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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

#411

Post by throw234234234 »

lazide wrote: post #135
sixtyj wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Offshoring/outsourcing is nice on paper, but as management doesn’t have to deal with time zones, in reality it is much more chaos than expected. And how do they want to deal with fuckups? Thru Slack or Discord? :) We had British SaaS supplier and all the time I have talked with Bangalore-based people. They had to work in night I suppose…

Also, Indian culture has a huge ‘overpromise, then try to cover it up’ issue at all levels. Outsourcers have really mastered it though. Source: lived in India for a year.

A lot of tech has this culture in general: "fake it till you make it". I see this a lot in the startup culture as well.

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

#412

Post by nradov »

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…

For a lot of startups the "sleep(5)" code isn't a milestone, it's in their MVP code with maybe a TODO comment to fix later.

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

#413

Post by pizlonator »

Eisenstein wrote: post #406
pizlonator wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The dollar hasn't really lost value compared to other currencies

Yes it has. Euro costs 10% more in USD than one year ago

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

#414

Post by com2kid »

groundzeros2015 wrote: post #304
com2kid wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If construction had kept up with demand salary wouldn't have skyrocketed and the overall cost of living would be lower. High salaries that exist just to pay for high house prices hurt everyone.

Yes. There is a supply problem hindered by politics. But even if all the construction in the world happens, would you be able to buy a 3 bedroom house in SF for 400k? Not a chance. Everyone wants it.

A 3 bedroom townhome in Seattle (actually Redmond WA, more expensive!) when I graduated was 350k, and that was already an inflated housing bubble price. My starting salary was 85k at Microsoft.

If 20k people move to a city each year and the city only approves 10k new buildings, the city is sabotaging its own growth.

Saying "we don't want growth!" doesn't work. Prices shoot up, wages increase, cost of living goes up, the price of everything goes up, eventually it becomes unsustainable and the entire economy crashes.

If 20k people want to move to a city, built 25k housing units. Keep it simple.

Expedite permits, hire more inspectors, simplify building codes, do whatever is needed to ensure people have a place to live.

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

#415

Post by epicureanideal »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #403
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?

Let them offshore if that’s what’s going to happen. And then let the stats show that American employment in certain sectors is tanking, and let the electorate decide what to do about that. Basically, I think this is a multi-round game rather than a one or two round game.

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

#416

Post by com2kid »

trenchpilgrim wrote: post #389
com2kid wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Any company not selling software for $$$ is hopefully not paying bay area salaries for their engineering team.

Mid west engineering teams are low six figure or even less. The cost savings from outsourcing a team of people earning 90k is meh compared to a team earning 300k.

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

#418

Post by [deleted] »

alephnerd wrote: post #407
9rx wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

[deleted]

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

#419

Post by fgauer »

WalterSear wrote: post #311
franktankbank wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I can't agree with this more, and it's exactly both the position and the impetus of my personal action plan for the next several years to come.

Truly, AI levels the playing field, if you just have the inclination to look at it that way. It brings such potential to the right people. In my hands, a software developer who has been slinging code for food for 40+ years, I am a 'god' with a cheap monthly subscription to Claude Code. I can run several projects and keep track of every one of them and see progress like I've never had that chance to, in my entire lifetime. And yes, I still wield the stick, because I KNOW how to do this stuff. Claude really doesn't. Claude just gives me raw material, individual orchestral parts as it were, that I can put together with a conductor's baton.

My enterprise client? They get barebones slop. Enough to keep things alive but yet never be scalable and extendable. And they deserve that. They slaughtered our entire US based team and went overseas. They retain me to keep the wheels on while offshore wires up worthless, unpredictable AI agents to 'enhance' the product. I'm taking their money until I can break free sometime next year. They get the scraps now, and they will never know until karma brings them their bitter fruit.

My personal project. A really, really fun and fluid development momentum. Truly art and logic combined with Claude doing the grunt work for me. Absolutely a blast and it will have a user base, and the user base will really enjoy the results.

New partnerships. You can now make ANYONE you know, that much more viable, that much more tech savvy. As an individual, with your talents and our new little 'digital helpers', you, yourself can become the David to any Goliath you wish. You can help elevate ideas, small teams, and aspiring entrepreneurs and have a blast doing so.

Shed the notion that this moment has to be dark for you. It doesn't. It just takes seeing that maybe, just maybe, the boneheads that are trying to capitalize in these horrendous actions which include lying about AI, lying about the reasons they are laying off, etc. are bringing about their very demise in real time. Clueless as to what they are doing.

And those of us with the knowledge, ethics, high standards, discipline, and honor, are now armed with the very thing that can bring down those who created it to harm us.

It IS a golden moment!

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

#420

Post by evantbyrne »

alephnerd wrote: post #376
evantbyrne wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one wants to leave their families, and the upper tier of salaries in alternative geos are high enough to capture the higher talent tier because their salary expectations are based on their domestic condition. For 2x the salary young men have proven time and again they are willing to take the risk. > On top of that, the US immigration system is severely backlogged. It can take decades for Chinese and Indian natio…

> For 2x the salary young men have proven time and again they are willing to take the risk First, sexist, and secondly in 2025 there's no guarantee that you would be able to live in the US long term on a work visa (but it's been this way since the mid-2010s), and if someone really feel the urge to immigrate to the West, then Australia, Canada, Netherlands, and Germany are all easier and (excluding Germany) Anglophone…

> Absolutely, but everyone makes time for Zoom meetings and finds a way to make it work, or people like me will hire someone else who can get it done.

So we are in agreement that work cannot be fully async.

There are clearly some forces at play that are changing how immigration works in the short-term. I think where we differ is mostly this: our anecdotal experiences are radically different (I would say competency is increasing not decreasing as a general trend) and I would never bet against the momentum of the US long-term, nor do I believe that quality tends to remain steady or increase with offshoring. Maybe things are different in your niche. I appreciate being given a view into a different perspective!

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