Why not both?
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What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?
301–310 of 394 posts
Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?
#302I blame the pervasive messaging of "learn to code" and those "day in the life of a software engineer" videos. The number of CS graduates is like double what it was a few years ago. As we transition into a 'bust' cycle for tech with lots of layoffs suddenly you have a tricky situation where mid to senior engineers are looking for any kind of work they can get, while at the same time there is an ocean of junior talent looking to get their foot in the door.
Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?
#303Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
And both of them are wrong, because they _should_ be trying to figure out what works best for the person; not what worked best for _them_ and forcing it on the person.
Eh, there could be some people who prefer WFH but would benefit productively from RTO. It's about what as a policy is best, not for individuals. I think the issue is when people conflate best for them with best ad policy
There main problem, at least in my experience, is that there's a direct conflict in it
- There are people that work better from home and get more done there
- There are people that work better in the office, with people around them
Regardless of which you pick, you're going to make one of those groups less productive.
I do agree that some people who want one thing but work better with the other. It's on the manager(s) to figure out which works before; for each individual and for the team.
Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
That tax change got reversed!
Proof? I don’t believe it did. Edit: BBB? Is it in effect yet, though?
Not an accountant, but I believe that it is. https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en-us/posts/corporates/sectio...
> The One Big Beautiful Bill Act introduces Section 174A, which restores immediate deduction of domestic research and experimental expenditures starting in tax years beginning after December 31, 2024, reversing the controversial five-year amortization requirement that took effect in 2022.
Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
My first and only layoff was effective 1h before that law went into effect. 1,000s of us were shunted off b/c an entire research arm was canned due to the changing cost of research s/w teams. I'm poorer but happier now b/c of it. That job was nuts.
I took a decent sized pay cut about 6 years ago to join a small company and build out our own product knowing that I may not get a raise for awhile but got to work on something cool with people I liked and I haven't regreted it for a moment. Looking forward to waking up to do work is a wild feeling.
100%. It doesn’t pay the same kind of bills but it makes life 1000% better.
Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ever heard of social engineering? Also, models nowadays are way sharper than they were even a year ago. They’re not going to make stupid mistakes like that unless you basically ask them to. GPT-5.x for example would bend over backwards to avoid even reading your passwords into context.
> Ever heard of social engineering? Oh wait, I thought these things were super smart. I didn't expect "social engineering" to work on them. > models nowadays are way sharper than they were even a year ago. You are missing the point. If the thing can solve complex math problems and at the same time be so dumb as to fall for "social engineering", then that means that it is not "smartness" or "reasoning" that is helping…
By "heard of social engineering?" I meant that humans are vulnerable to malicious input too. Prompt injection is basically a simplified form of social engineering for language models. It looks different because models operate over much smaller and more explicit contexts than humans do and are explicitly trained to follow instructions, but the general idea is similar: malicious input tries to manipulate how the system interprets trust and instructions. This is why we need protocols, permissions, and opsec for both agents and humans. That said, I’m not criticizing how you choose to use, or not use, these models, though.
Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?
#308What if Financial Times has a vested interest in the real estate industry, and therefore wants RTO mandates? Something something AI I mean.
The FT columnist/reporter, primarily, is lifting up this paper https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6787638 > as his newsworthy hook. But his conclusion is that "the evidence consistently shows hybrid arrangements get the best results." So I don't get the sense that he has a bias towards any specific outcome, given this kind of middle position. And given he's the chief data reporter, it doesn't surpris…
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Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?
#309The trouble with hiring juniors now is it's much more difficult to get them up to speed so they can be productive. Before covid, you'd sit next to them, get asked questions every so often, do some pair programming, and discuss ideas over lunch. You can, on paper, do the same exact things over Slack and Zoom. But there's much more friction. And a junior that's struggling is a lot less visible than it used to be. So wh…
> Before covid, you'd sit next to them, get asked questions every so often, do some pair programming, and discuss ideas over lunch the real glory days were the 70's when we all had to share a single multitasked computer, and the terminals (not enough for everybody) were all connected by wires and formed a sort of hive around the mini in a room called "the bullpen". Senior, junior, multiple unrelated projects sitting…
not just the terminals. the bookshelf with the documentation was in the terminal room.
(buy a VAX, get a library. oh, and a computer too.)
the 6 months after the first screen editor was installed was constant questions and answers bouncing across the room on how to do things.
Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?
#310I worked at a fully remote company that did the best job hiring juniors in my 20 year career. The talent and enthusiasm in that pool was great and really injected something into teams. What changed was ZIRP ending. The layoffs from that were real, and the managers who can't hire a ton angle for more senior people instead. The junior culture changed overnight.
At the end of the day, there are a bunch of different things going on. Higher interest rates, general overhiring during COVID for whatever reasons, and (yes) AI. And probably more macro trends. Maybe at some point we'll see some data-driven analyses but, from what I've seen, it's really hard to tease all the threads apart.
Remote work would seem to have a potential impact on mentoring and future development but that seems like a longer term trend. But, maybe, as the article suggests, some companies that are heavily remote are thinking that entry employees are going to be harder to develop--but that's a problem for the future so better not hire them today.