Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Will AI push more of us into freelancing?

news.ycombinator.com

1–10 of 18 posts

Ask HN: Will AI push more of us into freelancing?

#1
AI tools are automating bigger pieces of software work every month. Do you think that will shift the market away from traditional full-time roles toward contract or freelance gigs?

What’s your current setup (full-time, freelance, hybrid, student, between jobs, etc.)?

How do you expect AI to change that balance over the next few years, and why?

Curious to hear your experiences, predictions, or any data points you’ve come across.

Re: Ask HN: Will AI push more of us into freelancing?

#4
I think that AI will let us make better progress outside of our narrow expertise.

So entrepreneurial activities will be easier and more common. On the other hand, there will be relatively fewer opportunities for specialized consultants. Contractors and consultants should be able to solve bigger problems rather than working in narrow specialties.

Teams and companies should have fewer members, since fewer specialties are needed. So they will probably need more contractors to move things along when there is a lot of work to do.

Re: Ask HN: Will AI push more of us into freelancing?

#5

I think that AI will let us make better progress outside of our narrow expertise. So entrepreneurial activities will be easier and more common. On the other hand, there will be relatively fewer opportunities for specialized consultants. Contractors and consultants should be able to solve bigger problems rather than working in narrow specialties. Teams and companies should have fewer members, since fewer specialties a…

Why wouldn’t AI handle the work of the contractors?

Re: Ask HN: Will AI push more of us into freelancing?

#6
The software crisis of the 1960s was marked by an inflection point: Organizations saw the benefit of automation but software writing was a tedious affair typically done in assembly language or FORTRAN or something. There just weren't enough programmers on earth to take up the load of writing all the software that would be necessary. So new tools, like COBOL and ALGOL, were devised to help programmers produce correct software quickly.

Today's software crisis is not one of too little but too much. We are absolutely spoiled for computing power -- a smartphone having enough capacity to replace a mainframe that in the 1970s or 1980s would have handled a national bank's transactions, many times over. We are awash in software, most of it bad. We need less software and better software. Stochastic slop generators are going to make this problem worse, not better.

It may be a rough few years, but on the other side there will be a boom in demand for programmers to clean up the mess "AI" has made.

Re: Ask HN: Will AI push more of us into freelancing?

#7

No I think it will create more full time roles, either (pessimistic) cleaning up AI slop, or (optimistic) opening up work that would've been uneconomical before.

This is something I hope will happen. I can see small dev shops being able to do things like big migrations on legacy code they couldn’t contemplate before. I’m not so optimistic on the creation of new jobs though.

Re: Ask HN: Will AI push more of us into freelancing?

#8
post #6

The software crisis of the 1960s was marked by an inflection point: Organizations saw the benefit of automation but software writing was a tedious affair typically done in assembly language or FORTRAN or something. There just weren't enough programmers on earth to take up the load of writing all the software that would be necessary. So new tools, like COBOL and ALGOL, were devised to help programmers produce correct…

They might use AI to clean up old AI tech debt code

Re: Ask HN: Will AI push more of us into freelancing?

#9
post #5

I think that AI will let us make better progress outside of our narrow expertise. So entrepreneurial activities will be easier and more common. On the other hand, there will be relatively fewer opportunities for specialized consultants. Contractors and consultants should be able to solve bigger problems rather than working in narrow specialties. Teams and companies should have fewer members, since fewer specialties a…

Why wouldn’t AI handle the work of the contractors?

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Will AI push more of us into freelancing?

#10
It’s going to be a great time to be an entrepreneur, but a terrible time to be an employee.

A solo indie developer can have an AI team working on a project.

But so will every corporation. The competition for the remaining human-only roles will be intense.

Post reply on HN