Chris Routh (He/Him)Nov 16

So what are the career options for a senior engineer in the IT industry that avoid AI entirely in 2025?

I'm tired, boss. Tired of keeping my mouth closed about it at work. Tired of waking up angry that my employer and industry at large are:

* Pushing hard to adopt an absolute crap technology with very low accuracy and consistency, which additionally has had noticeable affects on certain co-workers ability to understand a problem and picture the solution (those who seem to be offloading their thinking to AI over the last year have notably degraded in these areas)
* Supporting the enrichment of billionaire fascists who want to manipulate and control the truth and control the population to make themselves richer.
* Supporting the re-ignition of coal power plants and burning significant amounts of power and water to fuel these inefficient garbage bots.
* Generally increasing affordability problems on all fronts while also accelerating the climate disaster that will be central to my sons future.

I wake up every day angry, stressed, and mournful that I am contributing the destruction of my son's future while begrudgingly going to work in the name of his present; in order to keep him clothed, fed, and try to eek out some chance of a better financial future for our family.

I'm not sure how much longer I can keep helping drive the engine of the very destruction I want to put an end to.

There must be some companies out there doing things without AI and making technology choices that are moral. They can't all be sycophants feeding the investor greed machine.. help me find them. I need to know there are some options.

Show threadHugo Slabbert ⚠️Nov 16
@Routhinator Valve noticeably didn't have any mention of AI in their hardware announcements. That cannot be an accident.
Show threadBrahmsNov 16

@hugo @Routhinator then again, valve has only what, 300 people directly employed? (yes, they invest a lot in other projects)

it serves as a point that there are companies doing good stuff (quite a lot actually), but its not like they are recruiting heavily.

Most importantly, I think the right answer is to build relationships with peers who are themselves interested in doing actual good things. Take for example a peek at https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/ludics-guide-to-getting-software-engineering-jobs/

Ludic's Guide To Getting Software Engineering Jobs — Ludicity

Show threadSteve Purcell
@brahms @hugo @Routhinator I think if you stay out of the VC-funded and bigtech spaces, there's not going to be anyone pushing AI. It's tied to hypergrowth pressure, collective delusion and herd mentality there. Valve is independent and just has no need to shill AI.
Nov 17 at 8:12amWeb
Show threadschrotthaufenNov 19
@sanityinc @brahms @hugo @Routhinator Sadly not true. I’m experiencing this first hand right now. A substantial number of my smart colleagues bought into the hype, and the execs suffer from a metric shitton of FOMO, which translates to a lot of “We should waste compute on LLMs where other solutions (even ML ones) would be more efficient, and/or cheaper.”
Show threadWilliam OldwinNov 21
@sanityinc @brahms @hugo @Routhinator Think again. I work in a capital-intensive segment of the transport industry and the information technology leadership in my workplace have gone all in on pushing 'AI' to 'improve efficiency'. Businesses of all descriptions are falling for this.
Show threadJima Nov 23
@willegible @sanityinc @brahms @hugo @Routhinator +1 to this; I don't work in "big tech" but the fervor for AI is killing what little will I have to stick around.