[HN Gopher] Ask HN: What is your fallback job if AI takes away y...
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Ask HN: What is your fallback job if AI takes away your career?
For the sake of argument, assume that if your job consists of
sitting at a computer, reading on a screen, and typing on a
keyboard, then your career will go away. There is always room at
the top, and there may always be room for humans at the top of any
career. Assume (this is a tough ask, I know) that you are NOT one
of those people. What is your fallback job? What skills do you
have or would like to acquire that might keep you going? Bicycle
mechanic? Teach music to children? Woodworking/carpentry? (Living
off your stock options or investments does not count)
Author : 7402
Score : 32 points
Date : 2025-06-13 16:03 UTC (6 hours ago)
| mattl wrote:
| I'm learning how to sculpt both with and without a computer.
| ilkhan4 wrote:
| Well, it was going to be pilot but then I've been hanging out on
| /r/flying lately and it sounds pretty rough in that world right
| now.
|
| I'd guess something else driving/piloting some kind of vehicle
| that isn't as saturated.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Just practice your Captain Allears and First Officer Blunt
| roleplay, and you'll be fine
| colesantiago wrote:
| Why do we have this scarcity mindset of AI taking away jobs?
|
| Sure some jobs may go.
|
| But ultimately there will certainly be new jobs created by AI
| that in turn will make an abundant future for all of us.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > But ultimately there will certainly be new jobs created by AI
| that in turn will make an abundant future for all of us.
|
| And what if there aren't? Hope is not a strategy.
| codingdave wrote:
| Why not? When we all started our careers, whenever that may
| be, we looked at the world, chose a path, and learned the
| skills to walk it. Changing paths is the same process. Look
| at the world, then choose, learn, and walk. Hope is
| completely appropriate because it embraces that freedom to
| adapt to whatever changes may come.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Because 60 percent of Americans already don't generate
| enough income to meet their basic needs.
|
| _Americans are losing spending power, say researchers_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44270120 - June 2025
|
| _Most Americans don 't earn enough to afford basic costs
| of living, analysis finds_ -
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cost-of-living-income-
| quality-o...
|
| https://lisep.org/mql
| codingdave wrote:
| Sounds like a problem to be fixed, not a reality to feel
| hopelessly stuck in. Change is challenging in the current
| environment, to be sure, but that is all the more reason
| to find a way to take actions that will invoke change.
| exe34 wrote:
| Not every problem is fixed peacefully. Remember the
| French in 1789.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >Changing paths is the same process. Look at the world,
| then choose, learn, and walk
|
| Oh good so after spending $40k on my education to be a
| valuable software engineer and build things I get to spend
| another $40k on some sort of retraining to be one of the
| ever shrinking professionals who make any money in the US.
|
| What a great outlook that is. I guess I'll put off owning
| anything for another 20 years? Maybe by the time I'm 50 the
| world will stop throwing "Once in a generation" events at
| me and I can have a hope of actually building a life with
| my family.
|
| A lot of us are going to end up driving ubers and
| delivering takeout to the 5% of the US that makes all the
| money. They only have so many needs to serve so plenty will
| just starve.
|
| AI gets the investment it does explicitly because their
| intention is to not pay humans anything ever again. There's
| not going to be new jobs to go to.
| lancekrogers wrote:
| The problem is it will take years for the jobs to come back and
| a lot of people don't have years of liquidity.
|
| If every developer is now 10x more productive, most businesses
| will be able to downsize until they start to be outcompeted by
| competitors who decided to build 10x better products rather
| than downsizing. The current norm is to keep the same
| productivity and shrink the workforce outside of small
| startups.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| "10x more productive" does not imply "10x better products"
|
| My expectation is more crap produced faster, and/or by fewer
| people.
| pacomerh wrote:
| Well some companies decide to produce more as well, this
| happens in every industry, once they can get more efficient
| for the same price, they see it as an opportunity to produce
| more.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| If every developer is 10x more productive, that means the
| total addressable market just got that much larger!
| ponector wrote:
| Instead of high paid western jobs, the new jobs could be
| created somewhere in India. Are you ok to have $20k annual
| salary?
