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AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

fastcompany.com

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

#381

Post by abustamam »

I think the company I work for has a pretty pragmatic approach for AI utilization. Don't use it to replace jobs, use it to make jobs more efficient (we call it an "enhancer"). IE we won't lay people off, at least not because of AI, we just may not hire as quickly as we did before LLMs, but still attaining similar scale. This goes for all departments, not just tech. We have very strict standards on what code gets accepted (no slop). Whether it's AI generated or not is irrelevant; even senior engineers can be guilty of slop after a long day. But we do have regular meetings to discuss our AI usage and to converge upon common patterns and rules to level everyone up.

That being said, I think we as a society are quickly reaching the point where there just doesn't exist enough jobs to keep everyone gainfully employed. There may be new jobs opening up but not ones that people in the middle or ends of their careers can quickly pick up on. I don't think this is a bad thing necessarily, just that when combined with the shitty safety net that the US has, it's a recipe for disaster. If even folks who are working full-time still need assistance for groceries, then we've already failed, and that's not even AIs fault.

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

#382

Post by marbro »

lisbbb wrote: post #210
_heimdall wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

We have already eaten a ton of inflation, particularly in the first year or so when Biden was President. Trump printed trillions to forestall a collapse during covid. The wisdom of that move is lost on me. I would have preferred the collapse--we might be recovering by now instead of sitting on an even higher precipice awaiting the inevitable fall.

[dead]

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

#383

Post by dr_zoidberg »

lordgrenville wrote: post #144
dr_zoidberg wrote: post #3

A little bit off topic: but I couldn't even start to read the article because "I reached my article limit" out of I site I never visited before... What are they using to determine how many articles I've read? Opening in a private window solved the issue, however I'm pretty sure I don't regularly read anything on this site (maybe never was an overstatement?).

Seems totally possible that the limit is 0...

Yes, the thought crossed my mind too... But then I tried a private window and it opened, so maybe the other suggestion that the cookies are very long lived is right.

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

#384

Post by nsainsbury »

etoxin wrote: post #378
nsainsbury wrote: post #354

I was laid off recently along with most of the tech team (Australian company ~ very well known brand). There's a handful of people left, but even they know their time is coming soon. And this isn't about AI (well, not primarily anyway). It's offshoring, offshoring, offshoring. IMO, what's taking place now is absolutely transformative and the world economy is in the process of being reshaped. It's not just tech jobs t…

I'm seeing the same thing in Australia. These new tech companies/existing companies were not here for the first wave of offshoring engineers many years ago. basically, the product/service degraded and they brought the product/service back onshore. It's a cycle that will repeat. Product degrades, there will be public outrage, then they will onshore the product to fix the problems caused from offshoring.

IMO, things are different this time (as someone who has been in this industry for about 20 years now) and I don't see these jobs coming back.

For one, many of these companies are now used to their tech teams being remote. The tools, culture, infra, etc. over the last ~5 years has all become remote which lessens the shock of going fully offshore.

Two, many tech teams in the western world are already partially offshored and have been for some time now. I know where I worked, a reasonable % of the team was already offshore in low COL countries (India, etc.). What's happening now is just the expansion of that cost saving after initial testing of the waters was successful.

Three, the quality gap between offshore teams and their western counterparts is now much smaller, and AI will be used to lessen the gap even further (along with just throwing more bodies at each problem which you can do when your salaries are 1/3rd of what they are here).

Four, many products/services now have captured markets with strong network effects, which means they can weather a heavy degradation of services with little to no loss of customers. It's called enshittification, and businesses are doing it now because they absolutely know they can, and get away with it.

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

#385

Post by danielschreber »

abustamam wrote: post #381

I think the company I work for has a pretty pragmatic approach for AI utilization. Don't use it to replace jobs, use it to make jobs more efficient (we call it an "enhancer"). IE we won't lay people off, at least not because of AI, we just may not hire as quickly as we did before LLMs, but still attaining similar scale. This goes for all departments, not just tech. We have very strict standards on what code gets acce…

>use it to make jobs more efficient

I left IT for the time being, but I ask copilot.microsoft.com a question once in a while to see if we've got to AGI yet.

Today's question (I admit not so creative) was what's the market cap of TSLA.

