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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

#151

Post by xienze »

dehrmann wrote: post #78
Glyptodon wrote: post #20

As a recently laid of senior engineer, to the extent that my job was replaced, it was replaced with offshore junior devs who'd already been working with the company for over year with a pretty rough level of productivity by man-hour, though maybe taking 3x the time to get things done is worth it if they're cheap enough. Which is to say I see my layoff as as cost cutting backed by a premise that there is no value in r…

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.

> All that effort convincing management you're just as effective working remotely was also a collective sales pitch to outsource your role.

Here’s the thing though. People have been trying to outsource software development since the late 90s. Every time I’ve been around offshoring efforts wherever they were implemented, a few years later onshoring would happen again. It turns out time zones, thick Indian accents, and poor quality control have been and still are major obstacles to overcome.

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

#152

Post by fullshark »

J_Shelby_J wrote: post #98
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…

If software engineering is not special and can be done by anyone, so can any other role in a business. So it follows that all American roles will be offshored eventually, including ownership of the company itself - or American businesses will be universally out competed.

> If software engineering is not special and can be done by anyone, so can any other role in a business.

What's the logic here other than "coders are the top tier of the labor market" arrogance?

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

#153

Post by candiddevmike »

dehrmann wrote: post #78
Glyptodon wrote: post #20

As a recently laid of senior engineer, to the extent that my job was replaced, it was replaced with offshore junior devs who'd already been working with the company for over year with a pretty rough level of productivity by man-hour, though maybe taking 3x the time to get things done is worth it if they're cheap enough. Which is to say I see my layoff as as cost cutting backed by a premise that there is no value in r…

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.

There are plenty of studies showing that remote work increases productivity that have been published before or after COVID, and similar case studies showing the dangers of off shoring. In a perfect world, a business that correctly understands these studies would be rewarded.

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

#154

Post by questionableans »

dehrmann wrote: post #78
Glyptodon wrote: post #20

As a recently laid of senior engineer, to the extent that my job was replaced, it was replaced with offshore junior devs who'd already been working with the company for over year with a pretty rough level of productivity by man-hour, though maybe taking 3x the time to get things done is worth it if they're cheap enough. Which is to say I see my layoff as as cost cutting backed by a premise that there is no value in r…

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.

Admittedly privileged counterpoint: I want to work with the best co-workers in the world. Most candidates I’ve interviewed both in the US and in other countries aren’t anywhere near that level. If just anybody will do for a job, I’ll probably get bored and frustrated by it.

High pay has been a mixed blessing for the tech field. For every aspiring top mathematician or physicist who’s been tempted by the pay and relevant new problems, I often feel like we’ve gotten 10x as many people who would otherwise have been uninspired doctors and lawyers or top business majors.

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

#155

Post by rzwitserloot »

I read in multiple somewhat off-beat sources lacking good info (in the sense "They did not back up their writings and don't enjoy an impeccable track record of such high regard that I will take their word for it", not in the sense "its known untrustworthy drivel") that the hiring rates in the US in particular for 'junior developers' is way, waaaaaaaaaaay down. As in, off a cliff.

I wonder if that's true; I'm not in the US myself so I can't exactly just go have a drink in a place with lots of devs to try to find out.

The reasons are somewhat obvious:

* World economy in general and the US in particular is a rollercoaster, with the current administration being apparently dead set on flip flopping on every decision it makes, and always making extreme decisions. That's not a good time to invest. Hiring juniors is investing.

* AI not necessarily replacing the jobs, but that's not actually relevant: AI has already torpedoed the general notion that 'if you have investor money you gotta spend just hire a bunch of folks; # of employees is the primary yardstick to check company size / success', whether AI works or not. If the boss tells a VP to 'use more AI to get a handle on hiring practices', then they're going to stop hiring juniors because it looks like you're outright refusing a direct order if you hire a bunch. Even if AI 'employees' are useless, you are strongly incentivized not to hire juniors in such an environment. Juniors both lost the job opportunities stemming from companies just hiring folks because they have enough cash to do it and no good idea on where to spend it, and the downside of looking like you aren't on the AI hypetrain, if you hire juniors.

* There's evidently been a rather massive push in particular during the previous administration to get folks from dead end jobs into IT, so there's now an overwhelming amount of junior devs, and many of them didn't naturally get drawn to the profession; they were told it's an easy way to get a steady job.

