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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)

#121

Post by duped »

Hawkenfall wrote: post #106
lateforwork wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if we didn't we wouldn't have a tech industry? The main problem with immigrant talent in computer field is that legislators don't understand the difference between IT and Tech product development jobs. IT jobs don't need immigrant talent, so companies like Accenture, Infosys etc. should not be given H-1B visas. But tech companies like Google, Meta, Apple, OpenAI etc. absolutely need immigrant talent, or they…

Not sure how you came to draw this conclusion, as there's lots of data out there showing droves of Computer Science graduates here in the states unable to land jobs.

I think that data captures the fact that there are more people being handed degrees without an education than there are jobs. Especially when there are thousands of mid career people on the market right now.

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

#122

Post by jmyeet »

xdennis wrote: post #42
jmyeet wrote: post #38

So I want to talk about the Claude Mythos mega-model that had a real marketing push in the last week. Marcus Hutchins (of IWannaCry fame) posted about the economics of this [1]. The upshot here is this was a longstanding BSD bug but mostly because nobody is paying BSD bug bounties and a null-pointer dereference may induce a crash but rarely (if ever) leads to privilege escalation as buffer overflows generally do so i…

> $50k gets you a lot of developer time, upwards of 2 months. God, I wish I was American sometimes...

You have to consider all the costs of employing someone, not just the direct compensation. Benefits, health insurance, taxes (eg employer payroll taxes), office space, equipment, various insurances, utilities, costs related to just having that person (eg HR) and so on. So even a $100k salary, which is pretty modest for a US-based engineer, the additional costs may well add another $50-100k.

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

#123

Post by kindawinda »

stego-tech wrote: post #69

Would really appreciate an archive link to read this, even though it appears to be another meta-analysis wrapped in a “everything will be fine” narrative from the limited previews I’ve been able to gleam and The Economist’s general lean. The problem with the tech layoffs is that it’s poisoning the well downstream. Smaller employers have repeatedly cited their layoffs as justification for abysmal, unlivable salaries,…

Would really appreciate if you made an archive link and sharing instead of complaining

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

#125

Post by ianm218 »

ehnto wrote: post #77
ianm218 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re missing the cost curve of inference. What costs $20-50k now will cost 2-5k in a year or two at which point the math is a no brainer. It makes a lot of sense to build products that almost work now or are almost economical and ride the trend line.

Why would it reduce ten fold? I think performance of the chips gets a little better but not that much better. The cost of the infra is probably going to go up if energy costs keep going up and presuming the US can keep getting cheap chips.

They have been exponentially decreasing so far [1] and the Vera Rubin generations chips will be going live that are 35X more efficient in terms of inference/ megawatt [2]. Even with rising prices 10x is possibly conservative.

Maybe if demand is truly crazy the labs will take more margin

1. epoch.ai/data-insights/llm-inference-price-trends

2. http://hashrateindex.com/blog/nvidia-vera-rubin-nvl72-specs-...

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

#126

Post by foobarian »

Ifkaluva wrote: post #98
mikert89 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

honestly i have no idea, in some cases, they are working weekends/are hyper focused on extremely boring, somewhat manual work. some of the systems are complicated and break constantly, so they are almost just oncall fodder for manually fixing a constantly breaking high scale service

Will these kinds of jobs survive Claude code? It sounds like exactly the job that would be easiest to automate.

And who gets paged when the Claude integration fails?

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

#127

Post by zeroonetwothree »

jmyeet wrote: post #38

So I want to talk about the Claude Mythos mega-model that had a real marketing push in the last week. Marcus Hutchins (of IWannaCry fame) posted about the economics of this [1]. The upshot here is this was a longstanding BSD bug but mostly because nobody is paying BSD bug bounties and a null-pointer dereference may induce a crash but rarely (if ever) leads to privilege escalation as buffer overflows generally do so i…

> What they will do is allow you to use 1 engineer with AI tools instead of 2-4 engineers.

In a competitive market this doesn’t work exactly that way because you will then lose to your competitor who has 2-4 engineer + AI.

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

#128

Post by seanmcdirmid »

mikert89 wrote: post #70

Two big tech FAANG jobs, org is 95% h1b engineers from china/india. Tons of resumes from american grads somehow never hit my desk, continue to interview random candidates from india with some low quality USA masters from missisipi state. Candidate has spent the last year locked in a room memorizing algorithm interview questions

I’ve seen two interns through to FTE jobs at a FAANG, both were at least second generation immigrants (so citizens I guess, though I never asked). So kids are still getting jobs, they come from reasonable universities, I haven’t seen UW resumes yet (my Alma mater), for some reasons those kids are all scooped up before I can take a look (I work at an office in Seattle so I find it weird that we can hire from the local university).

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

#129

Post by lateforwork »

woeirua wrote: post #120
lateforwork wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if we didn't we wouldn't have a tech industry? The main problem with immigrant talent in computer field is that legislators don't understand the difference between IT and Tech product development jobs. IT jobs don't need immigrant talent, so companies like Accenture, Infosys etc. should not be given H-1B visas. But tech companies like Google, Meta, Apple, OpenAI etc. absolutely need immigrant talent, or they…

That is absolutely not true. There are plenty of Americans who can do these jobs.

> There are plenty of Americans who can do these jobs.

This thinking is wrong. For IT jobs, the work is pre-defined and you go find people who can do the job. For product development this is sometimes the case, but for truly innovative products, such as AI models, this is not the case. You have to hire the best in the world and give them the resources they need, as opposed to defining the project upfront and hiring people "who can do the job".

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

#130

Post by acdha »

lateforwork wrote: post #129
woeirua wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is absolutely not true. There are plenty of Americans who can do these jobs.

> There are plenty of Americans who can do these jobs. This thinking is wrong. For IT jobs, the work is pre-defined and you go find people who can do the job. For product development this is sometimes the case, but for truly innovative products, such as AI models, this is not the case. You have to hire the best in the world and give them the resources they need, as opposed to defining the project upfront and hiring p…

How many “best in the world” people are we talking about, though? Based on what I’ve seen that’s a very small percentage (maybe 5%) while the rest were being hired by companies who valued having workers with limited negotiating power.

(I’m not opposed to immigration at all but it was transparent how for decades the industry resisted any change which would make it easier for a skilled H1-B worker to take a better job)

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