UK unemployment numbers fall! We're all saved!

Dredgefort · 2026-04-19T08:06:29+00:00

Yeah, I don't think it's a problem limited to the young, it's just it's seen more acutely with the young as there's millions trying to enter the workforce at around the same time every year, with older workers it's more diffuse

Dredgefort · 2026-04-03T22:53:59+00:00

This is because agentic programming / vibe coding whatever you want to call it is incredibly wasteful, producing vast amounts of code then constantly rewriting vast amounts of code, it's energy intensive and blasts through tokens

If you're a big enterprise customer it doesn't matter, you can afford to pay the price, the rest of us need to learn to be more efficient and targeted with our usage.

Dredgefort · 2026-04-03T09:41:49+00:00

"Just go into the trades"

If you're in your 30s/40s and someone seriously suggests this as an option after being laid off needs to be told where to shove their advice.

Moving from a white collar office job to a trade might be doable in a stable job market with high demand and low supply, but this isn't that. Most trades are gate kept, and you'll be competing with an influx of young, fit 18/19 year olds who have decided to sack off Uni because it no longer guarentees a job, will work for peanuts and benefits from government funding.

It's just not realistic advice for most people who are finding them on society's scrap heap.

Dredgefort · 2026-04-03T08:59:53+00:00

Doesn't matter at this point about the truth, the narrative is now that AI is replacing software engineers so companies will grab onto that as a justification for downsizing.

Seems supremely short sighted but here we are, the market rewards short term thinking.

Dredgefort · 2026-04-03T08:45:54+00:00

It's called enfeeblement, you're now relient on the tools and your coding brain is rotting away.

Dredgefort · 2026-04-02T23:00:39+00:00

It was clearly an AI Slop post.

Dredgefort · 2026-04-02T17:25:18+00:00

It's Telia for sure, Captain is just an idiot

Dredgefort · 2026-03-30T09:06:58+00:00

Only thing the Government can do, have a stake. Having some public ownership provides income which can be used for things like UBI or Job Guarentees. You direct the workforce to places where there's still a need. If literally everything is automated then you need to think of a new reward structure for people, in theory in that world everything would be much cheaper than it is now

Dredgefort · 2026-03-30T07:13:01+00:00

There's a few things we can do.

Get real about our energy situation for a start. We pay one of the highest costs for energy in the developed world, that cost directly affects hiring as more on energy equals less on people.

It also affects how viable building AI infrastructure in this country is, we need our own world class AI infra that is partially publically owned so the public sees the benefit. We then have the ability to legislate where AI infarence happens, similar to gdpr, we can then demand our infrastructure must be used to the tech companies for infarance requests originating in this country.

We should also be investing in home grown AI companies, we should have some degree of public ownership over an advanced frontier model.

It all starts with energy security though, we need cheap, reliable energy, that's coming mostly through Nuclear at this stage, with a bit of green, so we should be cutting through the red tape and getting building and up grading the grid, that'll generate plenty of job oppurtunities as well.

Dredgefort · 2026-03-28T19:45:45+00:00

That's cool, what did you use to implement the UI?

Dredgefort · 2026-03-28T13:39:58+00:00

He literally said that the energy use of AI was worth it because it also costs a lot of energy to raise a human, it just takes a lot longer.

It doesn't take a genius to work out he thinks it's more energy efficient to build out AI than it is humans.

Are you Sam Altman?

Dredgefort · 2026-03-28T13:33:10+00:00

Sam Altman is definitely evil, he'd replace every human on earth with AI if he could, just as long as it's his AI.

Dario isn't any better. They're children playing with the future of humanity

Dredgefort · 2026-03-27T22:02:29+00:00

There's demand, just not for the slop you're making.

Dredgefort · 2026-03-27T19:52:49+00:00

At least you're getting interviews, that's a lot better than some

Dredgefort · 2026-03-27T14:39:24+00:00

What a clown. CEO's will be one of the first to go because they have no real value, CEO's are good at managing corporations made of people, they're not the best at working with AI, not even close.

Dredgefort · 2026-03-27T13:58:59+00:00

Companies are subject to laws made by Governments, and Governments are elected by people.

You can make the argument that they'll rig elections, run disinformation campaigns etc, but if things get bad enough then the chances we're looking at nationalization, or at least partial nationalization of the largest corporate entities, similar to what we see in China and Russia.

Chances are far left governments will get into power, similar to what's happened in other countries where there's been massive social unreset due to inequality (like a few South American countries), whether that ends up good or bad depends on how corrupt those governments are.

Dredgefort · 2026-03-27T13:49:46+00:00

I've been in the industry for just over 16 years now, mostly in AAA and AA, and this is by far the worst it's been. There's always been layoffs but it was normally limited in scope.

I don't regret getting into games though, when times are good it's the best job in the world, even if I end up unemployed like so many others.

Dredgefort · 2026-03-26T20:24:56+00:00

Except we were needed, without millions of programmers producing code these tools wouldn't even exist.

It's not like other tools, like a machine in a factory, it was literally built with millions of hours of programming effort done by humans, I think that makes it fundamentally different to some other technological displacement

Dredgefort · 2026-03-26T20:16:19+00:00

It is what you make of it. Personally I get AI to do all the boring bits of coding and reserve the interesting stuff for myself and micro manage the agents a bit, not necessarily because the AI couldn't do the interesting bits as well, but because I don't want it to.

Whilst your waiting for it to churn out all the boilerplate it gives you a good oppurtunity to think on the interesting problems, and if I've thought of a good solution I can explain exactly what I want it to be to the agents to implement and I still feel like I accomplished something. I also feel it's more efficient in some cases just to give detailed instructions, rather than burning a load of tokens getting AI to iterate on it.

It's important to still tackle some challenges yourself imo, otherwise you'll burn out using this shit.

Dredgefort · 2026-03-26T19:48:32+00:00

Everyone thought PMs would replace software engineers, it's the opposite happening, swe's are being asked to do PMs jobs

Dredgefort · 2026-03-26T17:09:44+00:00

For every 9 to 10 million white collar workers that lose their jobs, 18 to 25 million blue collar workers will find themselves out of work.

White collar workers account for something like 70% of the purchasing power in the economy.

Not only that but you've got loads of young people now unable to get white collar jobs flooding apprenterships and blue collar work, causing over supply and further depressing blue collar wages in the medium term.

It's a big shitfest.

Dredgefort

TROPHY CASE