way to crush wages and working conditions. Look at what companies like Blizzard get away with because their employees just want to make video games at their favourite dev studio. While they’re a pain in the ass sometimes, I welcome the devs who are only here for the cash.
  - sunir 6mo ago
    I think you have the law of supply and demand backwards.
  - alex43578 6mo ago
    This is totally leaving out the supply and demand aspect. People like the idea of making games more than working on the plumbing of some accounts payable software, so Blizzard can pay less and treat worse than NicheBoringFinanceCo.
throwaway613746 6mo ago
[dead]
chromacity 6mo ago
The prevailing sentiment on HN is that AI will make coders 10x more productive, but that we'll all keep our jobs and salaries, with the possible exception of people who don't embrace AI quickly enough. But let me ask you this: has AI made life easier for illustrators, book authors, or musicians? They were affected by the technology earlier on. If they don't embrace AI, they face increased competition from cheaply-made products that the average consumer can't distinguish from the "real" thing. But if they embrace it, they can't differentiate themselves from the cheaply-produced content! In fact, for artists, the best strategy may be to speak out very vocally against AI, reject it early on, and build a following of like-minded consumers.
- acdha 6mo ago
  It’s also not exactly a secret that the executive class resents having to pay high-income workers and is champing at the bit for layoffs. Even if you fully embrace AI, they want white collar jobs to look more like call center work with high surveillance, less autonomy, and constant reminders of replaceability. Most people saw through that “our people are our greatest asset” talk before, but they’re not even trying anymore.
  - fragmede 6mo ago
    We just need to be bold enough to take risks and replace the executive class with an AI agent that's been trained on Machiavelli and the Wealth of Nations and all of the rest of the written word to write the layoff letter in corpo speak anyway. Waiting for the AI bot that gets paid $10mm/year to be a CEO.
- asdff 6mo ago
  The thing is, for most artists outside say in commercial work where AI is a great risk to jobs, they are judged by the finery of their craft, not rate of output. How many clients are there who say "we don't care how long it takes for you to come up with the solution, we just want it beautiful and representative of your style."
  - 6mo ago
ctoth 6mo ago
> What should kids be aiming for according to you? Computer Scientist? Biologist? Finance? Construction? Can you sit down with an unfamiliar domain and develop enough genuine curiosity to get good at it, without a syllabus or a credential dangling in front of you? The kids who'll do well in a world where the field-to-security mapping keeps shifting are the ones who can self-direct — not the ones who picked the right field in 2026. Although full disclosure I'm short humans and very long paperclips.
- fragmede 6mo ago
  > full disclosure I'm short humans and very long paperclips. What does that mean in practice? Are there specific stock market bets you've made because of that world view?
  - sph 6mo ago
    It can be read in two different ways. Massive techno-optimism, or massive techno-pessimism but facing a reality where humans are increasingly less valuable. In the first case, buy AI stocks. In the second case, build a bunker in the wilderness.
  - georgemcbay 6mo ago
    I don't think they are actually talking about the stock market and are just saying they think AI will destroy everything (referencing Nick Bostrom's Paperclip Maximizer theory).
- striped_hash 6mo ago
  > The kids who'll do well in a world where the field-to-security mapping keeps shifting are the ones who can self-direct — not the ones who picked the right field in 2026. Agreed that if someone can self direct and is capable, they’ll do better. Assuming two people who are similar in that regard, what are professions that may benefit from AI rather than hurt because of it.
- justonepost2 6mo ago
  > Although full disclosure I'm short humans and very long paperclips. What a ludicrous world we live in where this is a socially acceptable view to hold.
saltyoldman 6mo ago
You're coping. Everyone wants a remote software job. These are dead. If you want something in software, it will need to be robotics or space related and you'll drive to a location to do it. If you want to be in a remote, small town, get into construction and become a builder with their own GC license in a few years. Then charge people 400k to build that little dream cottage with 2 guys (you and a team mate) twice a year. 150k each 100k mats for each house. Just a small warning: It's hard but real work and very rewarding.
- adamtaylor_13 6mo ago
  Wha do you mean these are dead? I work a remote software job and it ain't going anywhere from what I can see.
  - saltyoldman 6mo ago
    I could have elaborated, but long term this line of work is dead. Will there be software engineers in 20 years? Can't tell you, but it won't be in the millions like it is now. Will those people KNOW a programming language? probably not. At some point the sheer amount of capabilities of agents will just keep going up and us humans are still writing buggy code. Waymo just declared that it's drivers are something like 13x better than human drivers... Agentic has only been around for what, 1 years maybe 2 if you count closed betas.
    - r_lee 6mo ago
      "Will those people KNOW a programming language? probably not. " if I'm able to learn all kinds of stuff in just a few hours, why would programmers 20 years from now not know programming languages? just doesn't make sense.
