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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

#501

Post by alephnerd »

porridgeraisin wrote: post #497
alephnerd wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My reply was primarily about American new grads - who overwhelmingly don't do grad school.

And your anecdote is exactly what I am trying to explain on HN.

We as employers are fine paying high salaries to mid-career talent, but it's hard to justify hiring a middle of the pack new grad from CSU East Bay for a $130k base salary new grad role when I can hire a mid-career US returned FAANG dev in BLR or HYD for $70k-90k TC.

We will still hire new grads in the US for a $130k-$180k base, but they will have to actually be worth it. The brutal reality is, if you didn't attend a target CS program for your Bachelors (Stanford, Cal, MIT, UIUC, CMU, UT Austin, GT, UMich, UW, Cornell, Harvard, Columbia), at this point you probably aren't landing a high paying CS job - just like how in India if you didn't get a good JEE score, you're essentially relegated to being stuck at WITCH because you didn't get into a good BTech program, and it's an employer's market

A lot of people on HN assume Indians (and other foreign nationals) only do b*tch work like legacy springboot crap (and ofc plenty of people do), but an equally large cohort is doing legitimately competitive and innovative work.

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

#502

Post by TurboHaskal »

ncphillips wrote: post #336
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…

> 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. Funny, this is the complete opposite of my experience. Greenfield projects I've been a part of have had a ton of highly visible progress with _frequent_ updates to stakeholders basically from day 1. Same goes for complex additional f…

I was going to say the same. In my experience I can say without hesitation green field projects is how you advance your career, become visible and get promoted.

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

#503

Post by porridgeraisin »

alephnerd wrote: post #501
porridgeraisin wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

My reply was primarily about American new grads - who overwhelmingly don't do grad school. And your anecdote is exactly what I am trying to explain on HN. We as employers are fine paying high salaries to mid-career talent, but it's hard to justify hiring a middle of the pack new grad from CSU East Bay for a $130k base salary new grad role when I can hire a mid-career US returned FAANG dev in BLR or HYD for $70k-90k T…

> The brutal reality is, if you didn't attend a target CS program for your Bachelors (Stanford, Cal, MIT, UIUC, CMU, UT Austin, GT, UMich, UW, Cornell, Harvard, Columbia), at this point you probably aren't landing a high paying CS job

But what about after masters? What are the expectations there? Now of course there is the research path which is publishing well in your masters, working at deepmind or nvidia etc,. But I am talking about people doing non-thesis MS and then entering the job market. Is the base salary for those people still high?

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

#504

Post by Yoric »

BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #343
Arch485 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a racism thing, it's because India is in a fairly unique position: their population is so large, that (relatively speaking) the top 0.1% of Indians in any sector tend to outnumber the top 0.1% of (for example) Americans in that sector, plus if an Indian immigrates to America, a company can pay them less than an equivalent American employee (for various reasons). So you basically can pay an Indian immigrant a…

>”for significantly-better-than-junior-dev work.” Not even close. We had two offshore contractors working with our team for about two years and they were consistently terrible. Despite this, some higher up pressed us to “hire” them so we conducted an interview. One of them said they had 8+ years of SQL query optimization experience and could not explain what a table scan was. The other claimed to have 5 years of C++…

On the other hand, I've had extremely skilled senior Indian colleagues who were essentially paid like juniors.

As far as I understand, there's extreme variance between highest-tier and lowest-tier universities and it's not necessarily reflected in salaries when they're hired by Western companies.

YMMV

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

#505

Post by exasperaited »

hexbin010 wrote: post #470
exasperaited wrote: post #21

This is absolutely crucial to understand. Because in any country with poor worker protections, the outcome is layoffs regardless. AI succeeds? Layoffs of unneeded roles. AI fails? Layoffs to cut expenditure to make up for the written-off expenditure. In the UK, if AI makes a well-established employee redundant, the employee is entitled to redundancy pay. And if the company fucks up and overspends on chasing a ridicul…

> they can't just fire people without making them formally redundant They are however pretty well trained in getting people to quit by making their job/life hell, avoiding all redundancy processes and cost

It's hardly as if the USA is better. People murder each other over workplace problems there.

But I guess if they want another tool to help make the workplace depressing, hellish, absurd and kafkaesque, congratulations everybody Microsoft just built it into Windows and Office365 and everything else.