| pacomerh wrote:
| What about intellectual property and cultural nuances. I can
| think of many jobs that can't be outsourced because of this
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Where's the scarcity mindset in the OP's question? If it's as
| you say and some jobs disappear but others grow, the OP's
| question is even more relevant than ever.
| NoOn3 wrote:
| Quote from Max Tegmark book Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of
| Artificial Intelligence: "In his 2007 book Farewell to Alms,
| the Scottish- American economist Gregory Clark points out that
| we can learn a thing or two about our future job prospects by
| comparing notes with our equine friends. Imagine two horses
| looking at an early automobile in the year 1900 and pondering
| their future. "I'm worried about technological
| unemployment." "Neigh, neigh, don't be a Luddite: our
| ancestors said the same thing when steam engines took our
| industry jobs and trains took our jobs pulling stage coaches.
| But we have more jobs than ever today, and they're better too:
| I'd much rather pull a light carriage through town than spend
| all day walking in circles to power a stupid mine-shaft pump."
| "But what if this internal combustion engine thing really takes
| off?" "I'm sure there'll be new new jobs for horses that
| we haven't yet imagined. That's what's always happened before,
| like with the invention of the wheel and the plow."
|
| Alas, those not-yet-imagined new jobs for horses never arrived.
| No-longer- needed horses were slaughtered and not replaced,
| causing the U.S. equine population to collapse from about 26
| million in 1915 to about 3 million in 1960. As mechanical
| muscles made horses redundant, will mechanical minds do the
| same to humans?"...
| Finnucane wrote:
| I'm a production editor, I can do copyediting and proofreading. I
| don't see anything about AI that will reduce the need for
| copyeditors and proofreaders. All the spellcheckers and grammar
| checkers we have now haven't done that. The suits may want to
| believe they won't need to pay for that, but I don't think it
| will happen in my lifetime anyway.
|
| But if I can't do that, maybe I'll be a pastry chef instead.
| ilamont wrote:
| _" I don't see anything about AI that will reduce the need for
| copyeditors and proofreaders."_
|
| Former copyeditor here. That ship has already sailed. The suits
| realized the copy desk was a cost center that they could live
| without.
|
| For the most part they were right. The burden of copyediting
| and proofing fell to writers and editors. Print publications
| were closed down, and everything shifted to digital, meaning
| errors could be corrected after the fact (often after readers
| caught the mistakes). Technology also helped catch errors
| before publication (spelling and grammar checks, software like
| grammarly, etc.)
|
| All the people with that title I used to work with were laid
| off years ago and are in different careers now (mostly in
| marketing, but one person is an emergency services trainer).
|
| I think where the real skills gap exists in the AI world is
| fact checking and getting the "voice" right. I don't think the
| hallucinations problem will be solved, and AI generated and
| copyedited text is so milquetoast.
| jasonthorsness wrote:
| While we are in an unlikely hypothetical of all computer-based
| jobs going away, I will pick the just-as-unlikely hypothetical of
| me making enough money to call it a job off of making wooden
| boxes, furniture, other crafts. Wouldn't that be great :P
| AGivant wrote:
| Retirement
| not_your_vase wrote:
| Dibs on being a politician. I have never heard about a starving
| one, and it doesn't require an awful lot of skills beside being a
| good liar. (This is only half-joke. I do have some vague
| aspirations for changing some public stuff that grind my gears)
| goostavos wrote:
| I similarly half-joke about the same thing. Being "replaced by
| AI" would be the kick in the pants to finally make a run of it.
|
| In Seattle, I _feel_ like I could get really far on a dumb,
| single-issue platform: "I will fix the potholes on 1st ave." I
| won't talk about anything except that. I'll only try to
| accomplish that. And then I'll leave.
| mathgeek wrote:
| > "I will fix the potholes on 1st ave."
|
| I hear Dominos is hiring if you want to leverage the power of
| the private sector for pothole filling. ;)
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| In my experience, it does require a lot of skills. You won't
| notice them if you only interact with politicians through
| reading about them in the news, but successful politicians have
| a lot of charisma, are very good at remembering names and faces
| of people they meet once at a crowded party, and are good at
| spinning answers to make everyone hear what they wanted to
| hear.
