Ask HN: Industry Wide Strike for Worker Protection?
In light of Zuckerberg proclaiming that AI will take the place of mid level engineers, how feasible would it be to organize a software industry wide strike for protections against AI? AI will take our jobs as soon as the suits learn how to precisely, accurately, and consistently express their needs in a backwards compatible fashion that doesn’t break existing customers. That is to say never. Our jobs will change. We might look more like product managers than code artisans. Or like lead engineers guiding mentoring and nudging robots to build the right thing. But I suspect AI will take about as many engineering jobs as spreadsheets did. More people will be writing code and automating their tasks. When the spaghetti starts to break and becomes a bottleneck, we can come take over and turn it into a scalable engineering product. Perhaps with the help of our own robots doing the boring stuff. > Our jobs will change. We might look more like product managers than code artisans. Or like lead engineers guiding mentoring and nudging robots to build the right thing. This is why I repeatedly tell software engineers not to be “ticket takers”. If your job is just pulling well defined stories off the board where the business requirement is already known - which is considered mid level behavior at every tech company where I have seen leveling guidelines - your job may be in danger by AI. But it is definitely in danger of being outsourced to cheaper labor and you’re just commodity and will find it hard to stand out against thousands of other commodities. Any employee's job is not to follow instructions, rather it is to do the job required to accomplish the company's goals. These are not always aligned. You know more than your manager about certain things and vice versa. You have to interpret. You have to use your expertise. It's easy to do work while creating more work for others. Move fast and break things works when learning but you don't go around breaking everything in the office either. Your expertise is not being glue between stack overflow and your codebase, your expertise is to understand the picture, limitations, failures, knowing there are different types of glutes, tapes, and fasteners. Your experience is seeing failures others don't, the cracks in the system. There's an old joke. (Yeah jokes aren't perfect. You don't need to nitpick and but actually. You can interpret ) My day job is a “staff” software architect working at a third party AWS cloud consulting company (coming from working at AWS directly doing the same thing) I am not bragging - I’m just old. I have “expertise” at some level or the other with: 1. Discovery, requirements gathering, creating project plans, etc - 2. project management (not great. But I’m good enough) 3. Tech lead for a software development project or a cloud architecture “DevOps” project 4. Your standard “senior” hands on enterprise software developer. 5. Every database type imaginable. 6. A “cloud engineer”. I can go from an empty AWS account to a completely “Well Architected” infrastructure using IaC and creating pipelines While I can do any of those, as a hands on keyboard person, I can only do 40 hours worth of work and I could never complete a moderately complex project that required me to do all six in an acceptable time period. When doing any of that work, I’m operating at most 2x the average person and that’s being generous. My value add, is that a company can throw me on a conference call or tell me to hop on a plane and deal directly with the client along with sales to close a deal and know I’m not going to embarrass them. On the other end, by being able to lead and coordinate between the customer, sales, and the hand on engineers , I can hopefully get a project across the finish line on time, on budget and that meets requirements. > precisely, accurately, and consistently express their needs in a backwards compatible fashion that doesn't break existing customers. A theoretical “AI dev” will be able to gather these requirements through conversation no problem. The same way a human dev would. In fact it will probably do a better job. I really don’t think this is some special skill that protects developers from automation. The industry is about to change drastically. I don’t foresee software engineers going extinct, but there will most definitely be a lot fewer of them. > A theoretical “AI dev” will be able to gather these requirements through conversation no problem Maybe! So far what I’ve seen are AI devs that are too afraid to say ”No you’re wrong this will never work” and can’t ask those awkward questions like ”Ok A sounds great, but you already promised to customer B that not-A will always be true. What do we do about that?” It is very important to have a working mental model of the system to do requirements gathering effectively. AI struggles mightily in that area. But all you have to do is tell the AI your mental model and it remembers. And it will remember all the times some suit promised customer zyx four years ago this feature would be ready, and it remembers the insights the old PM had before they left, and it can read the four bug tickets