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

#506

Post by pjmlp »

system2 wrote: post #367
pjmlp wrote: post #93

I can tell that editors doing CMS translations, marketing images have certainly been replaced. Likewise many tasks I used to do with Java, .NET, Node.js, have been replaced by low code/no code tools with agentic orchestration. Thinking that AI isn't replacing jobs is wishful thinking.

Those are tools, not jobs.

Tell that to the people that were using those tools, now looking for a new job.

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

#507

Post by pjmlp »

system2 wrote: post #476
jjk166 wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The combine harvester and the automated telephone switchboard were tools. If a tool allows for tasks to be done with much less labor, and the quantity of those tasks that need doing don't increase by a commensurate amount, then it does mean replaced jobs. The people replaced may move into new and perhaps even better jobs, either at different employers or transforming their current roll, but the job they once had is i…

That's the natural evolution of jobs, though. It is not like barbers will lose their jobs because of a new Cylon coming to market. These tools are gradually improving and adding more speed to workers. If someone's job is extremely mundane and limited, they have to evolve before these things take over. Those people can also lose their jobs when a new, smarter, and harder-working employee is hired and capable of doing…

Capitalism mindset at its best, with the luxury of living in world regions where people find new jobs every day, and no family responsibilities.

Many places of the globe the option is between mundane jobs or none at all.

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

#508

Post by simianwords »

csullivannet wrote: post #95

If AI really generates the value it claims to cutting jobs is short sighted. If existing human knowledge is commoditized, then we should be able to invest in generating new knowledge, and creating new kinds of products that were not even possible before.

that's what is happening. the economy is re-arranging itself and layoffs are obviously a part of re-arrangement.

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

#509

Post by lazide »

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…

Have you ever lived in India? (not just visited, but actually lived there)

I have, and while of course not 100% of any society is ever any specific way, Indian society is this way.

In the same way as german society is very ‘rules oriented’ (to put it mildly), even when individual germans can (and sometimes are!) the opposite.

Don’t mess with the Polizei and expect to come out unscathed, and don’t expect to get what you paid for (or what you’re asked to pay being a fair price) without fighting for it in India. Or for people to follow the rules if they can profit from not following the rules, even if it’s short term.

It’s just the way things work.

Occasionally, there are exceptions, but they typically prove the rule. (Ikea in India is awesome, for instance. And some individual local vendors are too. Autorickshaw drivers, cabbies, landlords, and vendors in busy markets tend to be the worst. Like 5x a fair price sometimes, or a fair price and 1/5 of what you should get. And in some situations, the Polizei are very kind. Like if you’re lost and a pleasant drunk. But do not argue with the Polizei, it will go very badly.).

Like in any society, these have reasons which are extremely obvious to most people in the society, and may not be obvious until you live there.

In India, for example, when everyone is trying to penny pinch/get rich quick because of a history of extractive behavior from authorities and economic/social instability to an extreme degree (including historically, famines, religious wars, purges, etc.) and so many factions/groups that ‘us vs them’ is just the norm - and once enough people start doing it, you’ll be screwed if you don’t do it yourself. It’s the prisoners dilemma writ large, but when there are already a ton of people floating around doing the ‘wrong’ thing. The rich can get away with not doing this (as much) sometimes, when they are dealing with foreigners, but it’s pervasive.

Or in Germany, when there is a history/culture of strong willed people doing what they want and making life harder for everyone else (in an environment where that can get people killed) but a reasonably consistent and obvious majority ‘us’ group, for instance. In weather that WILL kill the unprepared/weak without assistance a large portion of the year, and requires significant energy to be spent just to not freeze to death for everyone.

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

#510

Post by abustamam »

danielschreber wrote: post #385
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 a…

I never use LLMs to get current data. Sometimes for fun I'll ask it for product recommendations and it'll routinely make up products that don't exist and confidently even generate links for such products.

But for code generation, Claude is awesome. ChatGPT is OK too but I've had much better results with Claude. Weird things happen if a new version it a library came out with breaking changes though. You'll have to write rules or ensure that the new apis are in context.

But that's kinda my point. It's not good enough to replace a human, but it is good enough to make a human more efficient.

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