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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Naturally you can ask LeChat and you will probably get a sensible answer ;-) but in general jobs that deal with real people (sales, consulting, project management, politics, …) and real things (e.g. electrician, construction, gardener, creator of beautiful items (furniture, art), mechanic…)
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
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.
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.
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.
a career in poisoning AI
Anything that requires physical work. Manufacturing, trades, etc… But, there’s the caveat that AI may still indirectly affect these too.
[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.
Become a mechanical engineer on the operations side of electricity generation(stationary engineering, power engineering, steam entineering, instrumentation/controls, programming, tuning, etcetera). Shits been working out pretty well for me over the last decade. You don’t need a degree depending on state/country and the pay is excellent(usually but can vary based on state). Try not to work in a coal or trash plant. I got my degree but that was before I knew I wouldnt have technically needed it. The fuels will change but there’s always gonna need to be people maintaining the grid. Tons of different avenues to work within generation and you know you’re doing something that matters.
Wish I could tell ya. Im like just old enough that changing careers is rather monuental since I don’t really have time enough to get established. Something has to eventually give with the ai. either it goes away which I doubt or we need to restructure our societies.
Anything that’s done on site or with your hand. Forget about working from home or having your own hours though, most of the benefits you are used to won’t exist and it will be arguably harder work physically depending.
I’d pick something that can’t be automated since that’s also a risk even if it’s not directly AI. That means something to complicated for robots (not much), too big or messy, where it can’t be trusted entirely to robots (high safety like making plane parts) or most likely where robots can’t easily go (house plumbing and electricity for example).
A lot of trades and manual work pay very well but you have to look before hand, it’s definitely not all of them. Cooking jobs for example are pretty safe but don’t ever become a cook lol.
If you have dev experience, I’d go towards micro electronics. It’s too niche for AI to be good at it yet and has the physical part of prototyping and soldering that isn’t easily accessible by AI.
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.
Also a software eng (for now), genuinely thinking of starting my own barbershop lmao.
