What if Financial Times has a vested interest in the real estate industry, and therefore wants RTO mandates? Something something AI I mean.
What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?
131–140 of 394 posts
Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?
#132AI is not responsible for anything at the moment, except making existing senior developers reasonably more efficient for sleeve of tasks, but not the tasks that take the most time. Saying "we don't need as many staff because AI" is an oft-repeated trope because it sounds like a reasonable excuse to fire people. It's nearly impossible to back up the claim with any measurable method, and investors will look aside on th…
At the moment is the significant part, how long do we expect this to last now that AI is capable of generating novel ideas like solutions to Erdos conjectures?
LLMs enable a new kind of text search. It looks like reasoning and intelligence, but it is not.
For example, If you are not aware of Internet, you would consider a traditional internet search that comes up with a stackoverflow answer as a machine generating "novel ideas" and answers.
It is a clever marketing trick (touting Erdos solutions) employeed by AI companies.
Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?
#133What if is, and always was, having people with no discernible skills or expertise being in charge of filling the hiring pipeline?
Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?
#134In 2026 a Junior Engineer is just Claude Code with a bad UI, higher latency, and extra steps. Literally. I wouldn't even considering hiring a junior engineer at this point. The ROI was already barely breakeven for any but the top of the top junior engineers as they are likely to move on before they are meaningfully contributing. With AI in the mix the ROI for Junior Engineers is strongly negative for 2 reasons: 1. (o…
People don't want to hear this, but it's true, especially the part about the junior developer just using Claude Code themselves.
We may still be too early on the curve of AI usage for AI to be the major driver of the labor market changes, but we also have no clue about what to do about it.
Often the conversation puts "Using AI ourself" at odds with "Delegating to a junior developer", but the junior developer is going to be using AI just like the rest of us further bringing into question the value of junior developers (and eventually senior engineers).
What really is the next step? (Rhetorical question since nobody knows)
Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not necessarily true, though. For instance, real estate investors have a lot to lose from vacant office space and therefore would benefit from RTO. I personally find that I enjoy in person collaboration but that should not mean we should universally force every team to come back to the office.
I never understood this argument. Most companies do not own their office buildings, but rather lease space from corporate landlords. It is in the best interest of these companies to dramatically reduce their lease burden via WFH. Why would a company totally unrelated to real estate investment act against its own self-interest just to prop up real estate investors?
The argument (which may or may not be valid, just explaining it) is that companies do not lease space (or take any action), people do. And the same individuals who are able to make leasing decisions for office space are co-invested in commercial real estate; even if the company doesn’t benefit from maintaining an expensive office, the C suite might; and if so, then of course that’s the decision that will be made.
Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?
#136What if Financial Times has a vested interest in the real estate industry, and therefore wants RTO mandates? Something something AI I mean.
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Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?
#137What if Financial Times has a vested interest in the real estate industry, and therefore wants RTO mandates? Something something AI I mean.
i'm glad reading your comment, because i nearly always get that feeling with FT articles, and very often with Economist patronizing subset of articles.
Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?
#138Weak junior hiring is due to: - Longtime trends of companies trying to externalize training costs. - Avoiding hiring in general due to uncertainty in the economy. - Companies dumping tons of money into AI thus having to cut money from other places, particularly ones that don't add much value in the quarter (internships).
> companies trying to externalize training costs Why shouldn't they? You're commenting on a website where the common if not overwhelming view is that people should move jobs every 2 years or they are going to lose out.
Tragedy of the commons, prisoners dilemma.
Externalizing costs is a great short term strategy, for startups. We really should regulate any company over a certain size to force them to pay for their externalities but we all know they won’t happen. I’m sure this won’t have any lasting consequences or lead to the collapse of any economies.
Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?
#139I feel like there are some really good junior level jobs coming in the pipeline. But we have the flush out the capabilities of AI. The acceleration of AI progress is not increasing so once the roles get adjusted junior jobs will return.
Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
At the moment is the significant part, how long do we expect this to last now that AI is capable of generating novel ideas like solutions to Erdos conjectures?
LLMs enable a new kind of text search. It looks like reasoning and intelligence, but it is not. For example, If you are not aware of Internet, you would consider a traditional internet search that comes up with a stackoverflow answer as a machine generating "novel ideas" and answers. It is a clever marketing trick (touting Erdos solutions) employeed by AI companies.
Reading comments like this is like watching an impaired pedestrian about to be run over by an approaching bus. You yell, you wave your arms, but they aren't paying attention. There's no way to warn them, so all you can do is... watch.