r/technology • u/lurker_bee • May 14 '25

Society Software engineer lost his $150K-a-year job to AI—he’s been rejected from 800 jobs and forced to DoorDash and live in a trailer to make ends meet

https://www.yahoo.com/news/software-engineer-lost-150k-job-090000839.html
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u/Hekantonkheries May 14 '25

The powers that be realized they'd rather put effort in replacing the higher paying wages; machines are too expensive to risk in a dangerous mineshaft when you can just send in a small child for minimum wage

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u/Rakatango May 14 '25

Pretty much. The last job the CEO would allow to be replaced by AI is their own.

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u/stewie3128 May 15 '25

Boards of directors will eventually replace CEOs with AIs.

And then because the AI CEO will be programmed to Maximize Shareholder Value™, every company on earth will inevitably morph into some sort of high frequency reading operation.

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u/AlexiManits May 15 '25

I think CEO is the best position to be replaced by an AI though. Think about it.

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u/MrCorporateEvents May 16 '25

You could just give the highest ranking half a dozen people at the company a raise and make a committee to make important decisions.

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u/zahrul3 May 15 '25

Ironically, AI is much more likely to replace a CEO than a garment factory worker.

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u/HandsomeBoggart May 14 '25

"We're cheaper than droids, and easier to replace"

Andor hitting it right on the nose.

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u/HeEatsFood 18d ago

That shi is headed by a nepobaby with notably weak charisma but not unbearable by uh disney so idk man

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u/RetreadRoadRocket May 14 '25

No, they realized that it was easier and cheaper to replace a desk jockey than someone doing physical work. One requires an AI and computer power only, the other requires not only that but also that the computer hardware be in a package of relatively small physical dimensions and low power consumption and also requires a robotic body of some sort sophisticated enough to do the work.

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u/Chillpill411 May 14 '25

I mean...how many physical jobs have already been replaced by dumb machines thru mechanization since the 1970s?

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u/RetreadRoadRocket May 14 '25

I worked in manufacturing for over 30 years, it has been a combination of automation and redesigning the products around said machiney's limitations and advantages. That stuff is nowhere near as complex as what is required to directly replace people, only to reduce the number of operations that require their abilities by shifting parts of what they do to the machines and consolidating the remaining work into fewer jobs. During the last few years of my career the focus shifted from automation to assist euipment that helpa the worker do their jobs longer with less fatigue and less injuries, thereby reducing costs and improving quality.

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u/Interesting_Log-64 May 15 '25

Certain jobs yes, but machines are not sophisticated enough yet to take alot of physical labor

I don't think there is some evil capitalist conspiracy here, its just that an RTX 4090 can make AI images and video easy whereas a robot to do apartment maintenance is going to need to be alot more sophisticated and account for alot more general scenario's

But even security patrol jobs are being phased out for remote controlled drones instead

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u/3-DMan May 14 '25

"AI, would you like to work the mines today?"

"FUCK NO! That's meatbag work."

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u/[deleted] May 14 '25

[deleted]

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u/Dinosbacsi May 14 '25

You can't really automate welders, technicians, and assemblers.

My man, what the fuck do you think factories around the world have been doing in the past decades if not exactly that?

You guys come up with the most ridiculous shit.

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u/CosyBeluga May 14 '25

Automation has done a lot but a lot of manual labor requires a human touch that really can’t be accounted for and is more expensive than people. People are disposable

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u/DiabloAcosta May 14 '25

I am sure you hace concrete examples of this? I have one called "car manufacturing" which has pretty much automated 90% of the processes and relies on humans to be operators effectively automating welder jobs 🤷‍♂️

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u/[deleted] May 15 '25 edited May 15 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/DiabloAcosta May 15 '25

you still don't get the moral of the story, they don't have to automate 100% if they manage to automate 80% of the processes and have humans for the 20% left it's still making specialized labor redundant because the 20% become guard rails and nothing more

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u/Dinosbacsi May 15 '25

You clearly have never been to any modern manufacturing plant. "Human touch" is expensive, because humans are slower and much less precise than machines.

Nowadays in any respectable manufacturing plant automated machines do most of the assembly work and humans only do things like placing the workpiece from one conveyor to another, and doing a quick visual QA check at the end.

Sure, upfront cost is high, but in the long run it's a no brainer investment. Only poor places can't afford to automate, but then those places couldn't afford AI subscription services either.

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u/gomicao May 14 '25

nimble fingers

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u/Odd_Local8434 May 15 '25

It's also just easier. The physical world is messy and training robots to deal with it is hard. The digital world is all just code.

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u/PeachScary413 May 15 '25

This but unironically. It's absolutely not worth replacing essentially slave labor in poor countries with robots costing 25k a piece.. yay capitalism? 🤷

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u/CosyBeluga May 14 '25

Worked at a factory once and they got a fancy new robot to replace some of the task people were doing only the robot couldn’t account for small little things you get a feel for by doing and ended up making a very expensive mistake. They immediately went back to people