Engineering... Robots and AI won't be building shit without engineers for a long time.

True, I guess it would not be that much re-training for me to swing a gig like that.

A trade. Most work done in front of a computer is low hanging fruit for AI to do. It's gonna be a lot longer before a robot can perform all the tasks a plumber or electrician can do.

Yeah, nobody is going to bother replacing those jobs unless the cost of those robots get insanely low. Which I frankly do not see in my lifetime.

Problem is, being an electrician apprentice in your mid 30s, does not look very rosy. However, might just be what you have to do.

Underground sewer and water construction. Pay is crazy high, and you get into the outdoors daily. Workers are direly needed to backfill retirees.

What kind of engineering specifically?

Don’t need to be an electrician to be a tradesmen and yes that’s fine to be changing careers.

I’m an HVAC technician, i service commercial and industrial refrigeration equipment. We just had a 28 year old start 2 weeks ago and a new guy who’s in his 30s this coming week. Speak to your local union halls about jobs. You can be a machinist at the Millwright union working on compressors to combustible engines and more. You can focus on robotics, etc.

There is tons of trades such as longshoremen, HVAC, plumber, equipment operators, who makes very good money. The equipment operators around me are unionized and they work 4-8 hours a day but take home is a percentage of jobs, which ends up being a 50+ an hour work.

The demand is there for people to get into trades even without experience, speak to your local union. Also check out elevator technician, those guys make bank.

Medical or mental health. I'm halfway considering going into mental health. There's a huge demand especially post COVID and even with AI people are going to want and need human doctors, medical providers and therapists or social workers.

I don't see the medical fields being fully automated for legal and practical reasons. We'll have robots and AI assisting with surgery and diagnosis for sure but I don't see the human element going away

I am very unsuited to any sort of social work unfortunately. I dont do well with children, old people or the mentally impaired.

Going to be an AI psychologist, talk skynet down when he's upset.

Am previous trades electrician. Money is good, but it will take a physical toll on you. In my 30s now with a bad back & knees already, which is why i am going back to college for engineering. Something most people don’t tell you about trades.

Would be very surprised if an AI that has behavior as you describe will get made anytime soon. Would require a paradigm shift in ML for something like that to occur adding in the natural time it would take to adopt this paradigm shift I would be surprised to see that before 2030 personally.

Also why not have an AI do that instead of a human?

Depends what you like. The classics... Electrical, computer, mechanical, etc... Or the hybrids, biomechanical, etc. What interests you?

My apologies didn't read your post thoroughly.

Reading it now why not electrician or electrical engineering of some kind? I seriously don't see those going away even with AI that could design circuits. It seems like not too far of a stretch to pivot from your line of work

Get some fraternal ties and make your money off the sweat of others, this is historically tested and proven.

I'm in a trade and maybe 40% of our apprentices are over 30. We're union and in a highdemand field and we get paid pretty extortionate wages in my city it's sort of funny. I make 6 figures easily if there's any overtime at all.

Companies need drafters, if you can use autocad or revit, would be an easy way to find a spot in that field.

I started my first trade job at 30. 11 years on and I won’t look back.

I mean, if you wanted something with a futures that utilizes your skills, and future proof, something within the robotics and automation space. Building, programming, or repairing robots should have very good prospects for a long time.

Outside of that, any type of trade that deals in highly specific or varied applications that are hard to automate. Welders, Electricians, HVAC technicians, Plumpers, Mechanics of all types, Carpenters, Inspectors, Garage door technicians, Landscapers, Tree workers, Linemen.

If AI is imminently going to disrupt all knowledge work, it likely follows that AI will shortly after make dramatic optimizations in knowledge worker adjacent fields, ie all commercial/professional fields. In this scenario, in a very short period of time, most human labor will become uneconomical for employers.

Which trade are you in?

yes, enter the bio-energy ponzi scheme arena

You're a SDE for a top tech company. You already have the best overall career.

I'm not sure why someone with your skills can't see that this AI stuff isn't going to have a negative effect on software development. It's like saying we weren't going to need programmers after going from assembly to high level languages. Like high level languages, AI tools are just going to make programmers more productive. They can't be replaced.

To be honest, you'd be crazy to give up being a SDE to ruin your knees or back doing a trade job.

Any education requirements required?

Move to coastal South Carolina and do anything in the service industry. Electrician, plumber, dog boarding, carpenter, heat and air, dog groomer, dog walker, tailor. landscaper, rug cleaner, house cleaner , elder care. There's weeks, months worth of wait for stuff. Everyone retiring close to the beach or moving here to do remote work and in need of services.

