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AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

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Re: AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

#111

Post by tuveson »

Spooky23 wrote: post #80
random9749832 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say it is more sinister than just a cost-benefit analysis and plain racism in hiring. Cheap talent exists in far more places than India but somehow it almost always is India. Not only that but I have seen the strangest LinkedIn profiles where people graduate from no-name Indian universities and get a big-corp job here in the West like it is nothing. Even Japan has become pro-Indian on immigration for tech: ht…

The Indian diaspora is huge and you have second and third generation folks in executive office all over. As a political force, south Asians are increasingly powerful as well in many states. There’s a lot of opportunities for personal networks, nepotism and plain old corruption to work. (Who is going to figure out that somebody dropped a few gold coins to your sibling as a kickback?) There’s a much smaller network of…

> There’s a much smaller network of people with relationships to Eastern European or other companies.

Unlike eastern Europe, India is geopolitically in a pretty good spot right now, having decent relations with most developed countries, and not engaged in any major wars with its neighbors. The last company I worked for outsourced a lot of work to Russia. At a certain time in 2022 they suddenly had to shift a lot of that work to... India!

Re: AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

#112

Post by hshdhdhj4444 »

thesmtsolver wrote: post #97
echelon wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the biggest unspoken story in tech. The era of American developer exceptionalism is over. Talent abroad has access to the same tools, education, and increasingly, network. American engineers will be replaced wholesale with overseas engineers that cost a fraction of American labor. You can hire talented React engineers for $50k that will work harder than their American counterparts. It's not just React. Overse…

Any data backing this? If this were the case, why isn’t most innovation done outside the US? Jobs that have a high 0-1 component will still be in the US but jobs that are more 1-n may be offshored.

Because most of the smartest people in the world moved to the U.S. because of the education system, great access to capital, and the fact that they and other smart people could easily move to, live and work with each other in the U.S.

The U.S. also has the largest useful single market in the world (the EU is broken up across many languages/cultures, China is isolated so you can’t really expand out).

The U.S. is actively working to destroy several of those planks right now.

Even the capital plank, which superficially looks strong, is being hurt by the government picking winners and choosers. If the current govt bets don’t turn out to be the right ones we’re looking at an ugly, probably tax payer funded (OpenAI has already hinted at this) collapse.

Re: AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

#113

Post by chongli »

vishnugupta wrote: post #99
echelon wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the biggest unspoken story in tech. The era of American developer exceptionalism is over. Talent abroad has access to the same tools, education, and increasingly, network. American engineers will be replaced wholesale with overseas engineers that cost a fraction of American labor. You can hire talented React engineers for $50k that will work harder than their American counterparts. It's not just React. Overse…

Absolutely! $50k is ₹45,00,000 which is at the 95th percentile of tech salary in India across all levels of seniority. So yeah it’s not surprising that jobs are going offshore.

That's really interesting. I did not know that India used commas for numbers like that, 3 digits and then 2 digits, and then apparently 2 digits again?

3,00,00,000 instead of 30,000,000

Re: AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

#114

Post by paulcole »

dingnuts wrote: post #83
dehrmann wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News doesn't like to hear it, but remote work is a big part of this. All that effort convincing management you're just as effective working remotely was also a collective sales pitch to outsource your role.

sure but people on the other side of the world are harder to communicate with for practical reasons like time zones and also for cultural reasons that matter big time in many markets

Sure but if the cost savings is significant enough then there is plenty of incentive to overcome (or live with) those obstacles.

Re: AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

#115

Post by gruez »

munificent wrote: post #108
hshdhdhj4444 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. One of the most ridiculous things in my entire life of 40 years was seeing 90% of my fellow SW industry workers using the 2 or so years during/after COVID where we had more power than we’ve ever had to advocate hard for making ourselves much more easy to replace by insisting on remote work, and insisting on reducing our productivity (even if not actually, at least in the eyes of the employers) so we couldn’t ju…

Remote work benefits workers too, though: 1. It enables them to live in lower cost of living cities. This makes them more competitive relative to outsourcing because a lower wage in a cheaper city goes farther. 2. It opens up the job pool. If you work remote, you can work at any company that takes remote workers regardless of where you live. 3. It reduces the cost of switching jobs. Many people are stuck in jobs they…

>In general, more job flexibility increases the efficiency of the job market for employees.

It increases the efficiency of the market as a whole, but that's not the same as saying that first world software engineers (already highly paid and previously protected from foreign competition) would be better off.

