I’m kind of sick of being a dev. I hate AI with a passion.
I hate the hallucinations, I hate slop, I hate megacrops, I hate the environmental impacts, I hate the massive costs. I could go on but you get the picture.
At work I often times have to review vibe code slop from people who clock in 9 to 5 and don’t give a fuck (I respect that, I just wish your fucking code wasn’t slop)
I’m sick of it, I’m sick of hearing about AI tooling or new models or bro agentic actions bro based on your documentation bro.
I want to switch careers, so which career is not ruined by AI?
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I’m in building maintenance. It’s not affected at all by AI. Most of the trades are safe. Basically anything which would require both advanced LLM and advanced robotics to replace.
Plumbing is fairly safe from any kind of automation and also well paid.
They do use robots for pipe inspection and minor repairs, but that’s about the extend of what the clankers will ever be able to do.
I think there will be a lot of openings for Revolutionaries. Whether you are a planner, cook, maintenance, driver, prefer to educate or provide healthcare, or if you fancy yourself a fighter, I’m sure there is a role for you!
I did this 9 years ago. I make 2/3rds of what I did in software, but I don’t regret it. pivoted to environmental work. My job satisfaction is like, a thousand percent better.
Can you say any more about the type of environmental work?
Physical stuff. Electrician, plumber, HVAC. I do IT and networking primarily on the physical side which is an option. I wouldn’t suggest buying fully into the “trades make lots of money” propaganda but once you’re established you’ll be comfortable and they’re all jobs that can’t be automated or offshored.
Be realistic about the pay drop though if you decide to go this route. I would kill to be a slop dev because it would pay like twice what I’m getting right now, but I’m still pretty junior in my field.
a career in poisoning AI
Alas, they’re not paying for that. They’re not paying for what they need to achieve their goals either.
I’m picking up furniture making. Handcrafted furniture will always be needed
What? Ikea wrecked that a long time ago. Not that you can’t make a living but the demand isn’t high in any way whatsoever. Hand crafted furniture has become a luxury.
Hand crafted furniture has become a luxury
So you make more money selling them. I see no issues.
No issues, just become a master craftsmen and compete with other master craftsmen. Easy.
Bring back guilds.
The issue is in finding buyers who have enough money to spend on those luxury goods.
I feel like luxury goods are harder to into in terms of career change and it’s a bit off to characterize them as always needed.
The market for high quality furniture never went away. And if we enter a global depression, a local furniture maker will again be a necessity
If we enter a depression, people will have less money to spend on luxuries. I just think the percentage of people buying hand made furniture is kind of low. I think most people “buy” them from friends and family doing it as a semi-hobby, or are rich, at least in my experience.
Not trying to be overly critical, just saying it’s not easy.
As a side note, I’ve noticed no one makes nice wooden informational kiosks with integrated touch screen even though orgs like museums would likely buy them over plastic and metal ones. Just an idea if you were looking for a niche product.
I said necessity, not luxury… If we enter a global depression, there won’t be cheap IKEA furniture anymore
Join us, become a tradie. Get a company vehicle. Work with your hands. Become enough of an expert in your trade that you can tell customers to go fuck themselves if they’re dicks. Have every company in the area be desperate to hire you because every trade is short handed. Work with people who barely understand the concept of a computer. Spend half of every paycheck on milwalkee packout tool boxes. Never have to work with AI again.
My preference is HVAC-R but plumber or electrician are also good choices. Building automation may seem attractive but then you’re getting close to the AI danger zone again.
A couple of thoughts on this as a union electrician: for starters AI is absolutely having an (arguably negative) impact on manpower fulfillment. In my area the massive expansion of data centers is causing a manpower shortage for all projects not funded by massive tech companies. This is complicated because it’s inflating income for tradesmen due to demand, but it’s also pressuring workers into ridiculous schedules (think 4x10s, 2x8s, and most Sundays) and is forcing contractors that aren’t running data center work to completely rework their payment structure and bid practices. Many of these sites are also a 1-2 hour commute for a large number of tradies. A lot of these guys have been gaslit for decades into thinking working more OT somehow makes them a better person.
Beyond that, while I haven’t personally seen it yet AI will absolutely begin worming its way into design; a process already riddled with issues and errors largely due to time constraints. Clients are going to want work done faster and cheaper, which will pressure design teams into using AI tools in the name of expediency, which will lead to more errors in the construction process, leading to inflated costs and likely problematic installations.