related about a feature that describes conflicting behaviors... Out of the box sure. An agent set up specifically for this task with your code and internal docs is a whole different story. And LLMs aren’t afraid to say “you’re wrong”, they’ve just been configured to be agreeable by default. There is so much that goes into gathering requirements for any large implementation that is not just about asking the requirements. There is the entire management and navigation of organizational politics and priorities, getting to the bottom of XYProblems, users not really knowing what they want and being able to help them get there, etc. At that level, that’s the role of a product manager. We aren’t going to see software engineers all transform in to project managers. Most don’t have the skills, but more importantly there’s no need for that many PM’s. Project managers don’t have the technical skillset necessary. As far as not having the skills, that’s the entire problem that most software engineers are going to have if they don’t understand the business. If you look at the leveling guidelines of every tech company, the higher you go up, the more you are expected to deal with “ambiguity”. As a “staff software architect”, I am part project manager, part technical lead. But the last thing I want at that level is to play telephone and have someone constantly coming between me and stakeholder. And some software engineers will be stuck fighting thousands of other commodity ticket takers fighting for scraps. We see that now without AI taking jobs. You have basically just circled back to what I said initially: > I don't foresee software engineers going extinct, but there will most definitely be a lot fewer of them. Your bad attitude, calling most software engineers “ticket takers”, while envisioning yourself as being an un-replaceable genius is extremely common in these discussions. It’s clearly an emotional reaction. And I understand. AI is going to decimate the industry (along with many others). Even for those who are truly un-replaceable, for many their companies business model itself will easily collapse. I can look at the list of b2b sass software I use right now and literally all of them will have zero value soon when an AI agent can in house their service in a day. A software engineer who is only pulling well defined stories off the board is a ticket taker. Look at the leveling guidelines of any tech company, no matter how good of a coder you are, you are doing mid level developer work. It’s not that I’m irreplaceable at any given job, it’s the ability find another one. https://www.levels.fyi/blog/swe-level-framework.html You notice that “codez real gud” only gets you to a mid level developer? These definitions are similar to what you will see at Amazon (first hand experience), Google (second hand experience), Dropbox (guidelines are publicly available), etc I’m definitely not a genius. I do have demonstrably a greater ability to deal with people than most software developers. These agents aren’t going to magically do things without someone translating business requirements to technology and agents will never take over every implementation that large enterprises need. As much as I have avoid doing it, it’s not that much of a leap to go from where I am now to sales and being a “solution architect”. Yeah … instead of fighting to stay mid-level it’s probably better to just skill up as best as possible. Even without AI the competition from fellow job applicants, overseas talent, etc., would mean we all have to get more productive and more skilled. But I’m looking to get off the rat race / wheel of futility and looking at things like consulting to augment and maybe replace my job. The autonomy and the flexibility and being my own boss so to speak is what I envy. As long as by “consulting” you mean actual strategic consulting and not “staff augmentation” If it’s work that I can set the hourly or project rate on I’ll take it. I mean I don’t ask or judge if the work is offered. But I guess I will find out if I am inheriting a half baked project suddenly given to me because all the wage workers were fired. The difference is that staff augmentation consulting inherits the same issues as being a mid level ticket taker - you still just a commodity developer competing with other commodity developers from all over the world who are willing to work for a lot cheaper than you would be. Just as a reminder to those in the US — while regular employees have rights to organize, "supervisors" are not subject to those protections, and attempting to organize in your workplace can be lawful grounds for dismissal. While there is some jurisprudence regarding supervisor status, you should be very careful as most highly-paid software engineers who are in any way involved in hiring meet at least some of the checks defined here: https://www.nlrb.gov/guidance/key-reference-materials/nation... Technological progress is a classic multipolar trap - an arms race where rational individuals take action that harms society as a whole. If you decide to not play in the game, you lose the game. There will always be "defectors" that are willing to stay in the game and gain massive economic