this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2026
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AI is rapidly eroding any joy or satisfaction I once derived from my development job. It's being pushed hard despite its many problems and limitations, and I'm pretty sure they'll eventually be considering your AI leverage when determining raises, layoffs, etc. I know better than to voice my concerns about it, I've been around long enough to know when the company has its mind made up about something and expects everyone to get on board or get out of the way.
I don't know where to go to escape it, though. Every company seems to be going all-in on AI and I'm not sure what else I could do with my education and skill set. And it's not like my family can afford for me to take a pay cut in the current economy.
It's already started. Where I work, LLM usage has become the one single metric to judge who's a good and who's a bad software engineer. It's depressing and infuriating. I have very talented people on my team, but their low LLM usage makes them "worthless". Meanwhile some morons who have always been shit engineers are called "champions" because they burn 2000 Claude credits a month.
Things will get more expensive as the consequences of US foreign and domestic policy pile up. If your family can't afford you to take a pay cut, understand that your family will be under water within the next few years regardless of what you do, and prepare accordingly. Given you will not be able to get what you need with money, how can you increase your chances of getting it through other means?
For me, at least, the easiest option is to join solidarity networks. Unionizing, sharing appliances, dumpster diving, learning trades and skills from each other, cooking communally to reduce waste and save time, squatting, etc.
And if you can't afford to live given that, you'll be far from the only one. So maybe join the others that are trying to change the system.
Yeah it would've been nice if we'd done a bit more to sow class consciousness back when we had a modicum of bargaining power for, oh, maybe two generations there, but better late than never.
And remember, as bad as we get it our fellow workers in the global south are getting it so, so much worse.