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I analyzed 180M jobs to see what jobs AI is replacing today

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Re: I analyzed 180M jobs to see what jobs AI is replacing today

#71

Post by geodel »

sixhobbits wrote: post #5
batchfile wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes sense to me. Until Software Engineers have automated away all the other jobs with AI & software they'll be safe. That's going to take a long time. Replacing software engineers with AI only affects the bottom line of software companies. Companies are usually fine with increasing the bottom line if they can exponentially increase the top line. I think software engineers will provide that capability for at le…

I think that's an over-simplistic view - at the moment there are many, many software engineers hired by companies who are betting on AI being madly profitable. If those expectations change, we could see more cascading layoffs, which will mean those engineers will go looking at more traditional places like banks, which means they'll stop hiring, which means it'll be harder to someone who is looking for a new job to fi…

True, besides actual software engineering is small part of overall IT/computer related work. There are far more analysts, managers(project, program, IT, agile etc), QA, operations and so on. So engineers who employers think are capable of leveraging AI and do 20 s/w engineer worth of work with 5 people will remain in demand for time being.

Even without outright layoffs one can see how fast leverage of average IT engineer is disappearing. After 20 years of experience my value or feedback matters less than when I was 4 years into paid job. And it has far less to with AI so far.

Most custom work of past is just a library, component or framework to use. And those are mandated to be used as it much easier to hire/replace teams to work on those.

Now It may be always be true to have reusable components created but growth of IT industry kept people employed in ever greater numbers. However now it seems to be reaching limit. Leaving aside highly visible layoffs by US tech giants, growth is fading in countries like India with huge IT offshoring workforce. There are millions upon millions jobless fresh graduates waiting to get jobs with some IT degree.

Re: I analyzed 180M jobs to see what jobs AI is replacing today

#72

Post by 9rx »

QuercusMax wrote: post #70
9rx wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can have an LLM generate me code-like text all day long, but that doesn't means it's building a system. I don't follow. An LLM doesn't magically output code-like text, or anything else for that matter, on a whim. You have to build a system that describes your intent to the machine. Only then might it output code-like text, if that's what your system describes. It's not the execution of your code that makes you an…

You said a few comments upthread (and I quote): "What else can you do with code (and LLMs; same thing) other than build systems?" There are many things you can do with LLMs other than build systems. That's my point. Using an LLM doesn't make you an engineer; that's preposterous.

> There are many things you can do with LLMs other than build systems.

Like what? The code-like output example clearly requires you to build a system before the LLM can evaluate your program. If I want an LLM to generate a bedtime story, I also need to build a system that defines that. Where do you find the escape?

Maybe you're thinking of AGI? While everyone has their own pet AGI definition, many see it as being the point where you no longer have to build the system and the machine can start to take on that role. But we don't have that yet, and isn't what we're talking about anyway.

Re: I analyzed 180M jobs to see what jobs AI is replacing today

#73

Post by Yoric »

monero-xmr wrote: post #51
raesene9 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be surprised by a drop in security postings. Quite a few companies view security as an "overhead" so the siren call of reducing that overhead by introducing AI is a thing. Also for a lot of jobs in security it's pretty hard to measure how well it's being done, so if the AI based solutions are worse, that might not show up for a while

Security products and practitioners are the classic snake oil salesmen. They are actually sales and marketing roles for help closing deals by emphasizing some security aspect. True security comes from general IT practices followed by engineers themselves.

How does this affect hiring of security engineers?

Re: I analyzed 180M jobs to see what jobs AI is replacing today

#74

Post by ACCount37 »

monero-xmr wrote: post #51
raesene9 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be surprised by a drop in security postings. Quite a few companies view security as an "overhead" so the siren call of reducing that overhead by introducing AI is a thing. Also for a lot of jobs in security it's pretty hard to measure how well it's being done, so if the AI based solutions are worse, that might not show up for a while

Security products and practitioners are the classic snake oil salesmen. They are actually sales and marketing roles for help closing deals by emphasizing some security aspect. True security comes from general IT practices followed by engineers themselves.

I would be wary of making categorical claims like this, but it's unfortunately true that "security" field hasn't been doing well in a long, long time now.

Half the field is B2B "magic bullet" solutions like CrowdStrike and all the associated sales tactics - with pitches that boil down to "you give us money, we make your security issues go away". Half of what remains is mandatory certifications and other flavors of checklist-obsessed cargo cultists - often CYA-driven, often demanding the adoption of the fancy acronym of the day, regardless of the real threat profiles. Then you get the "security snake oil" - "magic bullet" systems that don't work, never did and never will, but are supported by the right influence groups and get the right pockets lined, and so are used anyway. DRM systems like WideVine and PlayReady being the prime examples. Then there are the corporate "security of our business model" shills - who pay lip service to "security", but have the true aims of "prevent anyone we don't like from doing anything that can harm our revenue streams" - with Apple being a common example.