I feel fairly comfortable in my IT career. No AI is going to rack and configure a switch, and no business in their right mind would leave configuration solely to AI. Security would want to be human verified.

I works anticipate rather than replacing me, AI will likely augment my job for me, making troubleshooting easier and configuration less of a pain, but there will always be a human element to it.

I would say having an open mind and ability to pivot quickly would do us all well. It was not predictable even 15 years ago that ML would become the dominant career that it is today.

I’ll counter this. 30 year old Electrician and feel just fine. Renovating some of the biggest hospitals in my state capital and feel like I worked harder at my first job stocking shelves than I do now as an Electrician. Naturally a physically demanding job will take its toll but so does sitting at a desk. Just different types of exhaustion

Well, ai cant do much about jobs with physical components as stated. Thats not going away anytime soon.

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>Also why not have an AI do that instead of a human?

This guy wants to give Skynet allies.

Bold strategy

Trades will be automated Down to where the Human is just a low paid machine operator. The higher paid trade jobs will be technicians to manage and service groups of machines and that will take a lot of education. Even in plumbing or hvac that still needs humans for some parts, Wages will be driven down as there is less work available and more workers available. It’s foolish to think those giant construction machines and manual labor will be safe from automation when that is what they are good at. Companies will LOVE the opportunity to no longer need to deal with trade unions and automate.

Even auto mechanic will become more computer based as we see more EVs and less gas engines on the road.

I would start off with an independent EV Service Station and hope to expand that into a chain, so people aren't forced to go to strictly dealerships.

Also worth noting that this job is a ton of “make it work”. Everything looks great to the engineer until you get out into the field with 1000+ premade things and each one needs adjusted an inch because the concrete raises 3” from one side of the building to the other. We’re not even close to automation.

Yeah, same spot. In tech, top of my field making 6 digits.

Everyone they're hiring is freaking clueless. I spend my days baby sitting on basic sysadmin stuff. (How DNS works , how TLS works, adding front end protection because their microservices keep getting attacked and they have nothing in their stack to mitigate attacks)

I've been doing senior sysadmin DevOps dev SRE stuff for 25 years now... But my power to architect infrastructure is dwindling to cleaning up when siloed teams of front end engineers with no oversight say "oh shit we messed up, everything is on fire"

I do think companies are going to start getting their asses handed to them... They don't value sysadmins anymore, and are losing sight of what happens when the smartest guy in the room is a college grad with 4 years of JavaScript dev.

The most senior engineers are getting pushed out since the tech needs are reducing with cloud... That means less jobs, and a retraction of positions in this down market.

As for what comes next, My guess is infosec. However the salary of an infosec guy is still substantially less than sre in my case... So here I sit. Explaining how you can't do HTTPS redirects in DNS for the 90th time.

Culinary, Trade, Safety, Security, all of those things are future-proof. We won't have machines doing any of those things unless we get rid of our fundamental laws and safety measures

Automaton/robotics will streamline and consolidate manual labor based Jobs. Corporations will jump at the the chance to get rid of the need to deal with labor unions and high wages, and Remaining humans will need more computer tech skills to manage, service and operate the machine workers.

Unionized manual labor and all that comes with it (pensions alone) is a prime target for investing massive cash to cut costs with technology.

Why not just move up on the food chain? Sure, AI can program things and spew perfect code but someone needs to engineer the AI.

I can see a lot of fab shop work being automated but I don't think people respect how difficult it is to like, wire a building for electricity or heat or plumbing let alone something more complex like an industrial process.

Electronic tech. Green energy tech. solar geothermal. These tend to be less physical than traditional trades. Anything having to do with troubleshooting the new Era of ai and quantum computer systems and robotics. Stem related careers are only going to be In higher demand. Typical trades jobs are also going to be in demand for the foreseeable future,but.... I've been a tradeworker since high-school and I'm 40 now. Obviously there are differences in physicality in those careers...but,it really really takes a toll on your health. I feel like I'm 60 most days with broken ribs a bad back, knees and shoulders and too many more to mention. If I could do it over again, I'd definitely look into one of the above mentioned. Good luck.

How to manage stage building in all areas. From Truss, A/V/L and everything in between. More precisely, a backstage Technician Management position.

Companies started using virtual networks though..

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If you're considering it, a career in the trades like plumbing or electrical work or carpentry will always be in demand. It can't be automated, and it can't be outsourced.

The medical field. I’m preparing to go to school for surgical tech. As a surgical patient and a natural helper, saving lives while providing top notch surgical services has always been a dream of mine.

