Plumbers over Programmers?

The weird future state of jobs in an AI world

We are entering a weird state of the world where Plumbers will have better job security than Programmers. Plumbers are experiencing an all-time-high in job demand, while tech continues its barrage of layoffs.

How did we get to this state?

It all boils down to the legibility of training data for AI. Writing code follows a certain grammar and syntax that make it easy for machines to parse. Code snippets are all over the web.

The steps to fix a leaky water pipe? Far less legible and thus harder for a machine to grasp. It will probably be quite some time before we have a large enough repository of plumbing data that machines can train on.

And this is how AI busts our intuitions. Things that look hard for us (like logic puzzles/playing chess/writing rhymes) are actually easy for machines. Things that look easy for us (like decorating our home or even walking down the stairs) are actually hard for machines.

I sincerely hope I’m wrong here, but all this points toward an impending white collar crisis.

How do we make our way out?

Tech builders will still be needed, but paraphrasing advice from Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams: ‘You should either be top 1% at building tech, or top 25% at tech plus another domain like finance or fashion or biology.

So the easier path is programming + X or product + Y. If you’re just a pure tech person, you should be damn good or you should brace yourself for a tidal wave.

Nvidia’s Jensen Huang echoed this sentiment recently when he said that instead of learning coding, focus on picking up domain knowledge instead while learning how to wield AI tools.

This intersection of fields does require a new set of meta-skills to master: systems thinking — seeing how the dots connect, community building — keeping an audience engaged, and good taste — judging when to accept, reject, or refine an output.

The other lesson here? Don’t underestimate the manual jobs. Maybe they have always been underpaid and are now just catching up. The Lindy effect is playing in trheir favor, so just stay humble and keep learning.