advantages over the Luddites as a result. When you think about the power structures of the modern world, there are virtually no examples where the powerful have gained power by swearing off modern technology - that would be a political non-starter. But we do see countless examples of powerful technologists simply crushing the cultures that stand in their way. Rational people see this and act according to their self-interested desire to not get crushed. All that is to say, I don't think a strike based on AI protection will succeed. A strike based on more fundamental workplace and human rights, possibly. But a reactionary anti-technology strike ain't going to happen. I wouldn't place bets on anything Zuckerberg has to say for future predictions given how insanely overvalued social media companies are. It's his job to keep the stock price up and people are keeping their ears tuned into "AI" as if it's some magical productivity panacea. Why do you consider the social media companies overvalued? In a consumer economy driven by advertising and influencing, with billions in online shopping, social media are very well placed to dip into those large money streams (and they do). Of course one should always consider what motivations lie behind a persons statement. And be distrustful of people trying to make a gigabuck. Bluntly? “Vibes” I’m skeptical given how common of a sentiment it is that Facebook and Instagram are dead. Over the last few years they’ve been adding more and more “suggested” content in the feeds and then there’s talk of adding AI-generated content. Why would a site flush with activity need to generate it’s own content? I’d expect AI-generated content from a site getting off the ground to try attracting users, I wouldn’t expect it as a potential mainstay for a site that’s confident of their relevancy. That said, Meta deserves credit for an impressive launch of Threads and may very well be able to pull it off with another type of social networking site (YouTube competitor anyone?), but the Meta brand is feeling dated. Additionally, more states are looking into clamping down privacy laws and social media use by <18yr olds. Yeah a particular company like Meta might be in for a challenging time. Mostly due to competition from the other social media companies. So the entire class of social media companies as a whole is very well positioned. Fighting technological progress is consistently a losing strategy unless: 1. You can take some extremely expensive or geographically irreplaceable assets out of commission while doing it. See port workers. 2. You realize that one day it will all come crashing down, and very suddenly and that you must save very aggressively for that day. Forklift drivers and manufacturing workers making 90K a year until their employers collapsed in 2008 and that freed them of union contracts. This is exacerbated by tech being a high cycle industry, with a lot of new entrants and large firms (beyond the largest) often dying or collapsing, so chaining a few major players with contracts is unlikely to protect the industry as a whole. There isn't a scenario where AI engineers exist and we all keep our nice tech jobs long term as they are (handwriting code). It doesn't help that in a large factory, having 70% onboard is enough to stop a plant. In tech, if 30% break rank, the thing is still getting built. Need to figure out where the ball is going. Trying to protect your job against AI - if it ever becomes good enough - and the efficiency gains that will hypothetically come from it, is like protecting your job against IDEs. You take Zuckerberg seriously and believe his thought is of value. You are wrong. He is wrong. My belief is that we are over optimized for a particular situation that is ultimately unsustainable. You cannot make money if no one can pay you. That is the most serious issue corporations face right now. If you want some sense of that, ask yourself how the stock market is doing versus income. Then ask if it is sustainable for the stock market to do well people do not have money to spend. There was an interesting, to me, discussion about cargo cultism recently. You have seen "cargo" appear and so you think it is caused by the observable factors. And perhaps we can generalize the term: Cargo cultism: The belief that you know how to achieve a result when you do not understand the process that produces the result. We do not understand the effects of AI at this point. It is likely that AI will help people become more productive programmers. But this is a two edged sword for Mark. What happens if I say "AI: write a version of FaceBook in Rust". Or "AI: write a new a library in Rust that reads, writes and displays all files supported by Microsoft Word"? Hey for now I would settle for an AI that converted all my JavaScript files to TypeScript and back again so I get the benefit of types without the bother. The stock market is based on companies getting revenue worldwide not just in the US. > AI: write a version of FaceBook in Rust" If you had all of the source code to Facebook today and could set up the servers, you still couldn’t create a better Facebook. Microsoft has enough money to compete and create