Re: AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

#116

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

alecco wrote: post #29

This week OpenAI, Google, And Perplexity announced free 1 year subscription to Indian devs. It must cost quite a fortune in inference https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c14pr0enjr6o Not a single mention of jobs being moved to India including tens of billions of investments in new offices. Backing links from a quick search earlier this week when an obviously Indian HNer tried to deny this was really happening: Micros…

I'm a bit surprised that Trump isn't going after outsourcing in the same way he went after H-1Bs.

Not that I believe Trump actually cares about US jobs, let alone thinks strategically about the importance of a strong software sector, but you might expect him to at least do another mafia-style shakedown of the companies outsourcing jobs. Heck, you might think he'd even care about all the lost tax revenue, by having developer salaries going to India rather than staying here.

Re: AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

#117

Post by monero-xmr »

evantbyrne wrote: post #59
alephnerd wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

London and Toronto have a similar CoL as the Bay Area and $45/hr is a mid-career tech salaries in both Greater London and GTA. Edit: can't reply but every single white collar job provides an employer healthcare plan that is equally as competitive as the public healthcare plans in Canada and the UK. And especially if you were being paid $50/hr as a new grad in 2014. Edit 2: > And I was in Michigan. All the more reason…

London and Toronto give people healthcare. And I was in Michigan.

The vast majority of jobs in America give healthcare. The quality is vastly superior to London and Toronto, although we pay far more (and our medical professionals are upper middle class rather than middle / lower class). However this is a huge hidden portion of salary that most are not aware of, about $25k for a family of 4, which increases labor costs greatly.

On sheer metrics of access and quality, America kicks the shit out of Europe and Canada

Re: AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

#118

Post by hshdhdhj4444 »

munificent wrote: post #108
hshdhdhj4444 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. One of the most ridiculous things in my entire life of 40 years was seeing 90% of my fellow SW industry workers using the 2 or so years during/after COVID where we had more power than we’ve ever had to advocate hard for making ourselves much more easy to replace by insisting on remote work, and insisting on reducing our productivity (even if not actually, at least in the eyes of the employers) so we couldn’t ju…

Remote work benefits workers too, though: 1. It enables them to live in lower cost of living cities. This makes them more competitive relative to outsourcing because a lower wage in a cheaper city goes farther. 2. It opens up the job pool. If you work remote, you can work at any company that takes remote workers regardless of where you live. 3. It reduces the cost of switching jobs. Many people are stuck in jobs they…

1. The cheapest American city is maybe half thr cost of the most expensive. Meanwhile in the most expensive Indian city, one could live like a king at 1/3 the cost of the cheapest American city with far more culture and things to do. And if you were willing to move to the cheapest Indian cities you could halve that again.

2. Correct. Given that the majority of SW jobs, especially the highest paying ones, were located in the U.S. this is a net benefit to anyone living outside the U.S. even before you take cost into consideration. More American jobs opened up to a Londoner than global jobs opened up to someone living in SF.

3. Efficiency approximately = lower costs. In this case costs = developer salaries.

So you’re right. We got more efficient. We reduced the average cost of developer salaries per job. Since very few people are willing to take a pay cut this means jobs are moving/will move to places where people are willing to work for less.

Re: AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

#119

Post by _heimdall »

monero-xmr wrote: post #53
gedy wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but salary expections have gotten extremely out of whack in the US, You mean cost of living and inflation has devalued the dollar.

All Western countries are devaluing their currency. No other way to reduce the debt. Cutting benefits is political suicide. Taking every dollar from billionaires would knock a 1 year of debt off. The solution is inflation

> The solution is inflation

The response is inflation. It would only be a solution if it works, and of all the countries or empires that tried it in the past you'd be hard pressed to find one that succeeded at correcting their economy long term by debasing their own currency.

Re: AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

#120

Post by BenGosub »

pants2 wrote: post #9

That's an interesting point that I haven't considered before: that the narrative of AI replacing jobs plus the widespread cheating in school using LLMs is making students less engaged and new graduates less employable, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy for AI.

It's like when we forgot all things that we can google, but on a much, much greater scale. For example, multiplication by heart. I think oral, in person examination should be used with students whenever possible, in order to deal with cheating.

If others are slacking, it's an opportunity to level up and stand out. Also, IMO there are market forces currently reshaping the jobs landscape, it's not only AI, I don't even think AI is the main driver.

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