That's one reason, sure, but it's very far from being the only one.
Another reason that I hear with increasing frequency is that the most visible effects of genAI is that it's making things worse. It makes things more difficult, annoying, and intrusive and when it's brought into existing goods and services, the quality of those goods and services is much lower. It's increasingly being used to do things that most people find objectionable. And the constant hard-sell that everyone is getting about genAI is becoming intolerably irritating to a lot of people.
> You don't see "older nurses are tapping out early" because financially they can't.
In the US, anyway, you do see that. Experienced nurses make money comparable to what experienced devs make, and as the doctor and nurse shortage worsens, making life harder for those that remain, more of them are deciding to leave early.
Most of the older devs I know aren't in the industry primarily for the money. Their wealth level may not be a large factor in their decision about whether or not to leave early. The ones I know who are leaving (including myself) are doing so because the industry has changed in ways they are not comfortable with.
> The ones I know who are leaving (including myself) are doing so because the industry has changed in ways they are not comfortable with.
The AI doom-trolling (h/t Cal Newport) of the big two firms is so utterly disreputable, shameful and absurd that everyone has lost their heads, and with long enough perspective it's possible to see that this is going to go on for another couple of years.
I am past my half-century and currently trying to get back into things after a period of devastating burnout, but figuring out all this stuff from the perspective of a freelancer, without falling into the traps being laid, is challenging.
I would like to get out of the industry but I don't really know to where, yet. The only reassuring thing is that outside of the IT world, people are proving more resilient to AI marketing than we are.
If your concern is how to prepare yourself financially in the near-medium term, then "is genAI a bubble" is exactly the right question. If it is, then we need to be prepared for the shock when it pops.
The question of whether or not the tech is revolutionary in a deep sense is an entirely different one from whether or not we're in a bubble. Both can be true at the same time.
I think this is the deep flaw this whole thing sits on: it's relying on photos. Photos do a very poor job of relaying how attractive people are, because most of what makes a person attractive is not their static appearance, but how they move, how they speak, how they interact, what they have to say, etc.
And that's completely ignoring the fact that how much you like a person directly affects how physically attractive they appear to you.
Also, speaking personally as an older man, I have always tended to find women roughly my age to be the most attractive, regardless of what my age was. It's no less true now than it was when I was in my 20s.
If I attempt synesthesia, like fantasize kissing or making out with those women, I can't help but imagine getting smudged with makeup and the mineral taste of lipstick. On the other hand in real life I might wind up accidentally really close to somebody and have their perfume herald the tang of their microbiome which one could interpret as "they should shower more" but because of the whole experience I am thinking about it weeks later.
This book goes to the heard of what is wrong with that whole evpsych approach
which reveals a whole inner psychology which can enrich our lives but that I think a lot of people are closed off to. If I am working with someone who's attractive but a little annoying I might cultivate a crush on them because then I'm not annoyed anymore.
That's lady's whole problem is that she casts such a wide net and considers so many options whereas when you fall in love with somebody that person seems absolutely singular, at least in that limerent phrase that Stendhal calls "crystallization". The more people she considers the more certain it is that they'll all fall short and she can't get it because
Stendhal makes polyamory seem like a delightful aristocratic game whereas those rationalists in the bay area make it seem like a stressful chore that you need a technical dictionary to talk about.
The fact that Flock operates a service that undermines and endangers society as well as innocent individuals is a thing they might want to distance themselves from, but they can't. Flock (and similar services) presents a real threat to us all.
Another reason that I hear with increasing frequency is that the most visible effects of genAI is that it's making things worse. It makes things more difficult, annoying, and intrusive and when it's brought into existing goods and services, the quality of those goods and services is much lower. It's increasingly being used to do things that most people find objectionable. And the constant hard-sell that everyone is getting about genAI is becoming intolerably irritating to a lot of people.
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