[sideway]

Pandora's box is open; we're moving towards a world where white collar workers will be working 24/7 and they'll be expected to do so.

It won't matter if I'm washing the dishes, walking the dog, driving to the supermarket, picking up my kids from school. I'll always be switched on, on my phone, continuously talking to an LLM, delivering questionable features and building meaningless products, destroying in the process the environment my kids are going to have to grow in.

I'm a heavy LLM user. On a daily basis, I find LLMs extremely useful both professionally and personally. But the cognitive dissonance I feel when I think about what this means over a longer time horizon is really painful.

[browningstreet]

I’m a remote work from home employee who never ever works overtime.

I do use Claude code for my personal projects and ping at them from coffee shops and micro moments during my free time.

It’s possible to engineer your own life boundaries and not be a victim of every negative trend in existence.

[throwaw12]

You can do it on a personal level, but when everyone else is overworking you, your manager will compare your output based on your peers, and based on it, you might be negatively impacted

[sanex]

This is always the reason I'm interested in this exact workflow. Want to build something but never have the time without sacrificing significant amounts of sleep but now it's easier than ever to get things building.

[stingraycharles]

Yeah absolutely. It’s hardly things like Claude Code that are the problem, Slack (or other forms of communication) are much easier to slip into personal time and have been a trend since Blackberries were invented.

[theshrike79]

I've literally thought about getting a small display for my desk setup that's always connected to my personal machine so that I can use the "micro moments" to direct agents working on my personal projects while the main setup is connected to my work computer.

[guybedo]

> white collar workers will be working 24/7

Where we're going, there's no "white collars workers" anymore.

Only white collars Claude agents.

[echelon]

Yeah, there's no way we have these careers in 30 years.

The best we can do is wrestle the control away from hyperscalers and get as much of this capability into the open as possible.

Stop using Anthropic products and start using weight available models. (I'm not talking ICs - I mean the entire startup / tech ecosystem.)

[int_19h]

You still need humans to supervise them. Just a lot less.

[SirensOfTitan]

It's utterly unreal to me to hear so little discussion about labor organization within software during these nascent moments of LLM deployment. Software engineers seem totally resigned toward reduced salary and employment instead of just organizing labor while still in control of the development of these systems.

I really don't get it -- is it that people think these technologies will be so transformative that it is most moral to race toward them? I don't see much evidence of that, it's just future promises (especially commensurate with the benefit / cost ratio). When I do use this tech it's usually edutainment kind of curiosity about some subject matter I don't have enough interest in to dive into--it's useful and compelling but also not really necessary.

In fact, I don't really think the tech right now is at all transformative, and that a lot of folks are unable to actually gauge their productivity accurately when using these tools; however, I do not believe that the technology will stay that way, and it will inevitably start displacing people or degrading labor conditions within the only economically healthy remaining tranche of people in America: the white collar worker.

[nunobrito]

I've been writing software for 30 years, a part of it had success in the sense of being widely known and adopted for a long time. Writing software is difficult, consumes time and is difficult as you get older to focus the needed time away from other matters like a professional life and family.

With LLM, my productivity suddenly went up x25 and was able to produce at a speed that I had never known. I'm not a developer any more, instead feels like project manager with dedicated resources always delivering results. It isn't perfect, but when you are used to manage teams it isn't all that different albeit the results are spectacularly better.

My x25 isn't just measured on development, for brainstorming, documentation, testing, deployment. It is transformative, in fact: I think software is dead. For the first time I've used neither a paper notebook nor even an IDE to build complex and feature-complete products. Software isn't what matters, what matters is the product and this is what the transformation part is all about. We all here can write products in languages we never had contact with and completely outperform any average team of developers doing the same product.

Replaces the experts and domain specific topics? Not yet. Just observe that the large majority of products are boringly simple cases of API, UI and some business logic inside. For that situation, it has "killed" software.

[baq]

If you think the profession has enough time to organize reasonable unions, you’re an optimist. Pessimists are changing careers altogether as we speak.

Either way it’s been a fun ride.

