Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

481–490 of 662 posts

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

#481

Post by i_am_proteus »

CalRobert wrote: post #441
elevation wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a US-based developer I do not feel threatened by the "cheap" offshore developers I encounter. I've repeatedly been hired to clean up after offshore developers who: * lied about their capabilities/experience to get the job, * failed to grok requirements through the language barrier, * were unable to fix critical bugs in their own code base, * committed buggy chatgpt output verbatim, * and could not be held liable b…

For a counterpoint, I’ve worked with many great engineers in Latin America who are smart, capable, and in the same time zones as the US

Likewise! Though Latin American engineers also tend to be some of the priciest offshore developers (along with European engineers). Excellent engineers, but there's still some churn from the friction of hiring and maintaining teams overseas.

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

#482

Post by spwa4 »

jedberg wrote: post #404
laughing_man wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What I've found is that only Americans exhibit self-starting and creativity. Isn't that mostly a function of how incentives are aligned? I had a job with a lot of outsourcing to India. The Indians were given specific bits of code to write. They didn't even know how their code fit into the application. Their entire incentive structure was geared toward getting them to write those bits of code as quickly as possible,…

It could be. But I worked at companies where we had full time employees all around the world, all of whom had full access to the same information the rest of us had. And I still saw this behavior generally. There were of course exceptions. Interestingly the biggest exceptions were ones that had at some point lived and worked in the USA, and then had returned to their home country for some reason or another. > I have…

Cultural differences do exist. I don't understand why this isn't a major problem, because it's behavior I've seen again and again and again: Indians seem terrified of showing any initiative whatsoever (including asking), any own contribution, and do what you've asked them and only what you've asked them. They are also terrified of being accused of doing nothing. This goes to extremes, such as purposefully taking a very long time to finish a simple task simply because they haven't gotten a new one, don't dare ask for one, have to be seen to be working, and can't come up with anything themselves.

You want a long list of simple tasks finished? Excellent workers. An endless ticket queue with simple problems? There's a few issues with them not escalating real problems, but ok.

You want an application developed and a lot of problems solved? Stay away.

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

#483

Post by lexandstuff »

raincole wrote: post #297
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…

It's amusing to see programmers in the US promoting remote work. Do those people really believe they're the most intellectually superior to the rest of the world? If a job can be done purely remotely, what stops the employer from hiring someone who lives in a cheaper place?

The trend of offshoring came and went nearly two decades ago.

Time zone differences, language barriers and cultural differences proved insurmountable.

Hybrid remote seems to work quite well, on the other hand.

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

#484

Post by Moru »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #312
raincole wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amusing to see programmers in the US promoting remote work. Do those people really believe they're the most intellectually superior to the rest of the world? If a job can be done purely remotely, what stops the employer from hiring someone who lives in a cheaper place?

You're getting downvoted, but IMO what you're saying is exactly true, and I've seen it happen. In my experience, pre-2015 or so, offshoring was limited in its utility. Communication was a bitch because videoconferencing from everyday laptops wasn't quite there yet, and a lot of the favored offshoring centers like India had horrible time zone overlap with the US. And perhaps most importantly, companies as a whole were…

> ... should understand they're going to be competing against folks making less than half their salaries.

The lower salary can be offset by the lower need for money when you don't need to buy your lunch, you don't need that expensive car to get to work and so on. The time you used for commuting could instead be spent working for another company part time.

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

#485

Post by legulere »

laughing_man wrote: post #394
bilsbie wrote: post #156

AI is the popular cover excuse for layoffs. I can’t think of a single job that modern AI could easily replace.

It doesn't have to replace people on a one-for-one basis to cause job losses. Let's say LLMs make your developers 50% more efficient. Doesn't it stand to reason you can lay off the lowest performing 33% and get the same amount (or more) of work?

It also means that with lower costs your service becomes more attractive and maybe attracts more customers, so might even grow the number of workers.

This is known as Jevons Paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

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

#486

Post by MangoToupe »

jimmont wrote: post #327

Organizations are choosing to eliminate workers rather than amplify them with AI because they'd rather own 100% of diminished capacity than share proceeds from exponentially increased capacity. That's the rent extraction model consuming its own productive infrastructure. The Stanford study documents organizations systematically choosing inferior economic strategies because their rent-extraction frameworks cannot conc…

It's really just the american companies deciding to do this. Seems like glorified suicide, tbh

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

#487

Post by MangoToupe »

shams93 wrote: post #363
jameslk wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So what comes next? When you don’t need as many people because of automation, you also don’t need them to fight your wars. You use drones and other automated weapons. You don’t need things like democracy because that was to prevent people from turning to revolution, and that problem has been solved with automated weapons. So then you don’t really need as many people anymore, so you stop providing the expensive heal…

Yeah this is what we are seeing today, also its not just junior jobs going, according to Amazon they are using it to get rid of expensive senior employees while they are actually holding onto juniors using ai tools. We have seen a lot of use of h1b and outsourcing despite the massive job shortage. Seeing lots of fake job sites filled with ai generated fake openings and paid membership for access to "premium jobs." Th…

> Ultimately this is great for Russia

Wat

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

#488

Post by aurareturn »

carabiner wrote: post #188
kerblang wrote: post #180

High interest rates + tariff terror -> less investment -> less jobs But let's blame AI

2 things can be true

But usually one is more true. I'm on the camp of high interests and high tariffs being the cause more.

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

#489

Post by hdgvhicv »

jedberg wrote: post #405
nurettin wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked with experts from around the world. After a certain level of competitiveness they are all pretty much the same. Once you become "pals" they all start suggesting improvements. Maybe you socialize better with americans.

Sure, at the highest levels you'll find these traits everywhere. But there is a reason these folks have ascended to the highest levels. What I'm saying is that you find it far more often in junior people in the USA.

I gif it far more often in UK juniors, US juniors tend to be more concerned with moving to their next job than doing the current one.

Maybe we just have different cultural expectations.

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

#490

Post by hdgvhicv »

jedberg wrote: post #410
bubblyworld wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only Americans exhibit creativity and drive? What nationalistic nonsense is this? Step outside of your bubble lol.

That's not at all what I said. I said I see it far more often in Americans than other cultures. And I have stepped out of my bubble many times. I've worked with a lot of people in a lot of countries. They agree with me.

So does ChatGPT. Have fun changing French fries into salad.
Post reply on HN