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The tech jobs bust is real. Don't blame AI (yet)

economist.com

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Re: The tech jobs bust is real. Don't blame AI (yet)

#21

Post by gbnwl »

i_love_retros wrote: post #15
rvz wrote: post #11

When anyone asks the question: "What is AGI", it is actually this. An "abundance" of nothing else but this. It's just that the tech workers are the canaries in the coal mines for the other white collar knowledge workers. This is "AGI".

Meanwhile... I had to step in and hand code lots of css today because copilot couldn't do the thing. And I had to step in and manually fix tests yesterday because copilot couldn't do the thing. Are you paid by OpenAI and/or Anthropic?

Have you considered not using copilot and using Claude Code or Codex directly?

Re: The tech jobs bust is real. Don't blame AI (yet)

#22

Post by [deleted] »

jmuguy wrote: post #19
0xAntonioo wrote: post #8

Feels early to blame AI for most of this. A lot of it still looks like a reset from 2021-era hiring assumptions rather than actual labor replacement

You'd think if the market were rational that Block would be punished for firing that many people, and obviously lying about why, but we haven't reached that point yet I guess.

[deleted]

Re: The tech jobs bust is real. Don't blame AI (yet)

#24

Post by chii »

dvwcf wrote: post #13
0xAntonioo wrote: post #8

Feels early to blame AI for most of this. A lot of it still looks like a reset from 2021-era hiring assumptions rather than actual labor replacement

Over hiring is one thing.. but that wouldnt be a problem if there was an endless stream of projects to take that are value creating. So the issue is not necessarily the over-hiring.. more that the large tech firms are running out of projects to take that are value-creating. Which is not surprising - the labour market in its currently state is absolutely not perfect in allocating labour. It should be noted that fixing…

The "value" creation is tied to the interest rate.

When interest rates are low, even low value creation projects are viable.

When rates are high, those exact same projects are no longer viable.

Therefore, i would argue that the labour market is not perfectly allocating labour, but it is close enough for practical purposes.

Re: The tech jobs bust is real. Don't blame AI (yet)

#27

Post by irishcoffee »

wmf wrote: post #20
irishcoffee wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn’t about holding value, the cards are going to burn up. If they don’t, in 5 years one could run a rack of 4 cards at home at an affordable rate. Either the cards become affordable again and the datacenter is useless, or they don’t, and nobody can fucking afford to rent them.

GPUs definitely have higher failure rates than CPUs but I'm not sure what the absolute rates will turn out to be. If 10% of GPUs die within 5 years that's very high but also probably economically fine. If 50% die that's a disaster.

Sorry, I meant at some point the current cards in he data centers will be obsolete, financially. They’ll be sold on the secondary market. Buying 8 h200s at $150 a pop will either be a real thing, or they all burn up and capex explodes again, which would be a death knell.

Either way, the moat is about 7 inches wide.

Re: The tech jobs bust is real. Don't blame AI (yet)

#28

Post by dvwcf »

chii wrote: post #24
dvwcf wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over hiring is one thing.. but that wouldnt be a problem if there was an endless stream of projects to take that are value creating. So the issue is not necessarily the over-hiring.. more that the large tech firms are running out of projects to take that are value-creating. Which is not surprising - the labour market in its currently state is absolutely not perfect in allocating labour. It should be noted that fixing…

The "value" creation is tied to the interest rate. When interest rates are low, even low value creation projects are viable. When rates are high, those exact same projects are no longer viable. Therefore, i would argue that the labour market is not perfectly allocating labour, but it is close enough for practical purposes.

Value creation is more of a function of cash flow potential on a project than the risk-free rate, cost of equity or cost of debt.

"labour market is not perfectly allocating labour, but it is close enough for practical purposes."

No its not lmao. Do you even know what characteristics a 'perfect labour market' is even comprised of? Go on, surprise me.

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