| NoOn3 wrote:
| Most of what you've written just boils down to the ability to
| being a good liar. :)
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| That's an extremely uncharitable take. Especially when
| nothing about the post suggested that.
|
| The deeper point is that the skills that were mentioned are
| very important in terms of getting along with a variety of
| people.
| GianFabien wrote:
| The most essential talent required of politicians is to
| extract the greatest amount of donations, funding for
| themselves and their party. Below the media polished image,
| it is all about money. Power is about being able to get the
| money.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| One of the most though-provoking things that I've heard AOC say
| is (paraphrasing), "I'm not a very good politician, but I'm an
| excellent public servant."
|
| Wish there were more like her!
| lancekrogers wrote:
| I've considered starting a handyman business if I truly can't
| find work in software again. I'd probably make more doing that
| than I've ever made from my actual job, the only difference would
| be I wouldn't have energy to focus on my startup ideas/side
| hustles.
| antithesizer wrote:
| I suspect there are many of us out there slowly but surely
| transforming into plumbers.
| azhenley wrote:
| YouTuber or move to the mountains.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| Despite mythology, crime does pay. /s
|
| The same thing I do now, but different: support. Everything
| ~burns~ breaks
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| I feel like my wife's job is AI proof as a Licensed Marriage and
| Family Therapist, but there might be a downturn that affects how
| much she can earn, which means I don't need as lofty ambitions
| for my future job of "farming" - basically 1-2acres of veggie
| patches, and couple chicken coops to sell and eat.
| Dig1t wrote:
| How will you pay for property taxes?
|
| Similar plans, but the problem I have is that property taxes
| are onerous anywhere near a population center.
|
| The food you grow can likely sustain you depending on where you
| are in the country, you can dig a well for water, and you can
| buy solar panels for power. But the taxes never go away.
| whall6 wrote:
| I think you can apply for an ag exemption depending on
| location
| Dig1t wrote:
| Where I am, the ag exemption barely blunts the taxes. You
| can claim the exemption on the land on which your house
| does not sit, but the house itself and the 1 acre around it
| is not exempt. Anywhere near a major population center, a
| house + 1 acre can be thousands, if not tens of thousands,
| per year in property taxes.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Ag exemptions vary, but it usually ends up that you still
| owe a significant amount. Usually it's something like you
| get a break on the tax on the land/barn/etc,but still owe
| all or most of the amount on the house.
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| Our property tax is right at $250/yr. It's the home insurance
| that terrifies me, went from $1300/yr to $2300 last year, and
| I'm waiting get the new increase in August.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yep the escrow for taxes and insurance is the biggest part
| of my mortgate payment by far.
| giantg2 wrote:
| That doesn't seem to add up. Even .5% on a $150k house
| should be 3x that tax. $2300 in insurance on a $150k house
| is outrageous.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| > you can dig a well for water
|
| You can pay someone upwards of $10,000 to drill a well for
| you. FTFY!
| orionsbelt wrote:
| Many people are using AI for therapy now. Even if AI gets as
| good or better than the average therapist, I think some people
| will prefer to see a human in person, so her job should be safe
| in that sense. But I wouldn't be surprised if rates go down as
| the fee sensitive shift to AI.
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| I wouldn't trust AI with my therapy. I've done "sessions"
| with it before to just see how good it would be, it's about
| as good as Eliza. My wife ripped them apart.
|
| It gets concepts wrong, and can't resolve interweaving
| narratives which a human can follow without issue. The advice
| it gives is generic and impersonal, and if you've ever had
| real therapy, you immediately sense of it's short comings.
|
| I'm sure a lot of that gets less noticeable as training and
| models get better, but it seems like we're plateauing in the
| returns we get from more training.
| seunosewa wrote:
| The most recent AIs are really good. Which one did you use?
| The AI is free and always willing to talk and adapt to your
| needs.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| I'm not sure how AI would be successful for group therapy
| like marriage counseling though. One of the the primary
| benefits is having a mediator for conversation.
| exe34 wrote:
| Middle aged male content creator on onlyfans.
| xnx wrote:
| AI is taking those jobs too
| exe34 wrote:
| drat. I was planning to starve in the streets at retirement,
| but I suppose I can bring it forward if things keep going the
| way they are.
| muzani wrote:
| I'm astonished at how fast the scene for AI daddy blew up.
| These apps are getting 100k+ downloads despite only being
| around for 4 months or so.