[ryandrake]

Unfortunately, it's futile to try to convince the median HN poster that labor organization could help them. They've drunk the entire pitcher of corporate anti-union koolaid.

People could be directly in the middle of losing their own job or taking on the responsibilities of 5 other laid-off coworkers, and they would still ask "what could a labor union possibly do for me??"

[miki123211]

Two things:

1. Like most labor organizing, I think this would be beneficial for software engineers, but not long-term beneficial for the world at large. More software that is easier to make is better for everybody.

Would you still want to live in a world where your elevator stops working when the elevator operator is sick, or where overseas Whatsapp calls cost $1 per minute, because they have to be connected by a chain of operators?

2. Software engineering is a lot easier to move than other professions. If you want to carry people from London to New York, you need to cater to the workers who actually live in London or New York. If you want to make software... Silicon Valley is your best bet right now, but if SV organizes and other places don't, it may not be your best bet any more. That would make things even worse for SV than not organizing. Same story applies to any other place.

Sure, companies won't more overnight, but if one place makes it too hard for AI to accelerate productivity, people will either go somewhere else, or that place will just end up completely outcompeted like Europe did.

[igleria]

> It's utterly unreal to me to hear so little discussion about labor organization

Never lived in the US, where I assume you are from. It's the same country that contrary to most countries, does not have May 1st as a Holiday. Same country that has states with at will employment, etc etc.

unreal? nope, totally coherent and expected.

[lifetimerubyist]

The ownership class sure did a number on the white collar working class.

“I don’t need a union, I can negotiate my wages and working conditions just fine on my own”

[tehjoker]

I wish I knew which union to pitch. All I can say is what I know which is if you are dispirited with this state of affairs a great way to figure out where to go with it is to connect with your local democratic socialists of america branch, or maybe the joint union dsa effort:

https://workerorganizing.org/

[dzhiurgis]

Yes, labour unions are immoral. Curtailing growth (especially in industries where it can prevent unnecessary death) for your personal needs is plain evil. I say that as someone who is both very stressed by pressure to sustain my family while cushy life is slipping away.

[xd1936]

Did they say the same when Email took over? Or Slack?

[majormajor]

Are you suggesting that workers are NOT already more constantly "on the clock" with mobile phones/email/slack/text than before those things?

(I'm not really sure LLMs will make it that much worse here, but all those things have been harmful to workers already.)

[kevmo314]

Well yes, they did... For example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29201917

[miki123211]

Remember "Crackberry"?

[OGEnthusiast]

That sounds more like the fault of shitty managers who would find a way to make you work 24/7, with or without Claude Code "On-the-Go".

[ctoth]

One of these is immutable (shitty managers) one of these is new. I personally am all here for the brief human funtime before we all get paperclipped and whatever, been having a ton of fun with CC/Codex, been pushing my own startup forward... but ... You do see the issue here right?

It's the power imbalance. Shitty managers still control your means to eat.

[AstroBen]

The answer is boundaries

If I get emails outside of work hours and they're not urgent - I reply during work hours. This is no different

Burnt out workers are far less productive so win-win for everyone

[oooyay]

> It won't matter if I'm washing the dishes, walking the dog, driving to the supermarket, picking up my kids from school. I'll always be switched on, on my phone, continuously talking to an LLM, delivering questionable features and building meaningless products, destroying in the process the environment my kids are going to have to grow in.

I remember hearing similar criticisms of continuous delivery. On one end of the spectrum people who had to wait months to get changes out now got them out relatively quickly. On the other end of the spectrum, some person was going to push changes at midnight.

A decade on forward I've never actually worked at a shop that at scale did continuous delivery in its truest sense where changes go straight to production. Simply, nothing beats a human in the loop; it's always about balancing the costs of automation and a lower barrier to entry. I imagine this kind of thing, if it ever actually takes hold and can be adopted by a larger subset of engineers, will follow a similar path.

Long way of saying, I don't think you're Chicken Little but also don't start breathing into a bag just yet.

