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Sorry, grads: Entry-level tech jobs are getting wiped out

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Re: Sorry, grads: Entry-level tech jobs are getting wiped out

#101

Post by rimunroe »

michaelmrose wrote: post #81
qoez wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is ridiculous to expect a computer science grand to "driving forklifts, construction, moving, factory work" I agree, but at the same time this is what we told truck drivers when self driving cars was going to take over like a decade ago ("reskill, and at your own dime"). Kind of karma. Capitalism doesn't care unfortunately.

We should replace manual work with automation we shouldn't chop off the tree of industry knowing we will continue to need non entry level knowledge workers after current workers retire. Also the we haven't actually replaced truck driver's at this point so nobody was actually told to reskill on their own dime yet and the "we" that specuated on this point is largely merely pragmatic.

> We should replace manual work with automation

Could you elaborate on the reasoning for manual work being different, and what it’s different from?

Re: Sorry, grads: Entry-level tech jobs are getting wiped out

#102

Post by hedora »

corp8drone8sf wrote: post #75
seemsclear wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The delusion is the public’s belief they can ignore political action and everything will work out for them.

both major parties have sold out workers, the only real choice is the green party, workers' party, etc

The data disagrees. Here’s a graph of private sector spending on new factories in the US. 2020-2024 blows every time period out of the water since 1975.

Look at what’s happening now: Spending started to collapse immediately after Trump got in:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PRMFGCON

Re: Sorry, grads: Entry-level tech jobs are getting wiped out

#103

Post by entuno »

pksebben wrote: post #95
entuno wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Offshoring to people who use AI, and are now much more productive and can produce high-quality written output. If a junior role can be done with ChatGPT and CoPilot, why pay a western salary for it when you can pay someone a fraction of the salary to use the same thing?

Because eventually you're going to need a senior dev who actually has an understanding of the underlying system, when the one you have retires. The human junior will eventually become that, while it would be foolish to rely on the inevitability of LLMs getting there in time. Of course, this only matters if you give half a rat's ass about whether the company is going to be solvent in a decade. If your management strat…

Even if you are thinking long term though, it's a big risk investing in training up a junior, because the culture of have a "job for life" that previous generations had is pretty much gone. People nowadys are much more likely to jump between companies than to still be in the same place a decade later, so there's every chance that the money you spending training up a junior will just benefit whoever hires them in a few years down the line.

And sure, people say "well just pay them more" - but most businesses are never going to be able to match the salaries that the FAANGs and VC backed companies can - so training juniors has turned into a big gamble for them.

Which is terrible for the industry long-term, but in the short term it's not really in any single company's interest to try and change that.

Re: Sorry, grads: Entry-level tech jobs are getting wiped out

#104

Post by [deleted] »

nradov wrote: post #91
robnado wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software Engineers need to get involved politically and demand regulations that systems that are critical for national security be developed by residents of the US on US soil by actual people with the right qualifications.

What are the right qualifications? Most military software development work already requires a security clearance and can only be performed on US soil.

[deleted]

Re: Sorry, grads: Entry-level tech jobs are getting wiped out

#105

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

franktankbank wrote: post #94
nradov wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the right qualifications? Most military software development work already requires a security clearance and can only be performed on US soil.

Healthcare IT is dominated by India. No skin in the game, no thought for the end customers (patients).

That's not THAT different from a lot of US healthcare...

Re: Sorry, grads: Entry-level tech jobs are getting wiped out

#106

Post by lotsofpulp »

michaelmrose wrote: post #88
lotsofpulp wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is why one shouldn’t take on large amounts of debt for questionable return.

What should they do then?

Government funded schools with lower tuition (possibly even community college), more rigorous degrees with higher likelihoods of stable pay (e.g. medical/engineering), trade schools/apprenticeships.

Re: Sorry, grads: Entry-level tech jobs are getting wiped out

#107

Post by hedora »

gtirloni wrote: post #72
tayo42 wrote: post #48

>The key difference, he said, is that the iterative process to make AI code better takes minutes, while a junior coder might need days for the same task. Your Sr engineer is also still distracted and focused on those tasks. Junior engineers come up with new ideas, can eventually put the whole system together. There's never just one code base. What Ai tools are replacing engineers? I finay tried cursors free tier yest…

Exactly. I don't know which planet has this AI fully doing junior jobs unattended. It's not Earth.

