Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

fastcompany.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 580 posts

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

#401

Post by whoknowsidont »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #368
whoknowsidont wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But rather that workplaces and workforces geared towards remote working has made it more feasible and accelerated the process By what metrics?

Is it really hard to understand that the infrastructure for remote work, which I think everyone would agree got a major upgrade during the pandemic, would also make it much easier for companies to outsource software dev work? Pre-2015 or so, yes, of course there was outsourcing, but it was honestly a major PITA in most cases. Most communication was done in conference calls, very little group video communication, lots…

>Is it really hard to understand that the infrastructure for remote work, which I think everyone would agree got a major upgrade during the pandemic, would also make it much easier for companies to outsource software dev work?

No, because it wasn't actually upgraded.

Like be honest, the shift into remote work wasn't surrounded by massive tech advances or upgrades. All the tools that existed for remote work had been there, largely in the same fashion and capability, for decades.

So when you say the infra. and tooling has improved, you need to be specific because it's very hard to point to anything that was fundamentally or notably improved in the pandemic around remote work.

It all existed before. It was all used before. If you weren't using it before the pandemic that was by choice, not because it didn't exist.

Everything from our communication software, to developer collaboration tools, to how org's track and manage their employees all existed well, well before the pandemic.

It was a cultural change -- not a technological one.

> And that is a change that only happened around the beginning of the pandemic

I'm not sure what you're basing this on. Especially someone's that's had to work with peers across the globe for 4+ decades -- the tools have always been there.

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

#402

Post by carlosjobim »

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

> All Western countries are devaluing their currency. No other way to reduce the debt.

You increase the debt when you are devaluing your currency.

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

#403

Post by JumpCrisscross »

mattfrommars wrote: post #399

I can assure you a lot of veteran devs in my company who had major impact were let ago because of off shoring to India and Poland. My employer is a very well known financial institution, think Blackrock, Bloomberg etc. Public press paints picture of the firm laying off due to adoption of AI. Yet, I can assure you without doubt its not because of it but due to continued offshore. I think we are at the brink of opening…

Are visa restrictions deterring or promoting this offshoring?

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

#404

Post by groundzeros2015 »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #351
groundzeros2015 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will the union advocate against H1B and offshoring?

They have been for decades: https://aflcio.org/about/leadership/statements/reform-h-1b-a...

That article is from 2003. What about this one on the front page values?

https://aflcio.org/issues/immigration

> The only way to stop the race to the bottom in wages and standards is for working people of all races, religions and immigration status to stand together

> Find resources to help union members know their rights and ensure they are prepared to defend themselves and the immigrant members of their families and communities in the event of workplace or community raids

What about this one that explicitly advocates for non-Americans?

https://aflcio.org/issues/global-worker-rights

> The AFL-CIO believes that confronting these challenges requires building power for people around the world.

The whole site is just college leftist activism. This isn’t about bettering my job and career

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

#405

Post by _heimdall »

pizlonator wrote: post #227
_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.

It's both. The devaluation of the dollar relative to other currencies will eventually make it profitable for work to move to the US. I think we're not seeing that yet because there's an imperfect coupling between asset price inflation, consumer price inflation, and exchange rates.

It may be a short term solution, on the right time scale I'd give it that.

The only way its a long term solution is if globalization is so fundamentally different from what other countries and empires have felt with that they can actually devalue at just the right rate to bring work back here.

Getting that rate right seems like a tiny needle to thread though, and that only works if this situation is different from when other currencies were devalued intentionally.

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

#406

Post by Eisenstein »

pizlonator wrote: post #227
_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.

It's both. The devaluation of the dollar relative to other currencies will eventually make it profitable for work to move to the US. I think we're not seeing that yet because there's an imperfect coupling between asset price inflation, consumer price inflation, and exchange rates.

I think you might be confusing 'devaluation' with 'loss of spending power'. The dollar hasn't really lost value compared to other currencies. The thing that would do that would a loss of faith in the US to pay its debts, not the inability for the dollar to sustain a certain purchasing power.

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

#407

Post by alephnerd »

9rx wrote: post #392
alephnerd wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be that pessimistic. The market can bear to pay high salaries for the right talent . If you can show me you have tangible development skills and can think about the product or feature you develop as a business (eg. Can you justify to me in financial terms the net benefit doing a refactor does versus keeping the status quo) you will be fine. We aren't going to pay you $300k-$400k TC just to be a code monkey…

> And finally, you will have to be located in Tier 1 tech hubs now Exactly. Adjusted for cost of living, $300,000 in SF or NYC is about $170,000 where I lived back then, so ~$80/hr. Which is, after adjusted for inflation to that time... You guessed it: $50.94/hr! And you're pointing at high quality talent with considerable experience, not some kid out of high school. Said kid out of high school like I was back then i…

> Adjusted for cost of living, $300,000 in SF or NYC is about $170,000 where I lived back then, so ~$80/hr

I've lived in SF over the same time period as well, and my CoL hasn't changed aside from rent - I've kept the same consistent savings rate - but even rent was largely manageable for me because of job opportunities and a mix of local and state rent control.

That said, I do think being Asian or Latiné means having different buying preferences (eg. the bulk of my shopping is at ethnic grocery stores and my "white people food" is primarily sourced from Costco or TJ).

Ofc, looking visibly ethnic also gives me the ethnic discount at most places I shop at.

> Said kid out of high school like I was back then isn't going to find that much in today's market. As you point out, the market has tanked big time — and has been tanking for decades

Oof, that is actually a good point. Sadly, you are right about that. I don't think hiring managers in the US would take a risk on hiring a HSer even if they have the right skills and domain experience.

-----------

That said, I am starting to come around to your argument.

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

#408

Post by georgemcbay »

kmac_ wrote: post #390
georgemcbay wrote: post #243

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.. 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 cor…

I'm certainly not defending such code, just saying that its out there and in some very successful projects.

If the managers where you work understand the dangers of taking on such tech debt and are willing to put in the resources to avoid it, consider yourself lucky, because in my experience that's not at all universal, or even particularly common, though it does certainly exist at some places.

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

#409

Post by coaksford »

throw-52 wrote: post #254
epicureanideal wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably could be repurposed for something else though?

The one truly hopeful aspect of a bubble-burst scenario is that extra capacity always finds a use-case, and in this case practically any other use-case would be both less harmful and more real.

Before the AI craze, all the GPUs were being bought up by cryptocurrency miners, and I'm not sure that's better. Even as an AI skeptic I think AI is a better use of all this hardware than cryptocurrency.

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

#410

Post by _heimdall »

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.

There is an interesting argument to be made that they have no choice once the problem passes a certain point.

The interplay between bond yields, the fed funds rate, and inflation can lead to weird situations. Right noe the Fed is having to lower rates because (a) job numbers are pretty bad and (b) the US debt is held in a surprising number of short term bonds and higher rates make the debt just rack up faster. They're also watching inflation continue to chug along higher than their 2% target though, a scenario they'd normally raise rates for.

I won't be surprised if we ultimately realize that, in the end, those in charge had way less control of the economy than they like to claim. I'm biased though, that's always been my view and it frustrates me that economics claims to be a field of science at all. It can be a very interesting and important historical analysis but it isn't predictive, and at the level of macroeconomics it can't realistically be isolated and tested.

Post reply on HN