Its answer was "Tesla Inc. (TSLA) currently has a market capitalization of approximately $429.52 billion USD. This figure is based on the latest trading price of $429.52 per share"

It allegedly used a web search to find this out, and it included a screenshot showing the market cap as $1.4B.

On the other hand, chatgpt.com prudently tells me to go look it up myself, because it doesn't have live data.

I guess OpenAI is winning?

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

#386

Post by notaurus »

nsainsbury wrote: post #354

I was laid off recently along with most of the tech team (Australian company ~ very well known brand). There's a handful of people left, but even they know their time is coming soon. And this isn't about AI (well, not primarily anyway). It's offshoring, offshoring, offshoring. IMO, what's taking place now is absolutely transformative and the world economy is in the process of being reshaped. It's not just tech jobs t…

Sorry for snooping—if this is about Foxtel, they were also sold to a UK company this year right?

I guess you’d expect some staff turnover, but not mass layoffs.

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

#387

Post by trenchpilgrim »

krackers wrote: post #369
trenchpilgrim wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If software engineering is not special and can be done by anyone, so can any other role in a business. Indeed, however other business roles have a significant physical presence or face to face component. Sales & marketing, legal, HR, and significant parts of operations and admin have physical presence requirements in most businesses. I would expect finance/accounting to be vulnerable to offshoring, though.

>finance/accounting to be vulnerable Aren't there certifications and stuff? I'd think that from a regulatory and legal compliance perspective it'd be better to have Americans handling the books. Say someone turns out to be cooking the books, if that person is halfway across the world good luck prosecuting them (unless your company is wealthy enough to the point where you can mobilize law enforcement to do your biddin…

You only need one person stateside to review and sign off on the work and that person can be outsourced to an accounting firm.

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

#388

Post by nsainsbury »

notaurus wrote: post #386
nsainsbury wrote: post #354

I was laid off recently along with most of the tech team (Australian company ~ very well known brand). There's a handful of people left, but even they know their time is coming soon. And this isn't about AI (well, not primarily anyway). It's offshoring, offshoring, offshoring. IMO, what's taking place now is absolutely transformative and the world economy is in the process of being reshaped. It's not just tech jobs t…

Sorry for snooping—if this is about Foxtel, they were also sold to a UK company this year right? I guess you’d expect some staff turnover, but not mass layoffs.

Yep, sold to DAZN. Who in turn do all their development out of Hyderabad, India. Almost entire tech team locally is gone now with handover done to that team.

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

#389

Post by trenchpilgrim »

com2kid wrote: post #189
trenchpilgrim wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If software engineering is not special and can be done by anyone, so can any other role in a business. Indeed, however other business roles have a significant physical presence or face to face component. Sales & marketing, legal, HR, and significant parts of operations and admin have physical presence requirements in most businesses. I would expect finance/accounting to be vulnerable to offshoring, though.

If all the workers are off shore, no need to keep HR state side. If all the high earners are off shore, may as well sell to them with an off shore sales team. Don't need local marketers if the market isn't local anymore.

> If all the workers are off shore

I forget that HN forgets that many companies don't sell software yet have SWE teams.

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

#390

Post by kmac_ »

georgemcbay wrote: post #243
BobbyTables2 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have an amazing amount of confidence that the new devs are going to fix subtle race conditions… They’ll add a few sleep(5) calls to make them go away though..

> You have an amazing amount of confidence that the new devs are going to fix subtle race conditions… > They’ll add a few sleep(5) calls to make them go away though.. I don't think torginus's point is that the new devs will find the proper fixes for the code, more that such a hack might be good enough in the eyes of both the company's management and the company's users. As much as it pains me to recognize this (as a…

Such "sleep(5)" is actually a milestone in a project, a milestone that marks the beginning of deterioration and the end of architectural changes. I've seen multiple pull requests with "sleep" and similar shortcuts, and worse, I've rewound coding agent context and changes because of such model suggestions. I'm responsible for informing management about the consequences of such shortcuts and why we have to take the correct, often more time-consuming and more expensive, approach to avoid project derailment in the long term. I believe that management picks employees. If they don't trust my judgment, then it's okay for me, but I don't feel obliged to be responsible for the consequences.
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