There are no proper jobs, whatever you do. There is no security. Don't listen to this CEO, a trade won't help either.
this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2026
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I'm a mechanic.
a trade won't help
This is why I'm a mechanic. Forklifts have to work, or nobody works. Whether industry is rising or falling, something has to put it up and take it down.
I'll get paid in rice and beans to fix someone's truck after the collapse. New boss? Same rules. Machines have to work, or nobody works.
HVAC specialists and cooling systems experts will probably be in high demand to keep the future AI overlord datafarms frpm overheating. They'll become the new priest class lol
I'm genuinely waiting for the calls to start back up. Every 3-4 years i get several calls from some of the big contacts i used to service asking if I'm available. I might just say yes this next time and quote done insane price and see where it gets me.
Adepts mechanicus
Bingo. This is really dark but we used to do this as kids in the 90s when there was a similar fear of WW3 with Iraq. Shit hits the fan what can you do? Is your job worthwhile in a society where shit hits the fan? All the techbros are fucked. If you can fix a tractor? Or garden? Or sew? Build stable structures?
Computers were a mistake 🤣
Same, I specialise in cranes and I work on the Liebherr harbour cranes that load ships.
The goods won't stop,
If the goods stop everything stops and even then I can fix your car or lawn mower.
The down side is every year I get closer and closer to being unable to perform my job due to my body slowly deteriorating.
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Eh, I'm not buying the complete doom'n'gloom perspective. Complex skilled labor is still very difficult to automate.
If everyone floods that market, they'll be minimum wage jobs. The media always starts promoting various industries when the rich want to weaken labor power in that sector.
The article gives the example of a bartender. Not as much skill as other jobs but yes I’d expect that to be difficult to automate. Especially profitably. But that’s a far cry from claiming that is a job that can support a family with a middle class lifestyle, or that all of us white collars can do it and still expect good oay
Some aspects of a bartender's job are already automated - there are "robot bars" where machines prepare and serve drinks. What can't be automated are the human aspects of the job, as much as AI can mimic conversation, it can't do empathy or really any genuine emotion which is an important aspect of a bartender/server's job
A pub near me has a serve-yourself beer wall that works pretty well without a bartender. It meters by the ounce but that means everything has to be the same price.
I have no idea if that would scale to larger, busier places or where people are likely to get drunk.
That approach wouldn’t work for cocktails but there’s no reason you can’t have a drink maker for at least the most common stuff. But that doesn’t work for crowds or personal service, and could never cover the vast number of possible combinations
A place near me has this too, and it's usually very empty. The thing is that it is not that serving beers and mixed liquids isn't automatable; it's that nobody is going to sit on a bar stool and talk to a kegerator.
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I went to a taphouse like this. You were issued a lanyard with an rfid chip in it that was linked to your tab. You’d scan the chip on the tap you wanted, and pour as much or little as you like into your glassware of choice. It had the price listed on the description screen for each tap, and would charge according to what you poured, down to a pretty small amount, because you control the tap handle. Want to try a small splash for a quarter? You can!
So yes it absolutely can scale larger. This place has I think 50+ taps, and because they only needed a few people for staff for dozens of tables (they had a limited cold food menu or it could have been one person easily), the overhead seemed like it was pretty low.
We went at an off-time, but they said they stay pretty busy on weekends and stuff.
Your asking these people to put a value on empathy?
Their thinking: A customer wants a drink. Have the robot liquor dispenser create any drink the customer needs, and collect payment. Repeat as necessary. What else is required?
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I didn't mean this in a doom kind of way. In many ways we have it pretty good nowadays, but some people don't want to hear it. We have it really bad in lots of ways as well.
Electrical, plumbing, HVAC are all pretty solid.
You aren't outsourcing it. AI can't take it. It's manual labor.
People will pay a lot to keep shit from flowing into their house.
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Knowing a trade, or even two, will serve you your entire life. There will always be someone in demand of your services.
As an older computer guy, I can relate and would never prevent someone from getting a certification in a manual job.
