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Ask HN: What is your fallback job if AI takes away your career?

95 points by 7402 ↗ HN
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)

205 comments

[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 326 ms ] thread
mattl
I’m learning how to sculpt both with and without a computer.
ilkhan4
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
Just practice your Captain Allears and First Officer Blunt roleplay, and you'll be fine
colesantiago
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
> 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
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
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
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
Not every problem is fixed peacefully. Remember the French in 1789.
mrguyorama
>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
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
"10x more productive" does not imply "10x better products"

My expectation is more crap produced faster, and/or by fewer people.

OccamsMirror
"Good enough!"

That's been the trajectory of software product development for the past twenty years, at least.

pacomerh
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
If every developer is 10x more productive, that means the total addressable market just got that much larger!
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ponector
Instead of high paid western jobs, the new jobs could be created somewhere in India. Are you ok to have $20k annual salary?
pacomerh
What about intellectual property and cultural nuances. I can think of many jobs that can't be outsourced because of this
bluefirebrand
AI has pretty much shown that Intellectual Property is a sham
jacknews
Looxuray! Mid-senior devs on <$10kpa here.
bryanlarsen
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
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?"...
jacknews
Current AI is clearly not going to replace everyone.

It will certainly reduce low-level clerical work, so plenty of jobs will, are already, going, but new jobs will of course be created.

But what if we get actual AI? All bets are off then. The only jobs left will be very specifically human jobs. The oldest profession, probably.

Finnucane
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
"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.

Finnucane
i work in academia; our authors definitely still need copyeditors.
jasonthorsness
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
not_your_vase
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
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
> "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
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
Most of what you've written just boils down to the ability to being a good liar. :)
HeyLaughingBoy
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.

000ooo000
>nothing about the post suggested that.

>[they] are good at spinning answers to make everyone hear what they wanted to hear.

To me that definitely reads like the original comment was alluding to an ability to bend the truth or frame things in an advantageous way, which is essentially lying's brother, manipulation.

Besides, politicians have earned their reputation a hundred times over. Good luck convincing anyone that it's unfair to suggest politicians are liars.

GianFabien
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.
abnercoimbre
I hadn't realized America glorifies the almighty dollar to the extent that it does until recently. Everything boils down to this; I feel like a fool.
HeyLaughingBoy
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!

jocaal
She is a great politician given the attention she can grab from the media. The primary goal of politicians is to get votes and she seems to be excelling at that.
csomar
> I have never heard about a starving one

Politics make Silicon Valley startup culture like a stable career. You only hear about non-starving politicians because you only hear about the successful ones. Politics is extremely hard which is why only people with no technical skills can make it (they max out on emotional/social skills).

lancekrogers
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
I suspect there are many of us out there slowly but surely transforming into plumbers.
octo888
There does seem to be a huge population that has: 1) no DIY skills at all, 2) absolutely no idea what anything should cost, 3) no idea what a top-tier pro job looks like.

Handymen with good customer service skills could probably do quite well?

azhenley
YouTuber or move to the mountains.
bravetraveler
Despite mythology, crime does pay. /s

The same thing I do now, but different: support. Everything ~burns~ breaks

jermaustin1
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
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
I think you can apply for an ag exemption depending on location
Dig1t
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
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
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
Yep the escrow for taxes and insurance is the biggest part of my mortgate payment by far.
giantg2
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.
paulcole
You seem to be familiar with the situation. What are the property tax laws and insurance risk where the commenter lives?
giantg2
I'd like for them to explain it. The data I have shows .5% tax is one of the lowest values, with $2300 insurance being the national average for a $300k dwelling. Based on this data, the numbers don't add up. Maybe they can explain so we can learn.
jermaustin1
Rural Louisiana and a Homestead Exemption on a house that I bought for $85k.
HeyLaughingBoy
> you can dig a well for water

You can pay someone upwards of $10,000 to drill a well for you. FTFY!

orionsbelt
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
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
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.
more_corn
And ready to egg you on if you start having delusions. Super dangerous and destructive for the people who need help most.
ravenstine
Unless something changes, I think that even the idea of AI being your "friend" is a giant meme. Kind of like dating apps, people will claim all the kids today have AI friends and AI therapists and talk it up as if it's just ad good, but there's a good chance that, given a decade, everyone will recognize that it's crap.

