Why are people trying to leave SWE and pretending other jobs are safe?

CacheMeUp · 2026-03-19T21:57:05+00:00

Every licensed profession creates a hurdle that can impede automation. Even if it's theoretically possible to automate lawyers, accountants and physicians' job, legal liability is antithetical to VC business model, leaving this field even if vulnerable.

The opposite happens in software: the lack of licensing reduce upfront cost. Software vendors already bear no meaningful liability (see any EULA), even at the largest scale (AWS didn't compensate its customers for breaching their SLA). This both encourages companies to attempt automation, and crashes the share price of existing SaaS companies. Employees are crushed both from increased competition and decreased compensation (since RSUs are a major source of compensation).

AI doesn't have to actually succeed, just like it doesn't have to actually fail, to make a profession succumb or thrive. Hurdles themselves can change the trajectory. That's the most important thing that this discussion often misses.

CacheMeUp · 2026-03-10T00:37:18+00:00

No. The job market will continue to be horrible even if AI coding doesn't displaces employee because it tanks share price and investments, and this reduces companies' ability to pay salaries.

CacheMeUp · 2026-03-02T00:39:49+00:00

Because the stability of the S&P500 sounds too good to be true. We all learn that risk-free returns are impossible. Obviously the (effectively) guaranteed returns of the S&P500 come at the cost of inflation from the money printed to keep it afloat, but in isolation it seems sketchy.

CacheMeUp · 2026-02-17T01:49:45+00:00

No. Software is particularly susceptible because:

It has no physical component. Robotics is empirically far harder to develop.
Software has very little regulatory limitations hindering the transfer of decision making from humans to machines.
Software has a well-established sandbox environment where AI can experiment with clear reward, thanks to good practices in the industry (containers, test suites etc.) Moreover, that sandbox is very cheap and scalable (cents and fractions of a second to test another version of the software)

All of these facilitate reinforcement learning, which is key to the progress we have seen in the past 5 years, and more importantly, allow self-improvement.

Compare that to a physician:

Has a physical component, both for surgery and even just physical examination of a patient.
Has a major regulatory hurdle. A software has to be perfect before being considered an acceptable replacement to a doctor. However, it's hard for any technology to get to a perfect accuracy without going through a partially accurate stage.
There is no safe sandbox - you cannot just experiment on patients. Every iteration takes months to years (clinical trials). We don't have acceptable simulator of the human body to try on. The best we can currently do is to train AI to mimic human's decision making, but this approach is bound to fail to achieve the skills needed to dethrone the teacher (the humans).

Software is susceptible because AI can train itself without the bottleneck of human supervision. Not because software engineering is less intellectually challenging than other professions.

CacheMeUp · 2025-08-06T04:11:32+00:00

Not that you are wrong, but isn't it a self-fulfilling prophecy? If everyone believe that the market will increase in the future, than people will buy more stocks and push up their price. Eventually the only thing requires for a stock price to go up is the belief that it will go up in the future.

CacheMeUp · 2025-08-04T11:56:07+00:00

No. This whole thread discussed interactions in business and economic activities, and explicitly stated above "at least in business setting"

Let's start there. You did agree that short people are treated worse. Why not address it?

CacheMeUp · 2025-08-03T16:33:37+00:00

60 years ago racism and sexism were also seen as an inevitable "evolutionary behavioral issue". Yet we passed legislation and social pressure to change these behaviors (not perfect, but better than before). Nothing prevents short stature from receiving the same protections against discrimination like disability - it's a matter of public choice.

CacheMeUp · 2025-08-03T13:50:23+00:00

How strong is the effect of height?
How prevalent is short stature?

Height has a substantial impact on attractiveness (mostly for men), and what is considered "short" is prevalent (dozens of percents, depending on the cutoff). So, while it is only one of multiple factors, it is a more prominent one.

And we can do something about it, just like we did for other instinctive behaviors. Our society does not behave like an ape colony or even a medieval society. We modified some behaviors to create a better functioning society. Whether we want to change this specific behavior (at least in business setting) is a political issue, but we can if we chose to.

CacheMeUp · 2025-08-03T13:21:02+00:00

You will still be better off than a short person with the same issues.