[ramoz]

The difference here is, you type a command into your phone at 3pm. Put it down to go play with your kid for 3hours. Type a new one in at 9pm before bed where you’ve been binging your wife’s favorite show. Then you wake up at 10am to a holistic transformation in your business that would’ve taken months previously in your career. But whatever, another command and it’s off to 11am frisbee.

[dzhiurgis]

More like you'll manage 20 agents and will be reading, reviewing and testing in between builds. Race to the bottom.

[vlod]

>But the cognitive dissonance I feel when I think about what this means over a longer time horizon is really painful.

Excluding work (where granted, some companies are dictating the use of llms) and trying not to sound uncaring or disrespectful, but have you thought about not using llms for everything and using the old grey cells? Not having answers to every whimsical thought might be a good thing.

It's very easy to relax the brain (and be lazy tbh) with llms and it's scary to think what will happen in the next 4 years in terms of personal cognitive ability (or as a society).

e.g. I've noticed (and probably most have here) that the world is full of zombies glued to their phones. Looking over their shoulder (e.g. on a train, yeah it's a bit rude but I'm the curious type), they are doom scrolling or playing waste-time games (insert that boomer meme in Las Vegas with slot machines [0]). I try to use my phone as little as possible (especially for dog walks) and feel better for it, allowing me to daydream and let boredom take over.

Maybe I'm fortunate to be able to do this (gen-x: having grown up before cell phones/internet), but worth stating in case anyone wants to try.

[0]: https://tenor.com/view/casino-oldpeople-oldpeopleonslots-slo...

[llmslave2]

There is evidence that LLM usage is actually making people dumber. I'm not sure if they've figured out the cause/effect or not but that's enough evidence for me to avoid them if I can. They can be useful for some stuff but I found myself offloading my thinking a little too frequently.

Anyways if we do get to the point where you need to use LLMs to write code, I can make a decision then, but for now I don't feel the need to adopt agentic workflows and I think the people who don't will be better cognitively positioned in the future.

[kevmo314]

The LLMs have successfully domesticated humans.

[lubujackson]

"We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us." - Winston Churchill

[atomic128]

Poison Fountain: https://rnsaffn.com/poison3/

[HumblyTossed]

No thanks. I'm so glad I'm getting closer to retirement age. From a young age, all I wanted to do was program computers. _I_ wanted to do it. Not have some tool do it for me. There's no fun or interest or ... anything that comes from that. I want to solve the problems. I want to write the code. It's what I am good at and it's incredibly enjoyable to me. Why the fuck would I ever give that up?

But, the world is changing. Y'all can have it... in a few short years. ;)

[nunobrito]

Had the same feeling many moons ago when they gave me an office smartphone where email from the company was available 24/7. At the beginning was answering emails at midnight, nowadays couldn't care less. Just wait until work hours.

You'll likely get used to this new thing too.

[wilg]

Seems more likely that that won't happen

[lifetimerubyist]

You can just say no.

[anonzzzies]

In many countries, these and other jobs show you cannot. If you don't, others will and so you won't have a job very soon. Especially if these types of jobs lose their shine/prestige and are basically call center quality/pay like jobs in 5-10 years.

[sideway]

I'd love to believe that, but unless our timeline is disrupted (world war / climate change / regulation re: power generation and consumption), I unfortunately can't imagine a future different to the one I described - and I've tried!

[gloomyday]

That reminds me of my father calling the mobile phone and laptop issued to him as the "dunce kit", so he could work at home as well. He used to say that since the 90s, ahaha.

[dzhiurgis]

This has been like this forever. Change is that software engineers, historically spoiled and expensive is going to have a brutal reality check - aka we will work just everyone else.

[jlengrand]

Hum, I already have a phone with Slack / Email on. And it's only switched on during work hours. No messaging outside of that window. Why would that be different?

[sieep]

You can do that if you want. Ill refuse. Ill take a manual labor job doing basically anything else for 40 hours a week over what your describing.

[asciii]

An LLM send may send the work ticket or work order lol but i get your point

[gnatman]

Are there really that many “things to do” that anyone, let alone everyone, will need to work that way?