      - saltyoldman 6mo ago
        Yes, you could. Have you bothered learning how to wash your clothes with a washboard sitting next to a river? No, instead you using a washing machine (I presume). There won't be much of a reason to learn a programming language at some point in the future.
marcus_holmes 6mo ago
The thing I'm seeing in people's use of LLMs is that there's still a strong contrast in technical usage of them. I went to the local Claude Code meetup last week, and the contrast between the first two speakers really stuck with me. The first was an old-skool tech guy who was using teams of agents to basically duplicate what an entire old-fashioned dev team would do. The second was a "non-technical" (she must have said this at least 20 times in her talk) product manager using the LLM to prototype code and iterate on design choices. Both are replacing dev humans with LLMs, but there's a massive difference in the technical complexity of their use. And I've heard this before talking to other people; non-technical folks are using it to write code and are amazed with how it's going, while technical folks are next-level using skills, agents, etc to replace whole teams. I can see how this becomes a career in its own right; not writing code any more, but wrangling agents (or whatever comes after them). The same kind of mental aptitude that gets us good code can also be used to solve these problems, too.
- toofy 6mo ago
  and the things the first person is doing can very very easily be trained into a bot as well. this doesn’t seem like a safe direction either.
eucyclos 6mo ago
>What should kids be aiming for according to you? If it's my kid? Starting their own Enterprise. Between 'good enough' knowledge work getting cheaper and the bureaucracy that made entrepreneurship less attractive over the last decades being either trimmed or automatable, we may be looking at a golden age of new business formation. There's an old saying, "genius is one percent inspiration and ninety nine percent perspiration". If ai shifts that to just 2 and 98, it'll unlock massive demand for a certain kind of mind. How to teach that I'm still pondering. One idea that occurs to me, is that a human will always be needed to ask the right questions and have good taste, but I don't know how to teach those. They can probably only be educated, which in my mind is distinct from teaching. A different idea I have is that an entrepreneur needs three skills: they need to identify a problem, implement a solution, and get paid for it. Those skills probably can be taught, so I'd try to ensure they get early reps in all three. If I knew how to connect those two ideas I think I'd have a decent curriculum. Anyone have suggestions for that?
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- logicchains 6mo ago
  Entrepreneurship is like sales; it can't really be taught, only learned through practice, through trial and error. The best way for kids to learn business is through doing it.
  - eucyclos 6mo ago
    Definitely. Unlike asking the right questions or having good taste though, it's possible to know how successful you are at business so the dynamics are definitely different.
andrekandre 6mo ago
> I tend to think there is a lot of scope for the $40 trillion white collar economy to be disrupted (re-imagined/made more efficient), so still see potential for software engineering demand to stay high over the next decade as the true ramifications of AI plays out. i would hope so, but wherever i have worked its the bureaucracy/endless "agile" ceremonies and meetings that make things less efficient, and so far (where i'm at anyways) ai has done nothing to help that...
wongarsu 6mo ago
> I tend to think there is a lot of scope for the $40 trillion white collar economy to be disrupted (re-imagined/made more efficient), so still see potential for software engineering demand to stay high over the next decade as the true ramifications of AI plays out So far, the demand curve of software has been very favorable, and I don't think that will change soon. If software was 10x cheaper to develop that makes a lot of features and projects attractive that would have been too expensive before. So far every single efficiency improvement in programming has lead to more demand for programmers because of this. At some point there is a limit of useful things to do, but I don't think we are close to it yet But as someone choosing which college to go to you don't just have to think about the next decade, you have to think about the next half century. I am confident software engineering will be in a good place in 10 years, but I have no clue where we will stand in 20.
ethin 6mo ago
Why shouldn't they? They're constantly being told by CEOs and big companies that AI is going to take all the jobs and do all the things. They're told the same by AI boosters who only see utopias and not the consequences of said utopias. Of course they're going to insulate from AI as much as possible. Especially given that society still pretty much requires that you work to be successful in the world. The utopian dream of "you'll never have to work again, you can just do anything you want" is a very very long ways off, but it's being pushed hard as though it will be in the next 3 years. But society is still pushing the "you must work" message too. Edit: of course, the "long ways off" assumes that that dream is even possible and isn't just that, a dream. I question whether even that is possible given how we are still split under hundreds of nation states and can't even unite on the most basic of things.

