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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

#191

Post by danans »

mbork_pl wrote: post #90
evantbyrne wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was making $50/hour fresh out of college back in 2014. And I worked remotely. $45/hour today is not great given the cost of living.

FWIW, I get on the order of $40/hour as a senior with almost 10 years experience, and it allows me not to worry too much about spending (with a wife earning about a third of my salary and two kids). I think I could easily earn at least 50% more if I wanted to work for some rich but soul-crushing corp, but for obvious reasons I don't do that. I guess US cost of living is just insane. (I live in central Europe.)

> FWIW, I get on the order of $40/hour as a senior with almost 10 years experience, and it allows me not to worry too much about spending (with a wife earning about a third of my salary and two kids)

How much do you pay annually out of pocket for health insurance premiums and other healthcare expenses?

In the US that expense is very high, and is a major source of worry for working families.

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

#192

Post by shinycode »

DeathArrow wrote: post #51

Many are predicting the AI bubble will burst soon. Then we will see massive layoffs.

Massive amounts of people with unsustainable lifestyle will stop consuming stuff. How will the whole capitalist economy continue to function with massive amounts of medium-high income people not having the same income anymore ?

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

#193

Post by torginus »

oxfordmale wrote: post #160
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.

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…

> In the UK a major retailer, Mark and Spencer got hacked after outsourcing work to India.

Does sound more like correllation than causation. Was there evidence that the Indian devs made the mistakes that led to the hack or was it just the good old 'let's fall back on racism to avoid blame' by management? I still remember the articles where Boeing tried to peg the 737 MAX crashes on Indian engineers who worked for $10 an hour.

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

#194

Post by blackqueeriroh »

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.

Remote work and outsourcing are two very different beasts, and companies have outsourced long before remote work. In fact, remote work is rarely an option in countries where outsourcing happens because the quality of high-speed internet isn’t uniform enough for folks to be able to just work from home.

Additionally, companies can’t just hire individuals in other countries. They have to set up business entities and that costs significant money to do. It’s why they mostly work with outsourcing companies, who often do have offices where these people come in and work.

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

#195

Post by phil21 »

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.

One of the most myopic self-owns by a certain segment of industry I can think of in my lifetime.

I guess folks really did think that location had nothing to do with Silicon Valley paying 4x or more the worldwide average. That there was simply no talent anywhere in the world who could even compete at their level. No project managers anywhere who could do the job for less than $200k/yr.

One the dam broke and it was clear that remote work could be productive it simply opened up a rather insular industry to extreme worldwide competition. Far more smart and talented folks out there in the world than many anticipated.

The hubris was (and is) crazy to me.

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

#196

Post by blackqueeriroh »

whoknowsidont wrote: post #163
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.

No one likes to hear it because it's not a part of it lol. Paying fair market wages is different than trying to exploit differences in vastly different standards of living between very very different economies. Talented workers get talented pay -- a fact many company's and execs don't like. It has very little to do with their literal position on earth in relation to a company's real estate foot print. Workers need to…

What “managerial” class are you speaking of? Because most managers in tech do not make much more than the developers they manage.

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

#197

Post by franktankbank »

torginus wrote: post #190
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…

In my experience, if you're working on a green-field project, you're working long hours, making very little visible progress, you have to write a lot of code, make important decisions. All the while management is breathing down your neck and asking 'why isn't it ready yet'. Once the thing is shipped, then all the important people come out of the woodwork, who were surely there all along, 'supporting' you from behind…

What dev to do then?

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

#198

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#199

Post by lisbbb »

evantbyrne wrote: post #54
alephnerd wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GCCs are expanding in Canada, Ireland, Poland, Czechia, and Costa Rica as well. Indians are more visible, but salary expections have gotten extremely out of whack in the US, and extended WFH during COVID proved to most boards that companies can continue to operate when entire teams are communicating async. If a large portion of interns and NCGs in the US are essentially expecting $45-70/hr salaries, it just isn't sus…

I was making $50/hour fresh out of college back in 2014. And I worked remotely. $45/hour today is not great given the cost of living.

Jeez--I was making $50/hr in 2004 in one of my first jobs after I finished my PhD and opted out of academia. That pay didn't go that far back then!

This is what upsets me about my career--that logistic pay curve. You initially grow fast and then it tops out and never gets better, but your costs keep rising, particularly as you have a family. I'm paying for one kid's college tuition right now, she has 1.5 years left, and will then enter a dubious job market. My son is 15, so if he goes to college, I won't be paying tuition for him until Fall 2028.

The problem is, I'm no longer a developer. I'm currently a nothing working on figuring out "something." I have a lot of skills and talents, but seemingly not many that will pay. I'm looking at any 2yr. training program that can get me certified to do something useful. It's so freaking bizarre to be sitting here with a degree in CS/Math, an MS in Computer Engineering from a very reputable university, and a doctorate in Information Management, also from a very reputable university, and looking at basically doing blue collar work! My nation has utterly failed me in every possible manner.

I should add that we are looking to move out of our fairly high-cost of living state for a possibly lower cost of living state, but there are complications to that plan, too. My wife doesn't really want to move our son out of the high school he is in. I'm saying that other imperatives need to be addressed before they become full-blown crises. I'm being taxed to death, and costs like insurance are rising fast.

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

#200

Post by rcbdev »

torginus wrote: post #190
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…

In my experience, if you're working on a green-field project, you're working long hours, making very little visible progress, you have to write a lot of code, make important decisions. All the while management is breathing down your neck and asking 'why isn't it ready yet'. Once the thing is shipped, then all the important people come out of the woodwork, who were surely there all along, 'supporting' you from behind…

This markedly does not apply if the stack is esoteric enough and/or the code is bad enough.
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