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AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers: study

cnbc.com

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Re: AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers: study

#11

Post by jordanb »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #6
muldvarp wrote: post #3

Brutal that software engineering went from one of the least automatable jobs to a job that is universally agreed to be "most exposed to automation". Was good while it lasted though.

Too bad engineers were “too important” to unionize because their/our labor is “too special .” I think you could find 10,000 quotes from HN alone why SDEs were immune to labor market struggles that would need a union Oh well, good luck everyone.

This was when programmers were making software to time Amazon worker's bathroom breaks so believing "this could never happen to me" was probably an important psychological crutch.

Re: AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers: study

#13

Post by jordanb »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #7
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too bad engineers were “too important” to unionize because their/our labor is “too special .” I think you could find 10,000 quotes from HN alone why SDEs were immune to labor market struggles that would need a union Oh well, good luck everyone.

This is, if true, a fundamental shift in the value of labor. There really isn’t a non-Luddite way to save these jobs without destroying American tech’s productivity. That said, I’m still sceptical it isn’t simply a reflection of an overproduction of engineers and a broader economic slowdown.

Yeah I agree that outsourcing and oversupply are the real culprits and AI is a smoke screen. The outcome is the same though.

Re: AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers: study

#14

Post by orochimaaru »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #6
muldvarp wrote: post #3

Brutal that software engineering went from one of the least automatable jobs to a job that is universally agreed to be "most exposed to automation". Was good while it lasted though.

Too bad engineers were “too important” to unionize because their/our labor is “too special .” I think you could find 10,000 quotes from HN alone why SDEs were immune to labor market struggles that would need a union Oh well, good luck everyone.

Unions won’t solve this for you. If a company just decides they have enough automation to reduce union workforce it can happen the next time contracts get negotiated.

Either way, there are layoff provisions with union agreements.

Re: AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers: study

#15

Post by grim_io »

muldvarp wrote: post #3

Brutal that software engineering went from one of the least automatable jobs to a job that is universally agreed to be "most exposed to automation". Was good while it lasted though.

Maybe it's just the nature of being early adopters.

Other fields will get their turn once a baseline of best practices is established that the consultants can sell training for.

In the meantime, memes aside, I'm not too worried about being completely automated away.

These models are extremely unreliable when unsupervised.

It doesn't feel like that will change fundamentally with just incrementally better training.

Re: AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers: study

#16

Post by lazide »

fibers wrote: post #8

The accounting note is not true in the traditional sense. The field in the US is just getting offshored to India/PH/Eastern Europe for better or for worse. There is even a big push to lower the educational requirements to attain licensure in the US (Big 4 partners want more bodies and are destroying the pipeline for US students). Audit quality will continue to suffer and public filers will issue bunk financials if th…

Yup, 95% of the AI hype is to apply pressure on the labor market and provide cover for offshoring/downsizing.

Re: AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers: study

#17

Post by shadowgovt »

muldvarp wrote: post #3

Brutal that software engineering went from one of the least automatable jobs to a job that is universally agreed to be "most exposed to automation". Was good while it lasted though.

I really hope nobody had themselves convinced that software engineering couldn't be automated. Not with the code enterprise has been writing for decades now (lots and lots and lots of rules for gluing state to state, which are extremely structured but always just shy of being so structured that they were amenable to traditional finite-rule-based automation).

The goal of the industry has always been self-replacement. If you can't automate at least part of what you're working on you can't grow.

... unfortunately, as with many things, this meshes badly with capitalism when the question of "how do you justify your existence to society" comes up. Hypothetically, automating software engineering could lead to the largest open-source explosion in the history of the practice by freeing up software engineers to do something else instead of toil in the database mines... But in practice, we'll probably have to get barista jobs to make ends meet instead.

Re: AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers: study

#18

Post by ivewonyoung »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #6
muldvarp wrote: post #3

Brutal that software engineering went from one of the least automatable jobs to a job that is universally agreed to be "most exposed to automation". Was good while it lasted though.

Too bad engineers were “too important” to unionize because their/our labor is “too special .” I think you could find 10,000 quotes from HN alone why SDEs were immune to labor market struggles that would need a union Oh well, good luck everyone.

Unions would just delay the inevitable while causing other downsides like compressing salary bands, make it difficult to fire non-performers, union fees, increasing chance of corruption etc.

For a recent example:

> Volkswagen has an agreement with German unions, IG Metall, to implement over 35,000 job cuts in Germany by 2030 in a "socially responsible" way, following marathon talks in December 2024 that avoided immediate plant closures and compulsory layoffs, according to CNBC. The deal was a "Christmas miracle" after 70 hours of negotiations, aiming to save the company billions by reducing capacity and foregoing future wage increases, according to MSN and www.volkswagen-group.com.

Re: AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers: study

#19

Post by nradov »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #6
muldvarp wrote: post #3

Brutal that software engineering went from one of the least automatable jobs to a job that is universally agreed to be "most exposed to automation". Was good while it lasted though.

Too bad engineers were “too important” to unionize because their/our labor is “too special .” I think you could find 10,000 quotes from HN alone why SDEs were immune to labor market struggles that would need a union Oh well, good luck everyone.

I'm not necessarily opposed to unionization in general but it's never going to save many US software industry jobs. If a unionization drive succeeds at some big tech company then the workers might do well for a few years. But inevitably a non-union startup competitor with a lower cost structure and more flexible work rules will come along and eat their lunch. Then all the union workers will get laid off anyway.

Unionization kind of worked for mines and factories because the company was tied to a physical plant that couldn't easily be moved. But software can move around the world in milliseconds.

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