crop_rotation 6mo ago

Even if people assume the worst impacts of LLMs on white collar work, there is simply not enough demand for electricians and plumbers for that to work, right now these professions work only because the number of people going into them is limited.

selectodude 6mo ago
And their elevated pay is a function of all the other folks making a ton of money in white collar PMC work.
F7F7F7 6mo ago
You sound like you're not a home owner. In populated areas it could take a week to get a electrician or plumber out. And contractors are hard to find.
- asdff 6mo ago
  It takes a week because if you want it fast they charge you an emergency rate. This aspect of the tradesman is independent of demand and one of the perks of their lines of work much like over time in other fields.
  - Capricorn2481 6mo ago
    They charge you an emergency rate because they are so booked out it takes a week to get them.
- sweezyjeezy 6mo ago
  Don't get fixated on plumbing itself. The point is if a bunch of people rush into any profession it leads to wage depression. Unless the amount of plumbing needed increases, the overall amount of money flowing to the plumbing populace is likely to stay roughly the same.
  - Capricorn2481 6mo ago
    > The point is if a bunch of people rush into any profession it leads to wage depression Eventually. Wage depression does not happen linearly. You're asserting that demand is maxed out and there's no more money to go around, and that's just not true. A lot of people just don't bother because tradespeople are famously difficult to work with because they are so overbooked.
- tonyedgecombe 6mo ago
  Six weeks here (wealthy part of the UK).
striped_hash 6mo ago
Agree.
dspillett 6mo ago
Development is the same though. If things play out I see there being two classes of low paid developers in a decade or so: the first being the vibe coders who earn a subsistence wage because most people can do it (not everyone, there will still be a cost of entry, paying for the tools, which will exclude some groups), the second being the more “artisnal” developers working on the things that can't (yet) be vide coded and fixing up the problems caused by insufficient care by the vibers and those employing them. These will be low paid because while the work is important demand will be low and there will still be a fair few people with the skills and desire (they'll make ends meet between good jobs by taking on gig-economy vide-coding work themselves). There will be a lucky few still making a decent living, but a much lower proportion than now. I'm hoping to arrange retirement before things get that far… Failing that I'll do something else (I could be a sparky, though if all the youngsters are training for that perhaps that industry will gain a bad supply/demand picture from the worker's PoV too!) to pay the bills and reclaim dicking around with tech as a hobby.

time0ut 6mo ago

Optimistically, I hope it filters out the people who were only interested in it for the money. When I was in school, decades ago now, very few people went into CS compared to other majors. Everyone I knew going into it did it because they loved it. I would have done it regardless of the career opportunities because I want to build stuff. Interviewing candidates over the years since then, my experience has been there are still very few of those passionate nerds and a lot of people who did it for other reasons, like the money or similar. There is nothing inherently wrong with this. I don’t fault people for it. Maybe if we get very lucky, it will go back to a relatively few passionate people building stuff because it is cool?

drivebyhooting 6mo ago
I only went into SWE for the money. I initially pursued my real passion which was math and physics and got a cold water bucket to the face only after grad school.
- KellyCriterion 6mo ago
  So you didnt tap your toe into a real dev environment before that second? :-)
denkmoon 6mo ago
Having an industry’s labour supplied only by those inherently passionate about it is a great way to crush wages and working conditions. Look at what companies like Blizzard get away with because their employees just want to make video games at their favourite dev studio. While they’re a pain in the ass sometimes, I welcome the devs who are only here for the cash.
- sunir 6mo ago
  I think you have the law of supply and demand backwards.
- alex43578 6mo ago
  This is totally leaving out the supply and demand aspect. People like the idea of making games more than working on the plumbing of some accounts payable software, so Blizzard can pay less and treat worse than NicheBoringFinanceCo.