Agreed heavy equipment mechanic since I was 19 …. 34 now and I’m pretty beat up

Clearly they are not a very good SDE…

You would be completely wrong. Software engineers aren't going to be replaced by AI. At least not decent ones.

I've been a software engineer, AI researcher (autonomous sensing and computational perception), and worked in quantum computing.

That’s true but those virtual networks still rely on hardware that is managed by tried and true IT folks such as myself. That’s more of an issue centralization, really.

What I’d expect is that it will be harder to get into IT at some point. Right now it’s relatively easy to get your foot in the door. Only the really talented people thrive though. That will probably be moreso going forward.

Trades do offer good money, but as others have said, the physical toll is pretty high, unless you only plan to work in a trade for 5-10 years.

I have uncles in trades they're in there mid -forties and look 60 , all complain about knee/back pain, many are out of shape (their jobs exhausts them daily they don't have any energy to come home and work out, not to mention a shit diet, again out in the field, they don't have the luxury of finding healthy food.). One does have a nice boat and they all have decent homes and their kids are well supported, but its a touch life..

To piggyback off of this, surveying and gis careers are similar and are easier to get into without a (engineering)higher education but still pay decently.

Workstations still require real switches and routers to get to that virtual network.

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As it currently exists, AI can can't create anything itself, it can only use what humans have created. Someone still has to write the code. AI will just be a tool, and developers aren't going anywhere.

This whole subreddit is full of people listening to the marketing people and ignoring the subject matter experts.

The best direction will honestly be a small change for you- manufacturing and industrial automation. Heavily software oriented with a bit of engineering and common sense thrown in. As a software guy already, it will be super easy for you to look at process optimization and predictive maintenance.

Alot will be prefab. Yeah it’s difficult on-site but even if you can replace 1 or 2 out of 5 on-site jobs with a rentable machine companies will do it. It’s coming for all industries.

Example: They are currently building an extension to my kid’s school and I see the workers everyday. The other day I saw a guy operating a bobcat digging a trench, then in the afternoon, 3 guys laying cable in that trench. That could all be one guy supervising 2 machines.

Also it’s a prefab permanent building. A giant Lego basically. They put the walls and roof up in like a day.

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Yeah, I'm trying to figure out wtf OP is talking about lol.

Pivot to consulting. For as long as technology exists, they will need people to teach other people how to implement it

You just got done saying AI is going to replace all software engineers, but they won’t be able to do basic sentiment analysis and suggest a course of treatment? SMH.

We experimented with chat GP to rewrite our existing website and blog copy just to see. It gave very top level 101 level content that was bland and generic…overly technical. Basically terrible marketing Copy. It was a middle school book report where we needed brand positioning, voice, opinion etc. the AI can’t form opinions. It can tell you what our product does at s high level, but it can’t tell you why you need it, what pain points it solves and why it’s better than competitors. It can’t make the emotional argument or connect with a customer.

That’s very difficult to do.

If I can replace 5 expensive workers with 1 operator and a few rented machines, that’s a no brainer business move.

Ocean wall and Levee builder will be needed. Lol

There will be lots of comments about which careers will grow in the future or be destroyed by AI, so I'll go a different direction here.

Do something you are passionate about, and you will have a good chance of being better than most everyone else doing it (which in my opinon is the best recipe for having a secure future in a career). For example, do you absolutely love cooking? Become a chef. Have you always been into numbers and geek out on spreadsheets? Become an actuary or an accountant. Career fields may shrink or grow in the future, but if you are at the top of the heap in a shrinking career, it's probably going to be better than being miserable at the bottom of the heap of a growing field.

I will also say for perspective that 20 years ago, college instructors were certain that advances in AI and globalization would make software developer a minimum wage job today, which turned out terribly wrong. Source, several family members in computer science 20 years ago.

I would not bother thinking I can predict and just plan to stay adaptive at all times, which is a strategy I generally prefer in life anyway. Things not changing much is kind of a boring way to live just for max prosperity.

How does a person get started in drafting? What type of education is needed?

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Disagree. AI can’t form opinions, come up with brand positioning, strategy, analysis, creative campaign concepts etc.

But it can be programmed to dig a trench at coordinates on a grid or install a set of prefab components and connect point a to point b.

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By replacing I mean cutting 90% of all devs. All crud developers and javascript heroes are done. You will have some senior devs left that will basically be the «fall guy» if something goes wrong.

