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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

#311

Post by WalterSear »

franktankbank wrote: post #197
torginus wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

IMHO, there's never been a better time to build your own product and learn to sell it. The effort that AI implementation requires is clearly exponential to complexity of the organization.

You can build faster now that you ever have: I am building faster than I have in 25 years of engineering. You have more capable support for all the unfamiliar processes of building a business imaginable.

And almost everyone larger than you is finding it harder to achieve similar productivity gains from implementing AI, if not outright struggling with it. This is a golden moment and won't last long.

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

#312

Post by oytis »

hshdhdhj4444 wrote: post #118
munificent wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> More American jobs opened up to a Londoner than global jobs opened up to someone living in SF.

As someone living in EU and working (and job hunting) for American companies for the last N years I just have never seen it happen. American companies were opening subsidiaries in Europe long before COVID - they were just making everyone go to office there. Surge of remote work didn't seem to bring new American jobs to Europe as far as I could see - if anyone was hiring remotely, it were the same companies that already were hiring for in-office jobs before. Meanwhile, most remote jobs by American companies seem to be open for American residents only.

Thing is, for most locations, you still need to establish a legal presense to hire there, and that is enough of bureacratic burden for most companies to expand their geography very sparingly

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

#313

Post by mrweasel »

zero_shift wrote: post #34
goalieca wrote: post #6

I can't read the article but that won't stop me from commenting.. This year alone something like 400B was spent on investing in chips, datacenters, electricity buildouts. That's 400B that could have otherwise been invested in people. While i don't doubt that people will find a few solid business cases for LLMs, i am on team-bubble. I don't think this investment will add 400B worth of value and I very much doubt that…

Imagine if 10% of that money had been spent just training young people, or on a new cohort of PhDs. Imagine what benefits we would have reaped in a decade's time.

With $400B you should be able to do pretty much anything you set your mind on. Want to do to Mars, not a problem. End world hunger, $400B will do that in about ten years. You can do ANYTHING with $400B, yet OpenAI want's to sell erotic chats and show you ads?

I'm not saying that LLMs and the current AIs aren't useful, but they aren't worth even close to $400B. Some of the progress, especially in the medical field, is amazing, but the spending is completely out of proportion with the gains. It only works because right now people like Sam Altman has sold people with money on the idea and now they have to continue to peddle their sneak oil, hoping that the money won't dry up.

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

#314

Post by ugh123 »

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.

100%

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

#315

Post by IshKebab »

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…

Maybe, but I was looking for a job recently and most "remote" jobs from US companies were still US-only. Some allowed for hiring people in US timezones or close (basically the Americas). Very few were open to anyone in the world. I get the impression it's mostly the admin hassle that makes most companies avoid it.

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

#316

Post by mrweasel »

epicureanideal wrote: post #35
laweijfmvo wrote: post #2

wait until the GPUs and data centers start getting written off for being obsolete in a couple years when we still have nothin but fancy auto complete.

Probably could be repurposed for something else though?

Mining crypto if we're unfortunate.

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

#317

Post by gtsop »

mrweasel wrote: post #302
qgin wrote: post #245

AI is absolutely replacing jobs though. I personally know multiple people whose companies have downsized departments or eliminated departments completely, offloading the work to fewer people using AI tools.

Here AI is more like a magic solution to stretch the employees you have. I don't know a single person who has been replaced by AI, but plenty of companies and government office hopes to be able to get more work done fast with AI. I doubt it will work.

No the OP is right, we had a whole department vanish: translators. Half laid off and half absorbed to other roles. I am waiting for this to backfire eventually, but even if it does, it will still be cheaper to handle the backfire than employing all those people.

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

#318

Post by groundzeros2015 »

tamimio wrote: post #309
groundzeros2015 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software development is by nature a boom and bust industry, probably most like film. It’s about creative and isosyncratic contractors picking up projects when they are available. What most people aspiring for a white collar career probably want is a job in IT - managing technology for business is much more stable than developing novel tech. If the thought of needing to move or lose a job strikes you as horrible, this…

Neither software development nor IT work is engineering work and shouldn't be considered one either. I am talking about engineering jobs, jobs that you went to school for 4-5 years in an engineering discipline, not a few weeks bootcamp or made-up program like computer science only to be called an engineer later, diluting the whole industry in the process. So yeah, software development might be boom and bust, engineer…

Yep. I’m talking about the software industry. Not working on planes for Boeing.

> made-up program like computer science

Sounds like you have a personal axe to grind. It’s ok lots of people have undergrad EE degrees.

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

#319

Post by StackRanker3000 »

whoknowsidont wrote: post #241
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who over the past couple of years was responsible for some of these hiring decisions, it absolutely is a part of it ... lol. I've worked with absolutely fantastic developers in Argentina, Poland, Romania and Ukraine. You're right, talented workers get talented pay, but talented pay in Romania is a lot less than talented pay in San Francisco. Teams are used to working entirely remotely now, videoconferencin…

I think you're contradicting yourself or getting some wires crossed. >You're right, talented workers get talented pay, but talented pay in Romania is a lot less than talented pay in San Francisco. But this is due to again, vastly different standards of living in different economies. Geo-based pay ranges have always been a thing, but I think it's a bit reasonable to draw the line here. So it's not: >it absolutely is a…

I don’t think anyone is arguing that the basic idea of offshoring was invented after the COVID pandemic… But rather that workplaces and workforces geared towards remote working has made it more feasible and accelerated the process

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

#320

Post by ultra_nick »

AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending isn't either. It's outsourcing and can be easily confirmed by cross-referencing H1B approval rates with layoffs.

If you've been outsourced, ask your representative to support the HIRE Act: - Creates a 25% tax on outsourcing payments - Creates a “Domestic Workforce Fund” for apprenticeships/workforce development. - Prohibits companies from deducting outsourcing payments.

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