throwaway613746 6mo ago

[dead]

chromacity 6mo ago

The prevailing sentiment on HN is that AI will make coders 10x more productive, but that we'll all keep our jobs and salaries, with the possible exception of people who don't embrace AI quickly enough. But let me ask you this: has AI made life easier for illustrators, book authors, or musicians? They were affected by the technology earlier on. If they don't embrace AI, they face increased competition from cheaply-made products that the average consumer can't distinguish from the "real" thing. But if they embrace it, they can't differentiate themselves from the cheaply-produced content! In fact, for artists, the best strategy may be to speak out very vocally against AI, reject it early on, and build a following of like-minded consumers.

acdha 6mo ago
It’s also not exactly a secret that the executive class resents having to pay high-income workers and is champing at the bit for layoffs. Even if you fully embrace AI, they want white collar jobs to look more like call center work with high surveillance, less autonomy, and constant reminders of replaceability. Most people saw through that “our people are our greatest asset” talk before, but they’re not even trying anymore.
- fragmede 6mo ago
  We just need to be bold enough to take risks and replace the executive class with an AI agent that's been trained on Machiavelli and the Wealth of Nations and all of the rest of the written word to write the layoff letter in corpo speak anyway. Waiting for the AI bot that gets paid $10mm/year to be a CEO.
asdff 6mo ago
The thing is, for most artists outside say in commercial work where AI is a great risk to jobs, they are judged by the finery of their craft, not rate of output. How many clients are there who say "we don't care how long it takes for you to come up with the solution, we just want it beautiful and representative of your style."
- 6mo ago

ctoth 6mo ago

> What should kids be aiming for according to you? Computer Scientist? Biologist? Finance? Construction? Can you sit down with an unfamiliar domain and develop enough genuine curiosity to get good at it, without a syllabus or a credential dangling in front of you? The kids who'll do well in a world where the field-to-security mapping keeps shifting are the ones who can self-direct — not the ones who picked the right field in 2026. Although full disclosure I'm short humans and very long paperclips.

fragmede 6mo ago
> full disclosure I'm short humans and very long paperclips. What does that mean in practice? Are there specific stock market bets you've made because of that world view?
- sph 6mo ago
  It can be read in two different ways. Massive techno-optimism, or massive techno-pessimism but facing a reality where humans are increasingly less valuable. In the first case, buy AI stocks. In the second case, build a bunker in the wilderness.
- georgemcbay 6mo ago
  I don't think they are actually talking about the stock market and are just saying they think AI will destroy everything (referencing Nick Bostrom's Paperclip Maximizer theory).
striped_hash 6mo ago
> The kids who'll do well in a world where the field-to-security mapping keeps shifting are the ones who can self-direct — not the ones who picked the right field in 2026. Agreed that if someone can self direct and is capable, they’ll do better. Assuming two people who are similar in that regard, what are professions that may benefit from AI rather than hurt because of it.
justonepost2 6mo ago
> Although full disclosure I'm short humans and very long paperclips. What a ludicrous world we live in where this is a socially acceptable view to hold.

saltyoldman 6mo ago

You're coping. Everyone wants a remote software job. These are dead. If you want something in software, it will need to be robotics or space related and you'll drive to a location to do it. If you want to be in a remote, small town, get into construction and become a builder with their own GC license in a few years. Then charge people 400k to build that little dream cottage with 2 guys (you and a team mate) twice a year. 150k each 100k mats for each house. Just a small warning: It's hard but real work and very rewarding.