I've worked a career at various automotive interiors suppliers, and during the great recession, when I was worried about being furloughed, I got another degree but in accounting. (thought automotive industry was done with GM and Chrysler in bankruptcy). I ended up staying in automotive parts but moved to management. My next pivot would be to auditing. So long as we still have automotive assembly in the US there are quality systems and they require conformance audits. It's also regardless of powertrain (ie moving from gas to electric).

Regular jobs take a different toll, we just make less money. I suggest not regressing unless money is no longer an issue.

Yeah chat GP is way overblown

Bro no don’t change because of shit you read online

Programmable logic circuits..(PLC's) heavily used in automation and require routine serving. Every water department in America uses them. My town paid a tech $1,200 for three hours of work. Talked with the tech a bit about his education and learned it's a super easy trade to get into and self teach..

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Some schools also have a mixed curriculum called mechatronics.

I mean it’s fun. I’ve been trolling it. You ask it a Simple question and it gives you 5 paragraphs with bullet points as a Response. Not impressed. If it can do the same with 2 accurate sentences then I’d be impressed.

Could also do what I did and go into CNC Engineering. That's not going away for a LONG time. CNC machines make almost everything, especially metals. Airplanes, guns, buildings, turbines, etc. I can keep going. It's a huge industry I feel like isn't talked about a lot.

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A lot of community colleges offer courses. I know people that have taken 2-year drafting programs and got job offers while they were finishing up.

This is a shit post

Brain interfacing tech. Your SDE experience would certainly be useful, but you'd need some neruoscience as well.

My 25 years of experience seeing hype and BS suggests otherwise.

And now we have additive manufacturing (AKA 3D printing) as well as subtractive manufacturing.

GIS is actually something I'm pivoting towards. My parents work for an environmental remediation subcontractor in the Midwest that uses GIS a lot in their work, and it was the first thing my mother recommended when I floated by her the idea of going back to school.

Local college has a professional certification program for it that runs only 15 credit-hours, so about 1 semester worth of classes full-time.

Combine it with a Part 107 UAS license from the FAA and you'll be golden.

I recommend considering a career in aerospace, especially electric or hybrid air vehicles, autonomous flight, air taxis, etc.

He and some other software devs are wringing their hands about how ChatGPT can write some code for you.

I never got a college education. Worked my way up in sales to a manufacturers rep for electronic components. Got an EMT cert. Decided there were too many Paramedics in SoCal. Took a job with a cabinet importer, learned as much as I could, started my own cabinet manufacturing company. Have been self employed since 2015. Can't say that I would ever go back to working for someone else.

There is a central control system that controls the HVAC, lighting, and scheduling of super tanker ships and highrises remotely. We call them controls guys who setup the system in the building. They make decent amounts of money; apparently way more than I do. The most electrical thing they install are variable frequency drives.

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Johnson Controls Link

This is just giving your a basic idea. There may be a more high tech contractor to find.

Rule 2 - Submissions must be futurology related or future focused.

high on your own supply, AI is a misnomer. Sure we've got some fancy tricks but knowledge will always be key to power.

This!

Its fascinating and fun and you don't have to be stuck in an office all the time.

I'm in a similar field as your parents but if I ever go back for a masters degree I'll probably do something gis related

Environmental or civil are great options if you want to profit off of climate change without being one of the bad guys

Yeah i agree with your sentiment. But I have seen far too many redditors predicting the end of “fill in job” based on it.

As someone else said, a community college would be the place to go to. I just finished the 2 year degree but a handfull of companies are willing to hire with just an autocad certificate. Mine was 1 semester of autocad, others might be 2. If you're considering architecture, another 1 or 2 semesters and you'll have a revit certificate.

Tech. If you control the AI, you control the future.

Perhaps, but just optimization and enhancement in the organization of more physical/mechanical labor would probably cut the demand for those kinds of jobs. Self driving trucks are a good example; there may still be human drivers involved, but likely many less.

This is a specific bit of information I refuse to tell lol.

crisper cas-9 genetic editing, artificial neural networking, biological chemistry, biological engineering, machine (deep) learning. technical work like robotics and automation, plumbing/hydraulics, carpentry, masonry, mechanic work, painting, drafting and small quantity machining.

I think you missed the point. You need the engineers and coders to make the robots as they won't be making themselves. Also, contrary to popular belief, the robots just don't materialize out of thin air, either.

Those are white collar jobs. They aren’t blue collar job site workers. You’re not converting and retraining a sheet rock or concrete guy to be a software engineer

And 20 software engineers can program an entire operating system/software application deployed all Around the country on job sites displacing thousands of Jobs.

There's always one...