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Ask HN: What skills are future proof in an AI driven job market?

20 points by sunny678

by late_night_fix

0 subcomment

I's argue no specific tool is future proof.The real skill is getting comfortable learning new tools fast and discarding old ones without attachment.

by austin-cheney

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* superior written communication
* leadership
* data structures
* task/project management
* performance/measurements
* data transmission techniques
Honestly, if you really have to ask the question then none of this matters because it sounds like you are already delegating your career to AI which would make this list unapproachable.

by kimhjo

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Judgment and domain expertise. AI can write the code, but it can't tell you what's worth building or why the architecture will hurt you in two years.

by phillc73

2 subcomments

Paramedicine and nursing. These roles will adapt and use AI, but because they're still so hands-on, and there's already a shortage of staff in those roles in general, I don't see job cuts there.

by throwaw12

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networking - to find gigs
bootlicking - to get promoted after you find your gig
good communication/leadership - to keep yourself in that high position

by Areena_28

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Judgment in ambiguous situations is the one thing that's held up consistently. AI is good at defined tasks, bad at knowing when the task definition itself is wrong.
Also, deep domain knowledge is the other one..... knowing what good output looks like in your field is something models can't fake convincingly at the edges.

by 0xCE0

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The answer is of course obvious, and applies to any business domain over time and hypes: how to sell, that is, being a real old-fashioned salesman, who has ability to make deals, who can bring money in.

by aldanor

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Efficiently communicating with other human beings

by fiftyacorn

1 subcomments

Communication and networking - i think we'll see devs expected to bridge to the BA role and deliver based on that. So being able to communicate will become more important

by Ashbt

1 subcomments

Meta skills: https://share.google/aimode/Fhd3GapqYWJ5vBBXo

by alegd

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knowing how to give AI good context. Thats the skill nobody talks about. I use Claude Code daily and the difference between a lazy prompt and a well structured doc is massive.
also just understanding how the models work. I'm doing an AI masters right now and once you know whats happening under the hood the anxiety disappears.
bottom line: learn it and embrace it.

by omertt27

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adaptability will be always important i think

by cal_dent

1 subcomments

Social skills. Same as it ever was. That beats talents/smarts every time in a corporate environment

by 10keane

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management and critical thinking.
management - it occured to me that giving instructions to agent is very similar to giving instructions to human employees - even the best of them make mistakes.
i learnt that asking claude code to "investigate for 3 potential root causes" is more effective than "investigate the root cause" in bug fix. this blows my mind as i realize that agent can be lazy, can be careless, and we can give better instruction to prevent that.
another reason why i said this is that giving enough context and defining blast boundary is more efficient than hand-holding/micromanaging and checking every tool call for agents. the management skill for human employees also works here.
critical thinking - you just need to have your judgement on the seemingly solid but actually halluncinated agent bs.

by bayarearefugee

1 subcomments

If LLMs have roughly peaked, then everything is safe except for things that are already being eaten away like translation and call center work.
If they haven't and we have hit the exponential growth mark, nothing is safe and even the temporarily "safe jobs" will also suffer greatly from being crunched on both the supply and demand sides (there will be more labor supply for those jobs as the displaced try to flee to safe jobs, there will be less demand for the output of those jobs because the displaced will no longer have income to pay for those goods or services). And LLMs and robots will eventually come for many of those jobs too, likely at a rate that exceeds people's ability to retrain.
Better hope that either things have peaked, or that we can somehow manage to stop treating all forms of socialism as evil or we're going to see the violent unmaking of modern society in our lifetimes.

by KetoManx64

1 subcomments

Plumbing and electrical work

by Jamesbeam

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Killing/rescuing people with your brain instead of bullets and/or creating/exploding structures.
Join the Army. Become a Combat Engineer Sergeant.
Enjoy getting told by your superiors that they are afraid of sitting in the same room with you, because your thinking cap gaze looks like you are always plotting to kill them in the most sophisticated and fun way imaginable. Never say a word, just give them a big friendly smile in return.
Leave with a treasure trove of abilities useful for the rest of your life, or to simply troll your neighbors, and give lifelong work to a local psychotherapist.
Big friendly smile. Two thumbs up.

by zhouzhao

1 subcomments

Critical thinking.

by ensocode

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small scale farming to get your kids fed

by mykowebhn

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Restaurant work

by SilentM68

1 subcomments

Psychology, psychiatry, medical, construction, auto repair, at least in the short term. The jury is still out on the long-term view which is a bit hazy at the moment :(

by fabulousman

1 subcomments

Maths

by 50K1N

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[dead]

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by sebakubisz

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[dead]

by num42

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Metrology, mechanical and materials science engineering, manufacturing and tool engineering, precision engineering, and electrical and electronics engineering, combined with being a generalist and having one specialization in physical or hardware engineering along with computation.
As people often say, matter, energy, and information are the fundamentals of everything. I think we need mathematics, analytic philosophy, the arts and humanities, and physics too. Sorry we need every skill. /s