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| Wendy's dumpster then.
| gtmitchell wrote:
| Hopefully I can move back into the laboratory. I'm a scientist
| who moved into lab software admin a few years ago, and there are
| days I miss it a lot.
| lee-rhapsody wrote:
| Hey, I'm really interested in lab software administration as a
| career. I have some related experience. Can we chat?
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Pizzaiolo, shawarma maker, high end assassin using drones to do
| work.
| lylejantzi3rd wrote:
| Manufacturing, sales, or crazy inventor who ends up blowing
| himself up with his inventions.
| whatamidoingyo wrote:
| Well, I used to paint houses professionally. I can also tile,
| frame rooms, and know basics of electrical and plumbing. I can
| also make pretty good pizza.
|
| But painting can earn a really good amount of money. Once you
| know what you're doing, you can make $3-5k in ~2-5 days, but it's
| a hustle, and you may not always have clients.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Ha you sound like me in terms of your other skills. Throw
| "decent shade-tree mechanic" in there for me. If it can be done
| with wrenches and other basic tools, I can probably do it.
|
| One of my kids painted for a while. He made good money but
| business tended to come in waves (mostly during the summer when
| apartements and houses changed over) and not much in winter
| (worked well with his being a student at the time).
|
| But reaching over your head with a brush or roller for 8-12
| hours a day will eventually cause RSI.
| mansilladev wrote:
| AI agent performance coach.
| stevi wrote:
| Hurting myself on camera (like Jackass)
| innanet-worker wrote:
| yoga instructor. how is a robot going to do yoga?
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I'm slowly building a business which produces and sells plant
| tissue cultures. I have many years to go before I can do it full
| time, but that's the goal in around 5 years. One of the big
| challenges is scaling up. This work is fairly labour intensive
| once you've got several batches on the go, and different species
| and protocols lead to different timelines and so on. There's
| always something to do. At some point, assuming things pick up,
| I'll have to go all in on the business. That'll be scary.
| There'll be an extremely busy liminal zone in which I have a full
| time job and thousands of cultures to manage. The margins aren't
| incredible, so it'll be a slog with fairly limited rewards.
| However, once I get past that zone and can leverage economies of
| scale and more safely invest more in the business, it should get
| quite a bit easier. Here's hoping. The risk and sweat equity
| factor is truly not appreciated if you haven't done it before.
| dv_dt wrote:
| That frankly sounds fascinating & amazing. Are the cultures
| used for grafting onto plants or something else entirely? I had
| an aunt that used to grow specialty crops and they were always
| rotating the varieties and raising different seedlings to see
| what they would like grow next.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Stock daytrading, but expect to lose for several years before you
| begin to win. It is skilled work, so don't get advice about it
| from those who believe it's not possible. It even is true that
| it's not possible for most people.
|
| A plus is that this gives enough free time and energy during the
| late afternoon and evening hours to do interesting tech work.
| dh2022 wrote:
| 99.99% of all gamblers give up before winning big. Don't give
| up after 5-10 years of losses, because you know what they say:
| no pain, no gain!!!
| OutOfHere wrote:
| You're obviously being sarcastic. The goal is not to win big
| - the goal is a steady income, perhaps even a compounding
| one. Wanting to win big is above my skill grade, and I get
| it.
| mosburger wrote:
| I'm a moonshiner with delusions of someday opening a micro
| distillery.
| hellisothers wrote:
| Innkeeper (bar, food, rooms) in some gateway town, still get some
| hopefully fun human contact, do some crafty stuff. Or probably
| anything in the theme of "local business in a small town that
| experiences all 4 seasons".
| justrudd wrote:
| As I've been lucky to be in computers my whole career and I
| started taking health/wellness seriously before things got too
| bad, I can probably stock shelves at a grocery or Wal-mart type
| store.
|
| Why would they hire me over a teenager or someone slightly older?
| Because I've proven for 20+ years that I'll show up and do the
| work. I've already figured out that I can "survive" on minimum
| wage. My house is paid for. My truck is paid for. I put "survive"
| in quotes in hopes that I don't have cancer diagnosed or some
| kind of heart disease and need long term medical care.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yeah, just insurance is my biggest worry/cost. Cheaper to house
| and feed a family than cover them with non-employer health
| insurance.
| blibble wrote:
| big tech's desired outcome is the capture of the majority of
| value currently generated by employment
|
| quite how they expect capitalism or liberal democracy to survive
| this scenario I don't understand
|
| there will be mass unrest long before it gets to this point
| pupppet wrote:
| MAGA grifter.
| dh2022 wrote:
| How do you that? I am thinking that with my carpal syndrome and
| sciatica I can claim some type of disability when my career
| goes up in flames... but how much disability can I claim?
| Yizahi wrote:
| No fallback path, but I've started to think about such
| possibility this year. I guess I can do telecom support, as in
| doing physical wiring, installing hardware in cabinets, tuning
| signal etc. Being a QA on telco project gets me maybe 20-30% of
| the skills required. But I suspect the pay will be crap, work
| hours a lot more than 40/week and hazardous working conditions at
| roofs, basements, in any weather etc.
|
| I would probably not start a business due to lacking initial
| capital, and not having a fallback option for that failure. And I
| don't have even clue what to do which is not immediately
| bankrupt.
| agsqwe wrote:
| Electrician or plumber
| mateo_wendler wrote:
| I believe there are countless ways to do your computer-based work
| while also pursuing creative projects. Ever since Paleolithic
| times, humans have had an innate creative impulse--and that
| impulse is poised to be reborn now.
|
| In the near or distant future, we'll step away from screens and
| return to eras of pure imagination--new needs will arise to fill
| the spaces that our work hours once occupied.
|
| Creators will compete for attention on social media. The best
| time to launch a brand was ten years ago; the second-best time is
| now.
|
| You must stake your claim before the explosion of AI and the
| surge of human leisure reshapes the landscape entirely.
| glonq wrote:
| By sending manufacturing jobs overseas for decades, America sold
| out blue collar families so that the rich could get richer. After
| if/when AI will do the same to middle-class white collar workers,
| maybe people will realize that it's long overdue that we eat the
| rich.
| Cloudef wrote:
| Bartendar
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Retirement? Nah, just start a new business.
| wwkeyboard wrote:
| It's unlikely we'll automate all of software engineering without
| also making considerable steps in the software of robotics(since
| that is also software). This puts many physical jobs up for
| automation as well.
| abnercoimbre wrote:
| What I'm hearing from you is that you'll take up piano?
| berlincount wrote:
| I'd likely become an EMT, or some kind of craftsman.
|
| Always wanted to learn carpentry. Demand will be soaring one way
| or another.
| jononor wrote:
| Did 6 years as bicycle mechanic/sales in highschool, was ok,
| could do again. Electronics engineering - presumably in this
| scenario the software aspects might be reduced, but probably
| longer before LLMs can do board design, debugging, type approvals
| etc.
| satisfice wrote:
| Expert witness testifying in court against people who negligently
| applied AI to software projects.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Work at Walmart or a warehouse. Maybe see if I can so some CAD
| work somewhere or be a tech teacher.
| unixhero wrote:
| Economics teacher
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| Better be teaching UBI and Marx, or everyone is going to be
| living in favelas while a tiny upper class enjoys comfort and
| normalcy only upstaged by a handful of billionaires and
| trillionaires. Widespread discontent and making peaceful
| revolution impossible leads to a preventable situation.
| atonse wrote:
| Either a restaurant or (more likely) food truck, I've always
| loved cooking and have a few things that I make very well better
| than most restaurants I've eaten at (like kabobs).
|
| Or some kind of related "experiences" business even though I've
| never done it before.
| Smoosh wrote:
| Retirement as I'm almost there anyway. But as I work with
| mainframes I think there will be non-AI jobs there for a while
| yet.
| xnx wrote:
| Retirement grease
| bojan wrote:
| I could teach high school math, but it takes two years to qualify
| to be a high school high school teacher where I live.
| kylecazar wrote:
| The banana stand
| spzb wrote:
| There's always money in the banana stand
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