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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

#491

Post by kamaal »

captainkrtek wrote: post #331
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…

> 'But only I can fix that complex race condition, that popped up half a year after development' - well if it was good enough with the bug for people not to notice it for half a year, it's going to be good enough for another half, until the new devs can fix it. From my time at AWS, and in light of the recent DynamoDB dns race condition bug, this is a line of thinking that is problematic. There is so much complexity i…

>>But when you hit some critical outage, edge case, etc., those people running the systems have such a different relationship to the system having simply maintained it vs. built it.

Long stays in most companies are practically non-existent these days, apart from a few folks who are present for long, unfortunately these people are often called lifers, coasters etc.

Simply put, no one person can say they contributed most to the building of a system. Barring very few rare projects.

So you already need the runbook, documentation model to run things, for the reason people themselves work along those lines.

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

#492

Post by m-ee »

diamond559 wrote: post #25
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…

Actual Indians, as always. Humans are cheaper, and have the capacity for long term memory formation.

The long term part is overstated in my experience. People move around a lot at these offshoring firms as better opportunities arise. In my experience by the time you find someone competent they’re already interviewing for a better role. Constant churn trying to find the next one.

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

#493

Post by arresin »

acdha wrote: post #431
lazide wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don’t see that as Indian culture as much as outsourcing. I’ve had tons of that from entirely domestic contractors, including people who’d bid on a project only to admit their team didn’t have the domain experience promised. I’m talking about things as basic as telling the client that they needed to buy an enormous SQL Server cluster because their “developers” didn’t know how to limit joins and were had deeply-neste…

I do.

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

#494

Post by arresin »

burningChrome wrote: post #482
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…

>> though maybe taking 3x the time to get things done is worth it if they're cheap enough. Started doing automation about 6 years ago. We had several offshore teams. The one caveat was that the company was vying for several government contracts. One of the requirements was the ability to pass a low level security clearance and on yeah, you cannot, under any circumstances off shore any of the work. Therefore, they nee…

But it MUST be cheaper. I mean it just has to be right. Think about the hourly rate. That proves it.

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

#495

Post by hhh »

Striggor6 wrote: post #439
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are visa restrictions deterring or promoting this offshoring?

[flagged]

Actually when I have a new group of diverse people in my neighborhood I tend to find it much more vibrant and fun, and I'm not 'losing' it at all.

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

#496

Post by likium »

frm88 wrote: post #483
dr_zoidberg wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I clean my cookies after every session online and had the same problem, so maybe the limit really is 0 but the dev never actually considered people using private windows? Like you could bypass NYT paywalled by disabling Java Script?

Nowadays platforms seem to track IP addresses and other signals to grant limits. Using a VPN works.

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

#497

Post by porridgeraisin »

alephnerd wrote: post #257
danans wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

For most white collar jobs like tech here in the US, your out-of-pocket as percentage is income doesn't play a role in how we decide salary bands. For a family of four, the average health plan is around $10k out of pocket from the employee along with around $20k in employer costs [0]. Yet the median American SWE salary is $187k [1] versus $66k in Poland [2], $93k in Canada [3], and $111k in the UK [4]. Either way an…

> A new grad is demanding salaries that simply don't make the economics of training and hiring new grads work

This is just me, might not be representative, but as an indian CS graduate, I was willing to move to the US temporarily if it meant I could make FIRE money and return to India and basically chill out and work at interesting jobs without worrying about needing MNC/unicorn money to live well. I saw broadly two ways to do this - the startup scene, and the ridiculously high new grad salaries (which would enable FIRE in india after a few years) in the US back in early 2020s - when I was graduating. By the time I finished though, those salaries dried up like you are saying, and startup exits are easier in Blore these days and I can get funding from the usual bunch by just domiciling in Spore like flipkart did. Note that I did not expect the current AI bubble to last this long. Potentially could have cashed out on that. My impression is that if you know nvcc exists, you get money thrown at you in the US today... All in all, the idea fizzled out. Among my peers too, the people who went there for the usual M.S at a UC --> california job market pipeline are all people who are sure they want to settle in the US long-term, through the visa troubles and all. Others didn't go.

Point is, those high salaries were a big draw to a lot of people here including me. And in the absence of that companies now need to move here to get access to the same people. I think it is happening, unicorns/GCCs here are now paying quite well. I mean I had almost the median EU tech salary ($60K - 52LPA) for india cost of living at my _starting job_. So without the US starting salary being 150K-200K (a salary unattainable in india anywhere) like it was 5 years ago, it's a hard sell. Senior salaries are still high of course, but if you have to stay there 10+ years, you have a family there, kids there, loans there, and it is basically committing to settling in the US. Meaning that without the added security of the backup plan "return and you're either FIRE or super comfortable", its much more of a commitment to move. My circles have a selection bias of course, and for people who did not manage to get top 10% salaries here, the risk/reward is completely different.

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

#498

Post by teamonkey »

hshdhdhj4444 wrote: post #104
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.

Yeah. One of the most ridiculous things in my entire life of 40 years was seeing 90% of my fellow SW industry workers using the 2 or so years during/after COVID where we had more power than we’ve ever had to advocate hard for making ourselves much more easy to replace by insisting on remote work, and insisting on reducing our productivity (even if not actually, at least in the eyes of the employers) so we couldn’t ju…

You’re suggesting that people should have maintained a load bearing fantasy that they are needed in the office in order to prevent offshoring.

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

#499

Post by com2kid »

trenchpilgrim wrote: post #460
com2kid wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You'd be surprised. I live in a state most SFers consider the middle of nowhere, and my friends and I make more in absolute terms than most SF companies offer (excepting the top tier). 90k is not much more than entry level IT pay here, even new grads make more. Of course, you can't just work on CRUD apps or mobile apps, you have to build up domain knowledge of the business.

Surprising! Whenever recruiters have gotten confused and sent me non-costal job listings the salaries have always been very low (e.g. 140k for a principal level).

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

#500

Post by cuteboy19 »

sumedh wrote: post #290
leosanchez wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can categorically tell you that no one actively wants to live in the cheapest Indian cities Sorry to burst your bubble but, I love living in my T3 city I was born in. Don't talk for 1.4 billion people. Thanks.

> Don't talk for 1.4 billion people. The data for Indians moving out of India does the talking.

very few people move out permanently. if you exclude the gulf workers that is.
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