And about a fifth of the field is people who do actual security work, and keep the sky from falling.

Re: I analyzed 180M jobs to see what jobs AI is replacing today

#75

Post by danillonunes »

moffkalast wrote: post #49
the_arun wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also decline in Security engineer by 0.35% doesn't make sense by conventional wisdom. Shouldn't it be increasing due to increased demand for security in all ai integrations?

Bold of you to assume there is any demand for security in AI integrations. It's like 90s web browsers, everyone's running random MCP servers that do god knows what.

Seems like when the security market is low on the white hat side, it's high on the black hat one. Security people just need to learn to adapt.

Re: I analyzed 180M jobs to see what jobs AI is replacing today

#76

Post by ricardobeat »

The decline in frontend engineering jobs matches my personal impression from the past year. Smaller companies can do a lot with vibe coding alone, while larger companies can multiply their FE team productivity without making any new hires.

Frontend code can be very repetitive / labour intensive, I bet that has made this more attainable than for other layers in the stack. Most mistakes in UI code are also easily corrected and have a very tiny impact radius.

Re: I analyzed 180M jobs to see what jobs AI is replacing today

#77

Post by geodel »

rvz wrote: post #59
9rx wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the end of the day, "AI" is just another programming language, albeit one that is much more accessible to the layman. When using AI, you become a software engineer. So it stands to reason that software engineering jobs are strong. But what about pay? Elevator operator jobs have never been more prevalent, but increased accessibility to the layman pushed the price to zero.

> When using AI, you become a software engineer. Stopped reading. VR flight simulator software is accessible to the layman. Does that make them qualified to be a captain (pilot-in-command) for a commercial passenger plane?

Huh, Pilot/ Captain job requirement for commercial plane is highly regulated by authorities like FAA etc but software engineer has no such requirement. Any random business with some basic software requirement can ask an employee or contractor to get something developed quickly and deployed it. They may start calling that person software engineer.

Further even if you have some strict ACM/IEEE definition of Software Engineer®, a person is not going to end up in jail if they don't fulfill those but call themselves software engineer nonetheless.

Re: I analyzed 180M jobs to see what jobs AI is replacing today

#78

Post by pixl97 »

monero-xmr wrote: post #51
raesene9 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be surprised by a drop in security postings. Quite a few companies view security as an "overhead" so the siren call of reducing that overhead by introducing AI is a thing. Also for a lot of jobs in security it's pretty hard to measure how well it's being done, so if the AI based solutions are worse, that might not show up for a while

Security products and practitioners are the classic snake oil salesmen. They are actually sales and marketing roles for help closing deals by emphasizing some security aspect. True security comes from general IT practices followed by engineers themselves.

> True security comes from general IT practices followed by engineers themselves.

Thank goodness engineers pop up out of the ground fully trained on good general IT practices....

Re: I analyzed 180M jobs to see what jobs AI is replacing today

#79

Post by estimator7292 »

ricardobeat wrote: post #76

The decline in frontend engineering jobs matches my personal impression from the past year. Smaller companies can do a lot with vibe coding alone, while larger companies can multiply their FE team productivity without making any new hires. Frontend code can be very repetitive / labour intensive, I bet that has made this more attainable than for other layers in the stack. Most mistakes in UI code are also easily corre…

Yeah, I've found LLMs to be pretty decent at frontend stuff.

I got a new job recently and my main task has been overhauling a Claude generated app into something functional. The backend is an unsalvageable disaster, but the frontend is actually pretty good. Which is great for me because I suck at UIs.

I think if you have a solid backend already in place, an LLM can produce a pretty functional frontend with far less effort to fix up.

Re: I analyzed 180M jobs to see what jobs AI is replacing today

#80

Post by tayo42 »

jeffbee wrote: post #29
saghm wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny, almost every conversation I have about the fact that I work as a software engineer with new people I meet nowadays seems to include them asking if I'm worried about AI stealing my job. Maybe it's something that people ask everyone nowadays regardless of what industry they work in, but at least as far as I can tell, the type of work I do doesn't seem in any apparent danger of being replaced by AI any time…

It's because journalists are still big mad that the internet wrecked the newspaper business, therefore the news constantly reports lies about how the tech industry is collapsing. The more news you watch and the less personal contact you have with the industry, the more likely you are to believe that techies are jumping out of office windows in despair (hi, Mom).

The job market is terrible, pay is stagnate and remote work is being taken away and the biggest companies despite profits are laying off large amounts of people. I don't think that's fud
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