Human knowledge is not the same thing as human experience. Create an AI that experiences the world autonomously, experiences trauma and come back to me.

I say this as someone who uses AI and doesn't completely dismiss it like many on HN these days. So far, I don't see it replacing the human being for connection and understanding. Replacing coders? That's a whole other question.

xboxnolifes
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.
orionsbelt
I haven’t tried it, and I’m not sure how good it is currently in terms of actually therapeutic benefit, but I would guess using OpenAI’s advanced voice mode, and giving it a good prompt telling it to play the role of a marriage therapist, would actually work pretty well in terms of conversing with two people, listening to both, being empathetic, guiding each person to really hear the other, etc.
exe34
Middle aged male content creator on onlyfans.
xnx
AI is taking those jobs too
exe34
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
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.
ben_w
Only 100k?

Sure, I'm old enough to remember when that was a lot, and I only missed that kind of (paid) user base being "take the whole company across the Atlantic to celebrate" level by a year or so, but these days it seems like even a million paying users gets a "meh".

(If you mean "all users including ones who don't pay", as I recall my Mac shareware around 2009/10 got about 10k downloads in a few months, of whom something like 1% actually paid).

gtmitchell
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
Hey, I'm really interested in lab software administration as a career. I have some related experience. Can we chat?
ReptileMan
Pizzaiolo, shawarma maker, high end assassin using drones to do work.
lylejantzi3rd
Manufacturing, sales, or crazy inventor who ends up blowing himself up with his inventions.
whatamidoingyo
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
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.

whatamidoingyo
Haha, awesome. Working with tools is an essential skill, for sure.

Winter does slow down, especially in the north. I live in Florida now, though, so painting is done year-round. I don't paint anymore, but I do miss it.

> But reaching over your head with a brush or roller for 8-12 hours a day will eventually cause RSI.

Absolutely.

stevi
Hurting myself on camera (like Jackass)
synthc
User name almost checks out
innanet-worker
yoga instructor. how is a robot going to do yoga?
kojeovo
the ai will program it to at that point
steve_adams_86
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
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.
steve_adams_86
It’s very fascinating and totally amazing! I almost exclusively grow terrarium and aquarium plants for hobbyists at this point, with a few businesses buying small allotments. As I expand what I can offer and gain more traction it should allow the business to grow a bit, slowly but surely.

The terrarium plants get acclimated in 2” pots. Aquarium plants go straight out in vitro.

I’ve got some blueberries on the go as an experiment because I know a farmer who would like to buy them, and that could be a future avenue to do higher volume. But at this point I’d prefer to stay away from agriculture if I can. I enjoy it, but it doesn’t really keep me ticking like the others do.

OutOfHere
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
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
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.
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mosburger
I'm a moonshiner with delusions of someday opening a micro distillery.
hellisothers
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
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
Yeah, just insurance is my biggest worry/cost. Cheaper to house and feed a family than cover them with non-employer health insurance.
blibble
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

OccamsMirror
Maybe?

For most of history, the majority of people were born into rigid social positions with little mobility, owing labor, tribute, or service to elites who controlled land, resources, and political power. Personal autonomy as we understand it was rare.

As modern people, we see this backslide as impossible. Surely we'll fight back if this happens, right?

But what if we won't? What if we just make do, as we always have. Our ancestors adapted to feudalism, slavery, totalitarian regimes, caste systems - not just the beneficiaries, but the oppressed too. History suggests that people are remarkably capable of normalizing and accommodating to systems that previous generations might have found intolerable.

I don't have faith in the general public fighting back against this new wave.