Ask HN: Anyone else lacking motivation during this time of layoffs?

  • It sounds mostly like a power grab from shareholders aimed at software engineers in particular.

    Software engineers have started to dominate earnings, started to have an increasing say in work models (WFH, 4 day weeks...), and those in financial fields do not really love it.

    I wonder what would happen if software engineers and developers started forming unions? We need collective bargaining agreements, we need to stand with one another, and threaten mass stoppage of work when we are threatened with measures not really coming out of a business need.

    Our cushy jobs have never made it necessary to consider this, but current climate makes it obvious that change is coming.

    What we can do about it is an open question, but all of these moves simply indicate to me of what power we DO have when companies want to rewrite the narrative how software engineers are expendable, right at the time when you can't get a toaster without some software in it. Basically, nothing to get unmotivated about, but rather a question of what action to take.

  • Try picking up the pieces after a massive hurricane when money can't buy a sudden scarcity of manual skill. Max Brooks captures this in World War Z when white collar workers become cannon fodder in the zombie apocalypse.

    You spent your entire life training for a job that assumed a silicon goalpost. Don't be mad when society moves it.