adamtaylor_13 6mo ago
Wha do you mean these are dead? I work a remote software job and it ain't going anywhere from what I can see.
- saltyoldman 6mo ago
  I could have elaborated, but long term this line of work is dead. Will there be software engineers in 20 years? Can't tell you, but it won't be in the millions like it is now. Will those people KNOW a programming language? probably not. At some point the sheer amount of capabilities of agents will just keep going up and us humans are still writing buggy code. Waymo just declared that it's drivers are something like 13x better than human drivers... Agentic has only been around for what, 1 years maybe 2 if you count closed betas.
  - r_lee 6mo ago
    "Will those people KNOW a programming language? probably not. " if I'm able to learn all kinds of stuff in just a few hours, why would programmers 20 years from now not know programming languages? just doesn't make sense.
    - saltyoldman 6mo ago
      Yes, you could. Have you bothered learning how to wash your clothes with a washboard sitting next to a river? No, instead you using a washing machine (I presume). There won't be much of a reason to learn a programming language at some point in the future.

marcus_holmes 6mo ago

The thing I'm seeing in people's use of LLMs is that there's still a strong contrast in technical usage of them. I went to the local Claude Code meetup last week, and the contrast between the first two speakers really stuck with me. The first was an old-skool tech guy who was using teams of agents to basically duplicate what an entire old-fashioned dev team would do. The second was a "non-technical" (she must have said this at least 20 times in her talk) product manager using the LLM to prototype code and iterate on design choices. Both are replacing dev humans with LLMs, but there's a massive difference in the technical complexity of their use. And I've heard this before talking to other people; non-technical folks are using it to write code and are amazed with how it's going, while technical folks are next-level using skills, agents, etc to replace whole teams. I can see how this becomes a career in its own right; not writing code any more, but wrangling agents (or whatever comes after them). The same kind of mental aptitude that gets us good code can also be used to solve these problems, too.

toofy 6mo ago
and the things the first person is doing can very very easily be trained into a bot as well. this doesn’t seem like a safe direction either.

eucyclos 6mo ago

>What should kids be aiming for according to you? If it's my kid? Starting their own Enterprise. Between 'good enough' knowledge work getting cheaper and the bureaucracy that made entrepreneurship less attractive over the last decades being either trimmed or automatable, we may be looking at a golden age of new business formation. There's an old saying, "genius is one percent inspiration and ninety nine percent perspiration". If ai shifts that to just 2 and 98, it'll unlock massive demand for a certain kind of mind. How to teach that I'm still pondering. One idea that occurs to me, is that a human will always be needed to ask the right questions and have good taste, but I don't know how to teach those. They can probably only be educated, which in my mind is distinct from teaching. A different idea I have is that an entrepreneur needs three skills: they need to identify a problem, implement a solution, and get paid for it. Those skills probably can be taught, so I'd try to ensure they get early reps in all three. If I knew how to connect those two ideas I think I'd have a decent curriculum. Anyone have suggestions for that?

deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
logicchains 6mo ago
Entrepreneurship is like sales; it can't really be taught, only learned through practice, through trial and error. The best way for kids to learn business is through doing it.
- eucyclos 6mo ago
  Definitely. Unlike asking the right questions or having good taste though, it's possible to know how successful you are at business so the dynamics are definitely different.

andrekandre 6mo ago

wongarsu 6mo ago

> I tend to think there is a lot of scope for the $40 trillion white collar economy to be disrupted (re-imagined/made more efficient), so still see potential for software engineering demand to stay high over the next decade as the true ramifications of AI plays out So far, the demand curve of software has been very favorable, and I don't think that will change soon. If software was 10x cheaper to develop that makes a lot of features and projects attractive that would have been too expensive before. So far every single efficiency improvement in programming has lead to more demand for programmers because of this. At some point there is a limit of useful things to do, but I don't think we are close to it yet But as someone choosing which college to go to you don't just have to think about the next decade, you have to think about the next half century. I am confident software engineering will be in a good place in 10 years, but I have no clue where we will stand in 20.

ethin 6mo ago

Why shouldn't they? They're constantly being told by CEOs and big companies that AI is going to take all the jobs and do all the things. They're told the same by AI boosters who only see utopias and not the consequences of said utopias. Of course they're going to insulate from AI as much as possible. Especially given that society still pretty much requires that you work to be successful in the world. The utopian dream of "you'll never have to work again, you can just do anything you want" is a very very long ways off, but it's being pushed hard as though it will be in the next 3 years. But society is still pushing the "you must work" message too. Edit: of course, the "long ways off" assumes that that dream is even possible and isn't just that, a dream. I question whether even that is possible given how we are still split under hundreds of nation states and can't even unite on the most basic of things.