Stephen's World

"Try not to get slammed by the door on the way in!"

I sometimes feel as though I got into tech just in time, at the last possible moment. Granted I missed out on the glory days of the dot-com boom, a time that - from an outsider's perspective - seemed like a halcyon moment for software engineers, when the internet was still becoming the all-consuming thing (for better and worse) that it is today.

Programming was much closer "to the metal" so to speak and was not yet embedded within layer upon layer of web-dev, framework abstractions, and the overall tech-stack requirements to make an entrepreneurial product were significantly simpler*. But I did, through much toil and effort, "make it" into this club we call tech. And now that I'm in and increasingly accumulating industry experience the world is my oyster, onwards and upwards and all that jazz...

But I don't think I can say the same for the next wave coming in. Because of (yes you guessed it) AI. As an engineer, AI is something I inevitable end up being asked for my "hot take" on. And in particular, often in hushed tones, I'm asked do I think that it will make my job obsolete. And the answer, for the moment anyway, is no - definitely not. Don't get me wrong, I've used ChatGPT and other AI tools to help me with some annoying fiddly bits (hello Reg-ex), and I even used it a little as an experiment when making Mixle. But currently I would rate ChatGPT's contributions to my workflow as akin to an overly confident intern: quick at getting answers, but don't trust it on key tasks - and definitely double check its work!

But things are not going to stay like this for long. Humans have a tendency to think of technological progression as something linear: e.g. if the 17th century had say 100,000 inventions then the 20th century must have had about the same rate of progress. However, I'm pretty sure you could take the average person from the 17th or 18th century and they would adapt significantly quicker to life in the Iron Age than to our modern world. And that is because technological and social progress was, from our point of view, at a snail's pace for most of human history. And that's because progress is not linear, it is exponential. And that is a very different beast. And it's something the human brain doesn't do a great job at comprehending. So technological and societal advances were very slow at the start of modern civilisation/early Neolithic, appearing like linear progress, but get quicker and quicker as exponential progress picks up momentum over time. And things are only going to continue advancing and changing ever faster and faster and faster - much faster than people's linear conception of progress is mentally preparing them for.

And that exponentially caused rapid change in the world is going to catch A LOT of people by surprise when they wake up one day and the world is completely different to what it was before.

This can perhaps be seen in its most extreme form when it comes to AI and tech. So when I say I'm not concerned about my cocksure AI assistant taking my job now, that doesn't mean it will stay so forever. But I think I'm safe because by the time AI can do my current job, I should have, just about, dodged the bullet and moved on to a different rung of my career. However, that leads to a concerning problem: how will white-collar industries select and train future employees when all of the tasks delegated to lower-ranking (and eventually mid-level) employees are now done by AI?

Tech is a particularly problematic industry for this. It takes a long time within the industry, and within a specific company and/or codebase, before one becomes productive. And when it comes to interns, many companies already currently shirk their duty** to the industry to hire them because they are often result in negative productive output - think interns introducing bugs, taking up senior engineer time, cost/time to onboard etc... But it's a necessary step on one's career to be an intern, and then a junior, and so on. And one cannot skip ahead and be a master at their craft; there is a reason why 10,000 hours of focused practice is considered a rule of thumb for mastery of a subject.

And this doesn't just apply to tech, but to white collar workers as a whole; blue-collar workers will likely be safer from this issue, at least until robots are developed that can autonomously do skilled manual crafts. I really wouldn't want to be a junior accountant in the upcoming decade, as I suspect a lot of the lower-level grunt work is going to be hit hard by AI automation. We've all heard the saying "you need experience to get a job, but you can't get a job without experience". Well how does one get their foot on the ladder when all the junior, and increasingly middle-level, positions no longer exist because AI does the tasks those workers used to do? Will things return to nepotism and the "good aul boys" networks of old: only a select few being groomed, at great cost over several years, for positions of seniority - often producing little value along the way, perhaps spending years economically-unproductively shadowing the leaders they are destined to one day replace? What will we do with those who cannot find work? In tech, it's often advised to work on a side project as a means both of professional growth, so self-improvement is always an option, but that doesn't apply to most white collar work as a means of gaining experience. So I guess future employees will be shit out of luck if they are not selected as a chosen protege inducted into the cadre of future corporate leaders; how very dystopian!

We currently already see a significant divide in demand between new/junior engineers struggling to get their foot in the door and the significant opportunities experienced engineers receive. And I can't help but think that divide, and the inequality it generates, is only going to get significantly worse in the future.

So yes, I think I got into tech JUST ABOUT in time. Not quite early enough to enjoy to enjoy the entrepreneurial green pastures of the dot-com boom. But not so late that it became impossible to get my foot in the door. But that door is closing fast for those looking to break into a lot of white-collar industries.

People just haven't realised it yet. So try not to get slammed by the door on the way in!

*Is it still rose-tinted glasses if you weren't there?

** Yes, I think it's a duty to hire interns and junior staff to ensure a healthy pool of future senior engineers, and yes I think your company are freeloading if you do not.