I expect current AI models to behave like an L1 or L2 at a big tech company, where they will eventually fire you unless you reach L4.

The only reason they’re useful is that, unlike a human, they can be summoned in under a second and you can’t hurt their feelings by rewriting 100% of their stuff.

Re: Sorry, grads: Entry-level tech jobs are getting wiped out

#108

Post by entuno »

erehweb wrote: post #12

There are a number of industries where you may need experience to become more productive than AI, but nobody wants to hire you when AI is more productive in the first couple of years. Is there a good equilibrium for this, or does it end up with each company saying "We won't hire the juniors, just the experienced people" and then finding there aren't enough experienced people around?

This used to be addressed by the fact that people were loyal to companies - so it was in the company's interest to spend years training them up investing in them, with the knowledge that they might get decades of productive work out of them afterwards. One of my grandparents joined a company as an apprentice as 16, got trained by them, and then worked there for 40 years until retirement.

But nowadys with the culture being much more to to repeatedly jump between companies looking for salary increases, there's a lot less incentive to train juniors - because odds are they're just going to get poached or jump ship before that investment has really paid off.

The big companies or startups with VC funding and deep pockets will always be able to hire experienced people - but it's going to become increasingly hard for other people (and particularly public sector and nonprofits) to do so, as the pipeline of juniors -> seniors is being eroded.

Re: Sorry, grads: Entry-level tech jobs are getting wiped out

#109

Post by entuno »

scotty79 wrote: post #50
erehweb wrote: post #12

There are a number of industries where you may need experience to become more productive than AI, but nobody wants to hire you when AI is more productive in the first couple of years. Is there a good equilibrium for this, or does it end up with each company saying "We won't hire the juniors, just the experienced people" and then finding there aren't enough experienced people around?

I think the solution is the same as it was in previous cases. Extend the education and make it more accessible so you can reach useful skill level before you dirty your hands with commercial work. In the old times 12 year old could have economic utility. Now 26 year old often has none. It might be that with AI you might need to keep learning till 35 before you can usefully contribute to the economy.

Which leads to the obvious question of: who's footing the bill for this?

Is the taxpayer going to pay for another five or ten years of education for people? Are the young people expected to borrow hundreds of thousands more for training? Are their parents expected to house and feed them for another decade?

Re: Sorry, grads: Entry-level tech jobs are getting wiped out

#110

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

hedora wrote: post #78
adamsb6 wrote: post #31

In the mid aughts I decided against computer science as a major based on media forecasts of offshoring destroying the market for programmers. That was a mistake. I ended up a programmer anyway, just with a degree that didn’t really prepare me for it. As for the data, starting with 2019 is going to skew things. In 2022-2023 things went sideways and many big tech employers didn’t extend any intern offers or didn’t even…

This also feels like yet another boom-bust cycle to me. During the boom, many people that couldn’t write a for loop got degrees and somehow got entry level jobs. After the dot com bust, many people avoided CS because such jobs evaporated. This cycle will be a bit worse because four things are hitting simultaneously: (1) Hangover from idiot over hiring during COVID (2) AI is going to replace a lot of incumbent busines…

> During the [dot com] boom, many people that couldn’t write a for loop got degrees and somehow got entry level jobs.

This wasn't universally true. In the SE US, late 1990s, I got 2 responses over a year of submitting applications for entry level coding jobs. One response was for a position hundreds of mi away.

Overlapping this time, I was serving as an employment counselor. I learned that this region was super insular and you need some kind of inside referral to get hired - in pretty much every industry. Local tech wasn't immune to that mindset.

It took me a few years to make connections and start working and even then it self-employed, on-site support. Thirty years later I'm still doing that.

On the other side, once I broke into an industry I could go all over. I got a referral into an ARC and within a few months I was serving all of them. They were all years needing someone but went without rather than hire cold.

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