That’s not even getting into the future of AI robotics which absolutely will be impacting our tradesmen directly in the near future.
It’s coming for us too.
I’m not an electrician, but I have a relative that is. You nailed it. We’ve got a couple DCs going up near by, and he was asked to commit to a 2 year commitment for just one of them, working exactly the hours you said. He agreed because I think they are paying double time for all OT, and that’s good money. They asked if he wanted to sign on for the other DC but he declined for the obvious time reasons. It’s definitely had an effect on available workers for other projects since seemingly all hand are on deck.
I’m not familiar with the architecting process, but I can absolutely see how AI will be, if not already, involved with generating plans. It will shit something out faster than anyone could create it, but it will lose that value in review and the inevitable mistakes that make it through. AI is a cancer
i went into a dying trade in my 20s ugh and stuck with it now i’m too old to start a new one outside of maybe CDL. so yeah make sure you are physically up to it first (i am in very good shape for my age and look 10 years younger but i would be obliterated by the multiple year “break in” apprentice period again and likely would just get in a fist fight with someone trying to “break me” and destroy them and go to prison or vice versa)
Maybe I just skipped it because I was a factory tech for a while but there was no “breaking” in my experience. The worst we have is a tendancy to throw aprentices into being full techs a bit too quick sometimes.
Ironically, the three trades you listed are in high demand right now specifically because of the rapid rollout of the data centers needed to power AI.
Anything that’s based on physical work or human contact. Trades, medical/social work, psychology, emergency workers…
Psychology? A lot of folks are already using ai as a virtual therapist
That is the equivalent of saying “we don’t need doctors since we can put bandaids on wounds”
Psychology is about a lot more that what LLMs can do
Doesn’t mean psychology can’t be ruined by AI anyway.
so is art or even programming for that matter, but here we are.
Anything that requires physical work. Manufacturing, trades, etc… But, there’s the caveat that AI may still indirectly affect these too.
I feel ya. But the pendulum will probably swing back the other way soon and we’ll have a ton of companies hiring to undo/replace slop code. That’s how it has been for previous coding fads, anyway.
I’m so tired of my skill and income being beholden to the whims of bullshit artists though.
[off topic?]
I recommend this book to anyone thinking about a career change.
“Discover What You Are Best At.” Linda Gail. Six self tests you can finish in half a day, and a list of jobs that use those skills. Jobs range from zero new training to post college.
Really helped me when I was looking for career advice.
Horticulture is nice. You get most of the benefits of a trade and honest manual work (outside of union protections in most cases), but it’s also a deeply interdisciplinary science that lets you impact the world in a lot of different ways while forcing you to touch and understand grass. With the same garden I get to do creative, intellectual, manual, and political work with really interesting spatiotemporal angles. There’s public education and anthropology and ecological utility in choosing one plant over another based on analysing the site across all the physical sciences, then lifting heavy rocks to achieve something that benefits my neighbours and wildlife pets. Most of my coworkers are natural scientists of some kind so we spend all day in the sun having interesting conversations about the landscape and urbanism.
There is the (more difficult) option of finding a dev job for an older tech conservative company. My workplace has just barely rolled out access to copilot chat. Our devs are still doing things without the slop.
Look at the more heavily regulated business sectors, they tend to be more resistant to tech fads.
I feel this. I relatively recently pivoted into dev work for my career. I really enjoy it because we haven’t forced AI into our workflows… Yet. We had a couple devs run an experiment to see who could finish an app first, where one generated as much as they could and another did it all manually. It wasn’t even close. The manual job was faster to completion and good.
Unfortunately for me, my time is being split and I’ve been tasked to upskill on all of the different automation and AI tools that we have, because dumbass VPs drank the Kool aid, bought shit, and didn’t hire experience to configure and run those tools. I’ve been reading so much garbage trying to master copilot studio, and honestly it’s the worst product I’ve ever had to work with. I’m going to be having a heart to heart with my manager in the near future, and if I’m still stuck on the AI shit, I’m bouncing. I’ll use what time I have to bolster my dev skills and leaving. If I can’t find a dev job, it looks like I’ll be pivoting my career again, and I’ve been thinking something like electrician. Honest work, not has hard on the body as say construction, and I feel it could still be mentally engaging compared to some other trades.
God speed on your future endeavors. Fuck AI.
