Goodbye, $165,000 Tech Jobs. Student Coders Seek Work at Chipotle.

[JakeL]

It can handle the majority of level 5 stuff. It is still pretty low-ish on process efficiency but will make a good part. It will not satisfy people that are cycle-time sensitive. Not even remotely. Onesey-twosey customers, that's not usually gonna a show stopper for the most-part.

Boss gives programmer a new job "its only a few pieces, cycle time doesn't matter". Couple weeks later... "hey why is the cycle time so high on that job, it's taking forever" *major facepalm*

[CNCAppsJames]

I guess I should first clarify, when I said 90% of top programmers, I was referring to Object oriented language computer programmers, not CAD/CAM. Those are two very different things, especially for AI. Those two things are not an apples to apples comparison for AI abilities.

Not to mention API Dev serves a massive market and CAD/CAM serves a microscopic one... comparatively speaking. 

[Newbeeee™]

Boss gives programmer a new job "its only a few pieces, cycle time doesn't matter". Couple weeks later... "hey why is the cycle time so high on that job, it's taking forever" *major facepalm*

Is this your boss?
https://x.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/1989701895238381818/photo/1

[JakeL]

Is this your boss?

This is one of my bosses a few months ago:
boss "hey we found this new software, looks really awesome... It's called CAM Assist"
me *hard eye roll* "yup"
boss "so you've heard of it? what do you think?"
me "there's a reason I haven't told you about it"
ignores me, sets up a meeting with higher ups, a couple programmers, and CAM Assist.
Programmers think it's dumb but agree to give it a chance.
Demo parts we tried with it go poorly.
Boss buys CAM Assist anyway

Luckily we aren't forced to try and use it, but I'm pretty confident that was a waste of money. Most of our higher ups are really solid because they have machining experience, but there's a couple that just don't understand.

[mowens]

The Wichita Technical and Professional Unit of SPEEA (engineers union) that I belong to just signed the first contract with Boeing. It's a five year contract.

An average of six more days off per year, depending on years of service, plus an additional 10 weeks of paid leave for new parents.

A $6,000 ratification bonus, paid in February.

A guaranteed annual raise of at least 2%. Increases will vary based on annual performance reviews. Aggregate wages will increase by 5% on July 10, 3.5% in March 2027, 4% in March 2028, 3.5% in March 2029 and 4% in March 2030.

An increase in annual performance bonus payouts starting in 2027 (for the 2026 plan year), with the target going to 7% and the maximum to 14%.

A switch to a Boeing suite of medical insurance plans in 2027, which will save the average WTPU-represented employee $3,100.

Starting in 2027, a 100% 401(k) match for workers contributing 10% of their own money.

The contract will last 4.8 years.

Boeing and SPEEA reach agreement on contract

"The average WTPU-represented worker will be making more than $117,000 a year when this contract is done in 2030," James Hatfield, chair of the WTPU negotiation team, said in a news release. "In addition, we'll see significant improvements to our health care benefits with lower premiums, we'll have more days off from work and we'll have a higher incentive pay tar

[Newbeeee™]

^^^^Murrica is STILL the land of opportunity

[YoDoug]

LLM's have a few fundamental flaws when it comes to CAD/CAM type work. The biggest one is essentially language. LLM or Large Language Models work in language, words. The whole reason humans created drawings, blueprints and standards, etc. is because using words to describe complex geometries and problems is difficult. When you feed an LLM a drawing of a part, it has to analyze that drawing pixel by pixel and create a natural language description of that drawing before it can do anything with it. The next big issue is the predictive text process of LLM's. The word description of an image or drawing or other spatial reasoning problem is built using predictive text, which may be the best prediction based on experience of the LLM. How that may or may not be correct, especially when things needs to be exact.

[CNCAppsJames]

LLM's have a few fundamental flaws when it comes to CAD/CAM type work. The biggest one is essentially language. LLM or Large Language Models work in language, words. The whole reason humans created drawings, blueprints and standards, etc. is because using words to describe complex geometries and problems is difficult. When you feed an LLM a drawing of a part, it has to analyze that drawing pixel by pixel and create a natural language description of that drawing before it can do anything with it. The next big issue is the predictive text process of LLM's. The word description of an image or drawing or other spatial reasoning problem is built using predictive text, which may be the best prediction based on experience of the LLM. How that may or may not be correct, especially when things needs to be exact.

Describing a digital 3 dimensional in words... yeah... they been having fun with that since the 1990's :cough: STEP NC :cough: And maybe that's not fair to that project to keep dragging it through the sewer like I do, but then again, had they not WAY oversold it, I would probably be less of an A-Hole about it, but they earned it so I keep reminding people of it when the best thing since sliced bread shows up at your CEO's desk proclaiming AI for CAD/CAM is here and is your salvation. He shows up at the CEO's desk because he KNOWS we're gonna tear that nonsense up to shreds faster than you can pour a cup of coffee. 
 

There's been a few things I've been quite impressed with on the AI Toolpath front (Toolpath for Fusion)... offloading some of the more menial tasks has been helpful. I've done a few turn-keys with Toolpath now and I'd say it got me ~70-80% of where I needed to be. If I can devote some time to building tool libraries like I have for Mastercam, I can probably get that up to 80-85% of where I need to be. That last 15-20% or so is always the most costly and may not be worth the squeeze as long as there are still capable CNC Programmers in the labor pool.

 

[Here's Johnny!]

as long as there are still capable CNC Programmers in the labor pool.

Hopefully I am wrong but it seems like there are less and less each year... What we don't want from Ai is to lose the skill and ability to do your own critical thinking. The younger generation seem to want the easy button so that is scary when tempted with Ai for ease of thinking.

[CNCAppsJames]

Hopefully I am wrong but it seems like there are less and less each year... What we don't want from Ai is to lose the skill and ability to do your own critical thinking. The younger generation seem to want the easy button so that is scary when tempted with Ai for ease of thinking.

That most certainly seems to be the current consensus. 

In a few weeks I'm going to be judging a Skills USA competition here in Utah, both for the CNC Milling and CAD/CAM portions. Should give me a good indication of where things are headed at least from their perspective anyway. 

[SuperHoneyBadger]

The younger generation seem to want the easy button so that is scary when tempted with Ai for ease of thinking.

Also since the money printers are ON for the AI space, there don't seem to be any respected, rational thinkers who can temper expectations for the kids. If you say anything negative about it you're just a luddite boomer who doesn't get it

[CNCAppsJames]

Also since the money printers are ON for the AI space, there don't seem to be any respected, rational thinkers who can temper expectations for the kids. If you say anything negative about it you're just a luddite boomer who doesn't get it

#Facts

 

[neurosis]

Yeesh.

Is this still the Biden economy?   


https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/05/layoff-and-hiring-announcements-hit-their-worst-january-levels-since-2009-challenger-says.html

• U.S. employers announced 108,435 layoffs for the month, up 118% from the same period a year ago and 205% from December 2025. The total marked the highest for any January since 2009.
• At the same time, companies announced just 5,306 new hires, also the lowest January since 2009, which is when Challenger, Gray & Christmas began tracking such data.
• Also, job openings fell sharply in December to 6.54 million, to their lowest since September 2020. Available jobs are down by more than 900,000 just since October.

[Rstewart]

I feel like there's a thousand open positions for tech and engineering here in my town.

Don't come, we're full 

[Newbeeee™]

Is this still the Biden economy?   

Good job he's out 'cus it would be so much worse.... :whistling: