Commentary on Article "Too Big To Challenge"
"did they all really do the exact same thing?"
Yea. This is hardly the first iteration of this. In 1991, the money thrown into tech by the government in its ramp-up of national defense under Reagan started to run dry. Massive tech layoffs, starup failures, once hot startups were assimilated for pennies on the dollar. Pyramid Techologies, Silicon Graphics (who were Nvidia before Nvida existed), Elexi, Symbolics, Lucid (LISP), Intellicorp (who mutated into an SAP consultant).....the list goes on.
Fast forward to 1999. If you had a business plan that said "internet" in it, you got funded. (This is only a minor exaggeration). The dot com bust left bodies all over the tech streets.
Strong, fundamental based business management is not a characteristic of the US high tech industry.
Right now, there is widespread fear of job loss across the tech industry. In response, tech workers are staying put. They’re not going anywhere. Unless they’ve been forced out. (Random aside: will we see a massive influx in startups in a few years due to layoffs?)
"I wonder if tech leaders think that this hovering threat of more and more layoffs will prompt workers into working harder, faster, more in-line with the company’s goals."
Yes.
"Fear is a motivator. Do tech leaders believe that’s effective?"
Yes.
"Moreover, is it?"
Yes. The vast majority of people are motivated externally. In the workforce, that means fear and money.
There's another factor at play here. The tech workforce ballooned while millenials entered it; young single workers form their social communities around their jobs and co workers. So, you it's easy to convince them to make the job their life.
But, young single workers have a tendency to become older married workers with children and mortgages. When this happens, the social community becomes their family, and no longer their co workers. They naturally want to spend less time on work.
"I’m waiting for the b-school research!"
Screw that. We have history. :-)
"Many in the AI tech community believe that self-coding AIs will code humans out of existence and make humans subordinate to AIs."
Again, not the first time. As technology has evolved from linear programming to object programming to web services to microservices and containerization, each of these shifts has caused an increase in the demand for technicians who can code it. But coders are expensive, so at the same time demand for coders increases (causing their pay to rise) that immediately creates an opportunity for startups to build tools that autogenerate the code.
Although AI is much broader than that, obviously, it's ability to code is just the next iteration in this cycle that's taken us from COBOL code generators to 4GLs to Visual Age for Java to whateverthehell we have today, and will have in the near future.
"Poke around a bit and these folks will talk about how programmers are doomed."
This is an overstatement. Each generation of computing has come up with the Next Great Thing, which requires a new set of experts to implement and manage. If you're a Kubernetes wiz today and you're 30, I have news --- you're not going to be doing Kubernetes when you're 50. Your future depends on your ability to stay light on your feet. When you see the Next Great Thing on the horizon, get tech-ed up on it and be ready to hop over to it.
(I wrote on all this at length about 4 years ago)
"But they’re projecting this onto all of humanity without appreciating the ways in which so many people already feel subordinate to a machine, namely a particular arrangement of capital and power that is extraordinarily oppressive."
Well, now you're kind of sounding like Ted Kaczynski. Being suspicious of technology's effects on society is common sensical, but we're kind of stuck where we are.
"How else should I be thinking of this arrangement?"
Don't think about it; on that road lies madness. There is no greater mental skill needed today more than the ability to compartmentalize.
The path we are on (nationally, socially, economically, whatever) is not going to change. Before Kaczynski became a murderous bastard, he recognized his impotence in changing the destructive path that you're seeing as well. He recognized that his choices were to (a) swallow it and participate, or (b) emigrate, either figuratively (go live in a cabin somewhere like he did) or physically (another less developed country that hasn't lost it's connection to nature or the agricultural cycle) as Robert Graves did (although Graves never totally discarded his connection to London.)
