Kyle HughesFeb 7
I experienced most of the existential crises that everyone is going through now a few years ago when I saw this trajectory. Besides the life-threatening “what labor will be available to me above minimum wage as my body breaks down,” the other one I have not gotten over is that I don’t think I have lived up to my potential and I’m not sure I will have the opportunity to. Boy, I worked hard, but how much harder could I have worked if I knew I needed to outrun this? Shit.
https://toot.cafe/@nolan/116030386189055424
Nolan Lawson (@[email protected])

New post: "We mourn our craft" https://nolanlawson.com/2026/02/07/we-mourn-our-craft/ No comment on this one.

Toot Café
Show threadKyle HughesFeb 7
Why did I ever care about work-life balance when I was 28? If I knew that at age 40 I would be competing with 18-year old boys in the mines then I would’ve lit myself on fire (figuratively). I would have smoked this thing down to the ashes. I just wanted to do great work my whole life and I don’t know if I honored that.
Show threadKyle HughesFeb 7
So that’s what I’m doing now. I am burning this thing to the ground. I am going as fast as I can, I am playing my whole hand, I am pulling everything out of my bag. My track record on life decisions is not great so I am not confident I have the judgement to pull it off, but if I don’t it won’t be because I left anything on the field. It’ll be because there isn’t a field anymore.
Show threadArmen
@kyle I'm a civil engineer in my day job so it's been fascinating to see the software industry from the "outside" in the past few years. The closest thing I can think of that has happened to my circle of work that's similar is introduction of CAD software. The more experienced/retired/close to retiring coworkers always mention the drafting tables that used to be present just not that long ago. Now everything is computer aided.
Feb 7 at 7:32pmWeb
Show threadArmenFeb 7
@kyle Every single person to had to change their way of doing things. I know of someone that lost their job who wanted to do the things the old way and not learn drawing plans using software. At the end of it all we're better off using CAD, as the designs are better, more efficient, and can be checked thoroughly. The jobs won't be the same, but I don't think they will be eliminated. Humans are good at improvising.
Show threadKyle HughesFeb 7
@armengrewal I am confident I can adapt better than nearly everyone. But I also genuinely do not think humans will be employed to use computers in any capacity within 7 years, and all labor will follow that path of commodification and be replaced by capital. It is possible that the people in the world on the other side of this will have a higher average quality of life than now, but to get there we will go through a period of unemployment and poverty more extreme than the Great Depression (25%).