It's a bit of a shitshow for software engineers in France. Most job offers are about fullstack/web stuff, the kind of software that is the most easily generated by AI.
AI is not destroying software jobs yet, but companies are definitely laying the ground for automation and layoffs, whether they do it on purpose or not.
I'm looking for more industrial job offers and it's a bit hard to find. I could go freelance and work remotely, but I have never done this before and I lack the time to do that. It was bad ten years ago but I still had hope, now I will get the first job that accepts me. And in 5 or 10 years I'm not sure I'll have any choice left but to switch to another kind of job.
As for the idea that "new jobs will emerge," I dont believe it.
Sorry for the rant.
I think there's a lot of people not realizing that the AI works better (as in "hallucinates less and it's mediocrity is better accepted") in office jobs than in specialized blue-collar jobs.
But as a web developer I gotta also point out that usually AIs just can't work decently within actual codebases of already existing software, and leaving an AI to do all the job usually means having to deal with shitty code that barely works or situations where things look like they're working but actually isn't properly. Moreover, even desktop software tends to bloat inevitably. The latest example is the Windows Notepad that takes 30mb just to open an empty .txt file. You also can't work with AI proficiently with technologies that aren't widely used
As a DevOps guy, automation has already greatly impacted software development. I’ve made a good career from being the guy that makes it so. However we’ve always had enough growth that it hasn’t noticeable reduced the number of jobs.
I’m ambivalent about AI. Companies clearly want it to reduce jobs but so far it is only good enough to be a tool to make developers slightly more efficient. I have a hard time believing that replacing developers could be successful without huge improvements in the technology
Developers who rely on AI are up to 19% slower than users who don't use AI because AI needs constant babysitting
Trade jobs are cool and all, but fuck this guy
Sure. They said that about degrees a couple of decades ago and then outsourced all the jobs. They'll do the same thing to these vocational jobs.
Only so much outsourcing you can do for trade work. Indians living in India can't exactly fix your pipes remotely.
You know. After declaring a teacher shortage, they imported teachers from Mexico. They could import plumbers, carpenters, or a lot of people that aren't computer savvy. They need them for the corporate owned housing.
Seems unlikely in my country (the US) given the current political climate.
Oh it won't be long till those kept in ICE concentration camps start being used as slave labor
I dunno I don't really foresee armies of ICE laborers being let out of detention to come fix your HVAC...to arrive more back at the point.
They already do this with inmates, and ICE centers are a form of incarceration. If it gets easier, it's not hard to imagine them being used as "unskilled" labor.
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“Go work in the fields… we deported everyone there already”
Plenty of those "Black jobs" waiting. Say thank you to MAGA for getting those immigrants out of the fields, so black people can go back to doing what makes them happiest.
/S, because there are people who actually believe this.
Yeah...let me know when the wealth class stops sending their kids to college and start sending them to trade schools instead.
Bs. Looks like it’s based on over-exuberant tech predictions and a study that “Bartenders and baristas are even seeing bigger pay raises than desk workers, right now”. There’s even a line about being prepared for any new jobs that might appear without connecting that to whether an education is likely to make you more prepared
"...Gen Z grads need to consider jobs that keep them impoverished."
Bet he doesn't give his kids the same advice, also the article only quotes CEO no labor leaders.
I hate to say it, but the same rules don’t apply to his kids or other kids with parents in similar roles. They are going to be given jobs without much effort.
Rich guy says you need to be disposable grist for the mill.
Yup. I went back to school a few years ago after being burned out.
I studied to be a developer because I like building things and problem solving. Finished a couple years ago. I spent a year looking for a job but I could only get one call back. And they still ghosted me after.
Maybe it’s me, but I’ve always been good with resumes and interviews before.
There aren’t many junior developer jobs out there. And if there are any, the don’t pay a livable wage anymore.
I'm not going to write that big corporations went into hiring freeze for office jobs in developed countries and made a list of countries they are allowed to hire for office jobs. Your country is not on the list, you won't be hired. They're spending their money on robots, computers and AI. That's what you get from monopolies.
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