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Tech jobs remain a good bet despite mass layoffs in Silicon Valley

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Re: Tech jobs remain a good bet despite mass layoffs in Silicon Valley

#171

Post by mycall »

sjducb wrote: post #165
JCM9 wrote: post #17

Tech is a rare industry where you can easily pivot into it later in your career, start at an entry level position, work your way very high up the ladder and get paid very well along the way. I know folks without a college degree that started as tech support reps who worked their way up to senior roles in big tech that make multiples more than most physicians I know or others that had to go down a rigid path to get to…

I'm amazed by the negativity in the replies to this post. I transitioned into programming as an older worker and it was really easy. It's much easier to be a successful programmer than a successful scientist. Also I don't think that ageism in tech is a thing. The reason that there are very few older workers is because the number of jobs is increasing exponentially (doubling every 5 years since the 60s). All of those…

One thing is for sure. Having a scientist background will make you a better programmer.

Re: Tech jobs remain a good bet despite mass layoffs in Silicon Valley

#172

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #138
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT was based on GPT3, which was released in 2020. The fundamental advance appears to have been InstructGPT which was 2022. GPT4 was 2023, three years after version 3. Id expect to see GPT5 sometime in 2026.

This thing is out in the public now and has massive mindshare. Funding and intellectual talent is flowing in at a much faster pace. The big incumbents are now under pressure from their shareholders to come up with competitors. I'll be very, very surprised if the growth rate doesn't accelerate from here.

Maybe, maybe not?

It depends on what improved GPT-4 relative to 3. If it was adding more data, then we'd expect progress to speed up in the short-term and then come to a screeching halt as we run out of text.

If it was algorithmic/model improvements then it could be much quicker to improve or much slower.

I think the big problem is that nobody (except Open-AI) knows what GPT-4 does and how it does it, so it's hard to predict.

I'm generally a fan of a naive model given the uncertainties around this, hence my prediction of three years.

Re: Tech jobs remain a good bet despite mass layoffs in Silicon Valley

#173

Post by lhnz »

tarruda wrote: post #29
lhnz wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you convinced of this? From what I can see, GPT-4 is incredibly useful but you have to be very careful to lead it in the correct direction otherwise it produces bad outputs. I say this as somebody that probably uses it every 10 minutes. Do you think that it will stop making errors of judgment and be able to behave as an agent soon? I've not encountered anything yet that gives me faith in that, other than hype…

> I say this as somebody that probably uses it every 10 minutes Do you feel like your ability to produce correct output with GPT improved with practice? If so, then eventually you might reach a point where you get 99.99% accuracy with it, and this can easily 10x your productivity.

No, that's not really what has happened. If you ask a question, it tends to mean you lack knowledge about something, and therefore you don't have enough context to produce a question that perfectly teases out the correct answer from GPT. Instead what happens is that you have to carefully engage in conversation and iterate towards improving GPTs context and your understanding of what it is saying well enough to ask it more incisive questions or to correct obvious inconsistencies in what it has communicated.

Re: Tech jobs remain a good bet despite mass layoffs in Silicon Valley

#174

Post by imtringued »

aio2 wrote: post #145
giantg2 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more than that. It's the continuation of a distorted view of reality in which the world is a meritocracy and everyone can be rich if they just try hard enough. That's there's nothing stopping anyone from taking a job that doesn't require years of training and making 2x+ the median for that role and using just an anecdote to back it up. This type of stuff is detrimental to the choices and mental health of the nex…

It's up to you to percieve this the way you wish, but please don't not force these assumptions onto other people. Thanks!

Ah yes, the good old other people's life's are "forced assumptions".

Re: Tech jobs remain a good bet despite mass layoffs in Silicon Valley

#175

Post by imtringued »

cityofdelusion wrote: post #137
giantg2 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be interesting to see what that looks like adjusted for location/COL. It's possible the comp due to cost of living with a high concentration of devs in one area might be enough to influence this. Until we understand that and compare it to the distribution for physicians, it would be hard to draw any conclusions from it.