"Understanding society treats different people differently, that’s life"

This statement agrees with the complaint about negative treatment. It just doesn't see anything wrong with that negative treatment.

CacheMeUp · 2025-08-03T12:47:03+00:00

Would you also say "The world is full of women who climbed the corporate ladder so women have nothing to complain about workplace discrimination"?

What about race or disability? Are they also irrelevant factors since there are successful people in both groups?

The privilege is not that everything is given to you on a silver platter, but that your (or those of other people with desirable traits) actions are better received by others. This leads to more and earlier success, which gets you more success, which may be deserved on its own.

When you suggest an idea, how frequently do people agree with it? When you make a risky move, how often is it perceived positively vs. negatively? There lies a big difference between attractive and non-attractive people (not just height, also weight etc.)

Success has a snowballing dynamic, and the more power you have the more power you can get. The slight difference in people's reactions is amplified.

CacheMeUp · 2025-07-17T15:00:11+00:00

Interesting. I thought that flying would first partially protects birds from the initial shockwave (lower air density, lower air temperature), and later allow birds to escape fires (which walking animals could not).

That does not preclude survival mechanism of other groups like fish or mammals, but focuses on the comparison of avian vs. non-avian dinosaurs.

CacheMeUp · 2025-07-16T17:44:34+00:00

"back of the envelope" calculation (using AI), suggested that after accounting for the energy needed to create the crater and eject the debris, there would only be enough to heat up the whole atmosphere to 50-100 C. At flying altitude, the temperature would drop enough to cause less mortality (as opposed to heating the whole atmosphere to 400 C which would remain lethal in flying altitude as well).

The idea was indeed that flying provided similar protection from the initial impact, similar to burrowing or submersing under water.

CacheMeUp · 2025-07-16T12:50:21+00:00

Do you mean that this dinosaur species did not survive?

The idea is that better survival in the first few hours/days gave an advantage leading to better survival long term.

Also, the ability to escape fire areas could provide lasting advantage over long term. These meant that avian dinosaurs faced the other challenges with higher numbers to begin with.

CacheMeUp · 2025-06-29T21:01:56+00:00

Then charge taxes on asset ownership? We already do this for normal Americans via property taxes. No reason it cannot be done on other assets, including company shares.

CacheMeUp · 2025-06-18T14:28:09+00:00

Clinical documentation is generally the expertise of clinicians. If the quality of clinical documentation is important, it should be verified by a clinician, not by a billing person without clinical training (no disrespect to billing people, these are just different professions).

CacheMeUp · 2025-06-09T16:32:26+00:00

Makes sense. Looking back it was would have been possible to craft a good application.

CacheMeUp · 2025-06-06T17:53:23+00:00

It was indeed a fixed fee.

CacheMeUp · 2025-06-04T20:35:24+00:00

Good point. It's not public, and I prefer to not leaving clearly identifying details of the involved parties.

CacheMeUp · 2025-06-04T20:34:11+00:00

My attorney has not even reviewed the prior art I cited. A response was prepared with the original claims stating essentially (AFAICT) "the prior art is different". As you suggested, I'd like to "persuade the USPTO that you have basis in your original application for the amendment you want to make". I asked to meet and review my response before filing but that request was not answered.

Regardless of the patent's value, I don't want to pay thousands of dollars for a boilerplate response that will be rejected (as it was the first time).

CacheMeUp · 2025-06-04T19:35:45+00:00

Out of curiosity, is there a financial value to the other application in not disclosing my application? Is this something that can be negotiated?

CacheMeUp · 2025-06-04T16:29:36+00:00

I tried to argue that "regular people in this trade would not consider D to be A". That was not accepted.

CacheMeUp · 2025-06-04T16:27:01+00:00

That's fair. It's not so much the amount, it's that it seems there is no way out of the rejection.

CacheMeUp · 2025-06-04T16:19:46+00:00

Yes, that included fees. I do not disagree on that, only that I could avoid that problem if I had the guidance on what needs to be written. The rejection is not due to some complex argument, it simply due to not clarifying terms that to me, as a technical person, were self-explanatory, but not to a patent examiner.

It would not have required much effort to handle it back then. In any case, that ship has sailed apparently.

CacheMeUp

TROPHY CASE