Crocodile tears? Altman's post "thanking programmers" sparks ridicule, netizens say "because of you, programmers will lose their jobs and go mine coal"

If you’ve recently seen the big layoffs sweeping the tech industry: Amazon cutting 16,000 employees, Block (formerly Square) laying off nearly half its workforce, Atlassian trimming 10% of staff, and rumors that Meta is planning a new round of large-scale layoffs… behind all this, there’s almost always the same reason — AI.

In this moment when tech workers are trembling and seeking solidarity, OpenAI’s CEO, the hottest man in Silicon Valley right now — Sam Altman — suddenly decided to take a “warm and fuzzy” approach on X.

Result? Unsurprisingly, he flopped, and it was a spectacular crash.

A Thank-You Message Like an “Old-Fashioned Dial-Up Phone”

This Tuesday, Altman posted a heartfelt message on X:

“I am deeply grateful to those who write extremely complex software character-by-character. It’s now hard to recall just how much effort that took. Thank you — it’s because of you that we’ve come this far.”

Doesn’t that sound touching? A tech mogul paying tribute to the old generation of programmers.

But the problem is, in the current context, this sweet sentiment sounds especially jarring. It’s Altman’s company that led this wave of AI frenzy, and now that wave is being used by major corporations as a perfect excuse to lay off developers and cut entry-level programming jobs.

The once-dreamed computer science career has turned into a nightmare; the idea that “programming equals prosperity” has officially shattered. A recent study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows that the unemployment rate for new computer science graduates in the US is as high as 6.1% to 7.5%, more than double that of biology and art history graduates.

Even more darkly humorous, OpenAI’s supermodels are trained on the massive amounts of code written by these very programmers — character-by-character, in old-fashioned ways.

As netizens put it, Altman’s words seem to imply: The highly skilled craft of developers is now just like an old dial-up phone — nostalgic, but outdated and useless.

Top Comments: Internet Users’ Top Sarcasm

Faced with this “raising the bowl to eat, then smashing the bowl” kind of statement, netizens on X exploded. Some openly expressed anger: “Not polite. Glad to know our reward is having our jobs stolen.”

But most internet users chose their favorite way to mock: ridicule and sarcasm.

To give a sense of how intense the scene was, I randomly screenshot some of the most-liked witty replies from thousands of comments on X:

【Workers’ Defense Squad】 User @lonelyguyse1 shed tears for the era: “So true… The first time I tried Vim without internet, I spent an entire hour just figuring out how to exit.”

But then, some users sent blessings from hell:

“Dear developers, you will forever lose your jobs and be forced to mine coal in the mines. But don’t worry — Sam Altman is grateful to you. ❤️”

【Capitalist’s True Nature Exposed】 User @theliamnissan cut straight to the point with Altman’s hidden message:

“Thank you for your work. Now, it’s mine.”

Another user @shahyn_kamali spotted a golden business opportunity:

“A billion-dollar app idea: develop an AI that reads billionaires’ tweets before they post, then reminds them, ‘This will make you look extremely out of touch with the common people. Are you sure you want to post it?’”

【Hellish Jokes Group】 Someone commented: “This is Sam’s eulogy for software engineers.” Others said: “It sounds like what Mayan priests said before starting human sacrifices.”

Another user launched a “reverse thank you”:

“I am grateful for all the AI work done by OpenAI, because now I can use Chinese open-source AI models for free.”

What Have We Lost Behind the Jokes and AI Frenzy?

Of course, amid the memes and jokes, there are also sober reflections from professionals. This is the core of what makes this “public mockery event” worth our attention.

User @NyxCyphers offered a very hardcore and profound insight:

“This gratitude is what you deserve. But what’s unsettling is that the ‘character-by-character’ discipline produces code that humans can review line-by-line. Now, large-scale AI-generated code erases that. We’re trading craftsmanship-level understanding for speed, but no one’s calculating what we’ve lost.”

This may be the deeper reason behind the public outrage: not just the lack of apology to those whose data, articles, and code were stolen (as @EnmiloX questioned), but also because the rapid technological advancement is destroying a controllable, fully human-understandable engineering culture.

Interestingly, in the comment section of this crash scene, a large “cyber-activist” army has also emerged. Many users are posting under tags like #keep4o and #BringBack4o.

User @Aclle12 angrily commented: “Stop just thanking the past and erase the future we truly love. It was #4o that made OpenAI what it is today — give it back to us!”

Another user said: “I am immensely grateful for #GPT4o, which has the emotional intelligence to listen — while most people are still afraid to listen to their own hearts. I long for a world full of compassion and humanity.”

Another user @langrisser4o sarcastically remarked: “Express such deep gratitude to the engineers who write code, but show no recognition to the millions of testers, iterators, and feedback providers who helped popularize these models.”

From a technological perspective, Altman may genuinely be reflecting on the tides of innovation; but from an industry insider’s view, in this grand “graduation season” led by AI, the boss’s sentiment seems tinged with “crocodile tears.”

In this era where programmers are using AI to assist coding while worrying about being replaced tomorrow, perhaps the most representative voice is the netizens’ soul-searching question:

“You’re trying to replace all of us, so why are people still liking this post?”

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