Bay Area bias is almost certainly skewing this entire conversation thread. In my average non-coastal metro area, all the nice homes in the nice areas are owned by classes of people like lawyers and doctors, not software developers. Most developers I meet here drive average cars and live in average housing.

I am sorry but I have to inform you that you are a forced assumption.

Re: Tech jobs remain a good bet despite mass layoffs in Silicon Valley

#176

Post by imtringued »

foobarian wrote: post #52
m_a_g wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2) If one were AI-alarmist, is there any profession you can be confident will not be displaced by AI in 10, 15, or even 20 years? Many; Dentists, people that fix your AC, electricians, etc, etc.

How in the world can AI replace an HVAC person or electrician? Will it braze copper for me somehow?

The point is that you won't need an HVAC person, just someone who knows how to braze.

Re: Tech jobs remain a good bet despite mass layoffs in Silicon Valley

#177

Post by imtringued »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #70
bombolo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh please stop with this meaningless fear mongering. AI is a (not so good) tool. Yes it can write very short snippets that often make sense, but in no way can understand requirements, do debugging or maintain existing code.

boggles my mind that we had a tool that was smart when it was first launched in November 2022, experienced a massive generational improvement in the next iteration (GPT-4) within 4 months...and people on HN are ready to assert that this is the best it will ever be. It improved drastically in quality within 4 months, yet for some reason, the nex 10 years will see 0 progress in a field with literally tens of billions a…

The hype ratio between GPT2 and GPT3 is much higher than the hype ratio between GPT3 and GPT4. If we project this into the future then the hype ratio will be even lower between GPT4 and GPT5. The key innovation was RLHF and everything since then has been incremental improvements.

Re: Tech jobs remain a good bet despite mass layoffs in Silicon Valley

#178

Post by imtringued »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #138
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT was based on GPT3, which was released in 2020. The fundamental advance appears to have been InstructGPT which was 2022. GPT4 was 2023, three years after version 3. Id expect to see GPT5 sometime in 2026.

This thing is out in the public now and has massive mindshare. Funding and intellectual talent is flowing in at a much faster pace. The big incumbents are now under pressure from their shareholders to come up with competitors. I'll be very, very surprised if the growth rate doesn't accelerate from here.

Your narrative doesn't matter in the real world.

Re: Tech jobs remain a good bet despite mass layoffs in Silicon Valley

#179

Post by rideontime »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #16
Joeboy wrote: post #12

I'm not sure what would be a better bet? It's not like automation / the economy / capitalism aren't also coming for other workers. Maybe a good time to retrain as a bailiff?

Given the capabilities of our current set of AI tools, I have zero doubt that almost every white collar job will be affected within a 10-15 years. Before you say that's not possible, remember that chatGPT (GPT-3.5) went live in November 2022, and GPT-4 went live in March 2023. 10-15 years is a long time in tech. The iPhone is barely 15 years old.

How are your friends' MegaCryptopolis investments doing?

Re: Tech jobs remain a good bet despite mass layoffs in Silicon Valley

#180

Post by eschneider »

sage76 wrote: post #42
JCM9 wrote: post #17

Tech is a rare industry where you can easily pivot into it later in your career, start at an entry level position, work your way very high up the ladder and get paid very well along the way. I know folks without a college degree that started as tech support reps who worked their way up to senior roles in big tech that make multiples more than most physicians I know or others that had to go down a rigid path to get to…

> Tech is a rare industry where you can easily pivot into it later in your career Everyone I know who is older and already in the industry, is having a bad time trying to change jobs.

I dunno...I'm 55 and was laid off earlier in the year and finding a new job wasn't terribly hard. I don't have a FAANG background and don't necessarily work with the absolute latest tech, but I try to work in one or two areas that seem marketable.

Took me a about three weeks to get two offers, but ended up going with a third that paid a bit less, but would let me learn some new skills.

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