* Even though there's some downturn/uncertainty, seniors/mediors aren't being fired because companies still remember how expensive and difficult it was to (re)hire dev teams post COVID. But that just makes the market for juniors even worse and makes it harder to hold out hope. When everybody is getting fired, then once the economy is in better shape you stand a good chance. But that's not happening; those mediors and seniors are continuing to get job experience whilst the juniors aren't.

Those 4 combined: Sure, yeah, I can imagine your average junior dev's odds to get hired are at this point well into the single digits. But is that actually true?

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

#156

Post by captainkrtek »

simonw wrote: post #32
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.

This is one of the aspects of AI ethics that I don't think gets nearly enough attention: the general psychological effect that information about AI has on people, regardless of their interactions with the tools themselves. Students getting lazy, or dropping out of subjects entirely because they don't think they have a future in them. Depression and a general feeling of despair. I see this in programming communities q…

It makes more sense through the lens of advancing the short / medium term interests of corporations under the guise of “helping people”.

When we’re all brain rotted and unemployed, how will we spend money on corporations? Its a spiral.

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

#157

Post by michaelcampbell »

CalRobert wrote: post #126
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…

There’s quite a lot of arrogance about foreigners just not being good enough. Turns out smart people are everywhere.

Theres an equal amount of experience showing that the claims that cheap outsourced workers produce less output of lesser quality is true.

Neither generalization works for ALL cases but hand wavey claims of some ism is small comfort to those of us who've seen the results more than once.

And I've worked with excellent offshored workers as well, but that doesn't make claims to the contrary invalid.

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

#158

Post by BoiledCabbage »

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.

> Jobs that have a high 0-1 component will still be in the US but jobs that are more 1-n may be offshored.

It used to be (since at least mid last century) and 0-1 and 1-n jobs were focused here. The world becoming smaller allowed a lot of 1-n jobs to move abroad. But we kept 0-1 jobs here.

That used to be the situation when the country brought people from around the world to be educated and then start business here. And historical precedent allowed us to continue thise advantages by having a reputation for it and continuing to support it. Our country for some reason now has decided it no longer wants to take the actions that fill the pipeline for 0-1 innovation.

And the world just like it took over 1-n is going to take over 0-1.

Why you would choose catalyze that change as an American, I have no idea.

I think there are people that generally believe that there is magic dust that says it can only happen on US soil instead of there being structural actions taken to enable it.

We will all very quickly learn that 0-1 can be anywhere that 1-n is.

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

#159

Post by lisbbb »

echelon wrote: post #94
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.

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…

The ramifications of losing all or nearly all of the tech jobs in the US is that the last "good" place to find better paying work that had a fairly low barrier to entry is now gone. I think that has major consequences for the US economy. I'm 52 and I can't just go back to school and re-tool to become a doctor or a lawyer now. I spent so many years becoming excellent and what I do, including higher degrees and certifications (I never really believed in certs, mind you, I always thought it was a giant scam).

Everything I look into as far as 2nd career goes has a very high barrier to entry and then there's the ever-present ageism barrier to fight, too.

I'm fortunate in that I have enough money to maybe just be retired, but most of you aren't anywhere close to being that financially independent. It's going to be ugly.

I knew for years that the offshoring blitz would finally reach critical mass and I was correct. Now it is an economic conflagration.

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

#160

Post by oxfordmale »

dehrmann wrote: post #78
Glyptodon wrote: post #20

As a recently laid of senior engineer, to the extent that my job was replaced, it was replaced with offshore junior devs who'd already been working with the company for over year with a pretty rough level of productivity by man-hour, though maybe taking 3x the time to get things done is worth it if they're cheap enough. Which is to say I see my layoff as as cost cutting backed by a premise that there is no value in r…

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.

Outsourcing comes and goes in waves. Good talent in India and the Philippines tend to work for FAANG companies, often at very comparable salaries to the west.

The remainder of the talent tends to struggle with some of the outsourced work, but with AI they can now give a semblance of competence.

In the UK a major retailer, Mark and Spencer got hacked after outsourcing work to India. They couldn't fulfill orders online for months, and they are now reducing the amount of work they outsource to India.

We will see something similar happen to other companies in a year or two, but until then we just have to tighten our belts and hope we don't get layed off before then.

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