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Yet again hearing how some skilled work never truly mattered now that it's getting automated, while it absolutely did and was a point of professional pride for many. It's a significant aspect of 'deskilling', which is a known consequence of automation. Pretending otherwise is needlessly unkind.

17/8/26, 5:59 pm7 reposts35 likes

Sam Stokes

@five-eights.com

17 Aug

I've been guilty of saying "coding was never the hard part", and thanks for calling out this harm. For me it's been an imprecise attempt to *distinguish* the skilled part from the "manual labour". E.g. nobody thinks *typing* the code was the skilled part.

Sam Stokes

@five-eights.com

17 Aug

For me it's been a response to "AI makes code free", which is now an article of faith in mgmt but controversial for engineers. I think the disagreement is about the scope of "coding". Mgmt would like it to mean "producing software that solves business problems is now free", but that isn't true.

Fred Hebert

@ferd.ca

17 Aug

Right. I don’t know people were ever disappointed about typing less/in a new box; it’s the nature of what’s typed that connects to skilled work. But the work changes, so does the deskilling/devaluing (IMO), and processing this isn’t simple, particularly when work is part of people’s identity.