something as good as Google. But still was never able to beat Google Chrome or Google search. > AI: write a new a library in Rust that reads, writes and displays all files supported by Microsoft Word Today there is plenty of open source code that does well enough in reading and writing Word files there has been third party code to read and write Word since the 1990s. Yet Microsoft has maintained its dominance. Like what I said in HN: all AI development, especially the algorithm part, should be paused until we all get some basic income at least because it has the potential of destroying many jobs in a short period of time. It is not to abandon the road completely, but to plan ahead and avoid the train wreck. But of course people just want to move ahead. I know I can't fight the future. I'm fine with that. I'm an old man over 40. I'm going to be obsolete in about 10 years. I'll be debt free and some half million in cash and small passive income too. And you can do whatever you want. Apres moi... If you or anyone else is interested in the idea, you really should join an existing union or form a union in your workplace. A strike, even a small strike, requires that almost all of your coworkers are organized and in agreement. A strike is the last negotiating tactic when all previous negotiations have failed. You need to already be negotiating collectively before calling a strike. If you are interested in organizing, I recommend reaching out to CWA:
https://cwa-union.org/ We are currently seeing an undeclared capital strike against workers. It’s completely infeasible, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see significant movements inside individual companies or small groups of large companies. As corny as LinkedIn often is, I saw an interesting take recently that I can't be bothered to find right now, but I'll attempt to paraphrase: If AI can truly replace me at scale, I'll direct it to make billions of dollars. Why should we be afraid of AI taking our jobs, our companies should be afraid of what we can now quickly create to compete against them. Luddite technologists. What a time. Don't you want robots cleaning your toilets so you don't have to? A strike won't stop that from happening. Why is engineering work any different? In the fifth century BC, there was a secessio plebes in Rome - a strike - which won demands for the plebians.pleasant. In 1877 there was a nationwide railroad strike in the US which was put down by federal troops - it failed in the short term but led to some more scraps being doled back to workers. It is feasible, but industry wide strikes don't just happened. Companies can move software jobs overseas easier than factories, so international solidarity is important - something US labor has notoriously been poor at. It can happen, but a lot of work and time and effort and defeats would happen first. It starts on a small scale, with an enormous amount of effort to build up. The momentum of the past 75 years have been things going in the other direction in the US. Not feasible at all. If AI is going to succeed to that degree (I have doubts), then it only has to succeed in that degree anywhere. Are you going to successfully organize such a strike in India? China? North Korea? No, you aren't. New technology is here. Those who refuse to use it are going to get run over by those who use it well (if it's all that useful). Second point is that worker strikes are a thing of the past. If you want to strike, it is the consumers that have the power. So rather than getting all programmers to get together, have all users of Facebook just stop using it for one week. In my opinion only. What about Zuckerberg's track record on tech progress makes you think a claim like that is worth taking seriously? First they came for the taxi drivers… Even though this post it utter nonsense per se, it's kind of refreshing to see how the 2021 arrogance of the SWE job market turned tables...jokes on who? Actively resisting technological progress is a great way to make sure you are unemployable and the company you work for is bankrupt. If you really think that you will be replaced, you already are valueless to your company. (Pro tip: If you are valueless, striking is the surest way to get fired) Bold to propose such a thing in a haven of libertarians and temporarily embarrassed billionaires Sure — let's all meet in the metaverse to coordinate.
The former will prevent 100x tickets from ever being created, while the latter will be the cause There's two types of 10x developers
1) those like Knuth
2) those that complete 10 the number of jira tickets
I am not a lawyer but if you are considering getting involved in workplace activism, I strongly recommend that you consult with one. (11) The term "supervisor" means any individual having authority, in the interest of the employer, to hire, transfer, suspend, lay off, recall, promote, discharge, assign, reward, or discipline other employees, or responsibly to direct them, or to adjust their grievances, or effectively to recommend such action, if in connection with the foregoing the exercise of such authority is not of a merely routine or clerical nature, but requires the use of independent judgment.