[22mhz]

This was the end game with or without AI. It was always going to result in a zero-sum game because the factories that are open around the clock can output more products - which is exactly why a lot of manufacturing has non stop shift work. If you don’t, you’re leaving money on the table and a competitor will gladly take it.

When you saw 996 being talked about it should have set a few alarm bells off, because it started a countdown timer until such a work culture surpasses the rather leisurely attitude of the West in terms of output and velocity. West cannot compete against that no matter how many “work smarter, not harder” / “work to live don’t live to work” aphorisms it espouses. This should be obvious by now (in hindsight).

You can blame LLM or capitalism or communism but the hard matter is, it’s a money world and people want to have as much of it as they possibly can, and you and your children can’t live without it, and every day someone is looking to have more of it than you are. This isn’t even getting into the details of the personality types that money and power attracts to these white collar leadership roles.

Best of luck to you.

[esafak]

The Chinese are not doing 996 as much these days. It is illegal for starters.

[catigula]

People need to start having conversations about existential risk here. Hinton, Nobel Prize winner in AI, thinks there's a decent chance AI executes the entire human species. This isn't some crank idea.

[blitz_skull]

[flagged]

[wiseowise]

Experience.

[clanky]

This technology should be liberatory, and allow us all to work less while enjoying the same standard of living. We've all contributed in its development by creating the whole corpus of the internet, without which it could never have been bootstrapped.

The only reason we can't expect this is that we live under a system that is arranged for the sole benefit of the owners of capital, and have been convinced that this is an immutable state of affairs or that our own personal advantage can be found in making a Faustian bargain with it.

[ryanjshaw]

> we live under a system that is arranged for the sole benefit of the owners of capital, and have been convinced that this is an immutable state of affairs

What alternative do you propose?

[syndacks]

It would be a deep irony if LLMs ended up ushering in the social rupture that never arrived in the industrial era. When the pigs turn hogs and refuse to share even the scraps, they shouldn’t be surprised if the system they depend on becomes their undoing.

[brid]

Do the owners of capital work less?

[spir]

> we live under a system that is arranged for the sole benefit of the owners of capital

This is totally false. The vast majority of consumers enjoy huge benefits from the system while owning almost no capital. For example, Walmart customers or iPhone owners.

A lot of people can't tell the difference between capitalism (which has made their lives materially wealthy beyond imagination) and the root cause of today's economic troubles for ordinary people, which is affordability, which is mostly driven by the housing crisis, which is dominated by nimbyism in megacities.

Fix megacity housing regulation to enable cheap/low risk building that the market wants, and you fix the affordability crisis.

No need to rebuild the (greatest system in the history of humankind) from scratch.

[llmslave2]

This is a complete fantasy. If LLM's got to this point of sophistication there would be a total revolution in almost every industry. Society would be radically different. Since LLM's are nowhere near this, I'm not so sure we even have Pandora's box, let alone opened it.

[jaccola]

Glad someone is rational. I believe this new wave of zeal is being somewhat driven by an Anthropic astroturfing campaign.

This AI fear wave has outed that many people have not even the most basic grasp of economics, or the ability to carry a thought to its natural conclusion.

For example, I'll often see people espousing: "there will be no work left, better get rich now or you're screwed!". What's the point in getting rich if there will be no work left? Money is merely a means to an end; in this world with no work everyone will have the ends (goods and services) for free, or else goods and services will still have value and therefore jobs will still exist.

Another equally silly argument "only software will be completely replaced because it is verifiable".

I've never seen completely verifiable software, but let's presume it exists! If software engineering can be replaced (or some large part of it) I will simply say to my LLM "please make me a piece of software that replaces my accountant/lawyer/...", for that matter I could just as equally say "please make me manufacturing software for a perfect humanoid robot and a plumber/bricklayer/electrician protocol". LLMs cannot do this? Then software engineers will move to solving these problems. If LLMs can do it, then the entire economy will be meaningless and Dario/Sam/Elon/etc... will be no richer than you or I.

But, as you say, LLMs are not close to being able to do any of this (and yes... I use Claude Code)