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Where is the AI jobs crisis?

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Re: Where is the AI jobs crisis?

#81

Post by jmyeet »

paulpauper wrote: post #45
jmyeet wrote: post #31

You can't draw any conclusions based on "job openings" without dealing with, or at least addressing, "ghost job listings". There are several issues here: 1. AI ATS systems have made posting jobs "cheap", such that too companies post jobs that don't exist (ie "ghost jobs") to keep up appearances they're hiring or just to keep people in the pipeline in case they hire. This is a huge waste of everybody's time and should…

You can look at the official unemployment rate, too. It's still low despite rapid advances in LLMs

The unemployment rate is cooked. It doesn't capture underemployment, people who want full-time employment and don't have it and people who don't make a living wage.

Long gone are the days when the vast majority of people just have one job. Now it's 2-3 part-time jobs because companies are exploiting a legal loophole where they only have to pay benefits for full-time employees. And then you have people doing "gig" work, which is often sub-minimum wage when you factor in expenses (eg driving for Uber and not factoring in car wear).

On top of all this we, across the Western world there's an increasing youth unemployment crisis. In 2008, entry-level jobs basically disappeared overnight and never came back. Well, that just got worse post-pandemic.

Re: Where is the AI jobs crisis?

#82

Post by 5701652400 »

rich_sasha wrote: post #67
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Average weekly and hourly earnings were up in May [1], though “real average hourly earnings for all employees decreased 0.5 percent from March to April, seasonally adjusted” [2]. Nominal wages being up rejects the hypothesis that folks are being downsized into lower-paying roles. [1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t19.htm [2] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.nr0.htm

In absolute terms AI is nibbling on a fairly small slice of the global pie of jobs - junior coders, lawyers, accountants, bankers. The average person earns an average salary doing something very different to the stuff we on HN stress about.

key point, those 6 figures SWEs earn, they would spend to "local non SWE" economy.

your local datacenter does not care about local chickens or eggs, or private tutor, or pretty much anything at all. not even energy, it is has its own nucleaer reactor nearby. it is one-way economy from now on. you are only a consumer, not a producer. there is virtually nothing you (nor average joe) can provide that "datacenter" needs.

Re: Where is the AI jobs crisis?

#83

Post by nawgz »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #69

It's crazy that so often I see articles, here on HN and elsewhere, where some pundit claims that there is no AI job crisis, AI isn't replacing any jobs, that layoffs are actually due to post-pandemic ZIRP overhiring, etc. But then people who work in actual tech companies come in and explicitly say they are not hiring any juniors anymore specifically because AI is good enough to do most of what juniors do, and that se…

> However it seems just like common sense that if an AI can do junior-engineer-level coding work, that a company has less reason to hire a junior engineer.

I mean, if we want to not talk about economics that’s fine, but can the AI actually do junior work at the same price? What if we don’t look only at quarterly reports, and instead include the value of having people knowing about the business having to explain it to others, who then learn it and can improve it over time?

I think it’s clear the AI is strong, there’s no doubt about that, but that’s not the whole picture.

Re: Where is the AI jobs crisis?

#84

Post by heathrow83829 »

sp1982 wrote: post #30

I run a job search site and I don't see a crisis in terms of job openings even for SWE - but there is very clear signal that AI is deeply getting embedded in every SWE job. https://corvi.careers/blog/global_software-engineering_jobs_...

Your own site shows there's very very little demand for entry level SWE which mirrors all the other data we've seen.

BTW, cool site!

Re: Where is the AI jobs crisis?

#85

Post by sdellis »

ams92 wrote: post #18

I wonder when we’ll reach diminishing returns on new AI models. Haven’t tried Mythos or Fable yet but it seems like Anthropic is already priming itself for this by calling for a “slowdown” of AI development.

I think it's less of a technology problem and more of a money and investment problem. They called for the "slowdown" right when they filed for IPO. This allows them to both triage the money bleed while under the microscope as well as make their competitors look unethical and dangerous if they don't heed the warning to slow down before we lose control of A.I.

Re: Where is the AI jobs crisis?

#88

Post by thewillowcat »

pockybum522 wrote: post #74

It's really funny that the first thing in the article is a graph showing a long downward trend with a tiny, brief uptick circled at the end and then the entire article appears to be written about that.

I don't see an uptick. Demand has been steady for the past two years after falling from the post-pandemic frenzy. That fits with my personal experience of the tech industry over the past several years.

People are right to point out that hiring is nothing like the post-pandemic years, but it's not clear that it's any tougher out there than, say, 2018. This is from the perspective of someone with a lot of industry experience, though. I can't speak directly to the experience of junior engineers.

Re: Where is the AI jobs crisis?

#89

Post by mfuzzey »

nawgz wrote: post #83
atleastoptimal wrote: post #69

It's crazy that so often I see articles, here on HN and elsewhere, where some pundit claims that there is no AI job crisis, AI isn't replacing any jobs, that layoffs are actually due to post-pandemic ZIRP overhiring, etc. But then people who work in actual tech companies come in and explicitly say they are not hiring any juniors anymore specifically because AI is good enough to do most of what juniors do, and that se…

> However it seems just like common sense that if an AI can do junior-engineer-level coding work, that a company has less reason to hire a junior engineer. I mean, if we want to not talk about economics that’s fine, but can the AI actually do junior work at the same price? What if we don’t look only at quarterly reports, and instead include the value of having people knowing about the business having to explain it to…

>I mean, if we want to not talk about economics that’s fine, but can the AI actually do junior work at the same price?

Even if we assume it can then not hiring Juniors still doesn't make sense - where will seniors come from in the future?

Re: Where is the AI jobs crisis?

#90

Post by thewebguyd »

nawgz wrote: post #83
atleastoptimal wrote: post #69

It's crazy that so often I see articles, here on HN and elsewhere, where some pundit claims that there is no AI job crisis, AI isn't replacing any jobs, that layoffs are actually due to post-pandemic ZIRP overhiring, etc. But then people who work in actual tech companies come in and explicitly say they are not hiring any juniors anymore specifically because AI is good enough to do most of what juniors do, and that se…

> However it seems just like common sense that if an AI can do junior-engineer-level coding work, that a company has less reason to hire a junior engineer. I mean, if we want to not talk about economics that’s fine, but can the AI actually do junior work at the same price? What if we don’t look only at quarterly reports, and instead include the value of having people knowing about the business having to explain it to…

> include the value of having people knowing about the business having to explain it to others, who then learn it and can improve it over time?

It's always been difficult to put a number on that value, which is the problem for the MBAs running the show. There's no number on the P&L assigned to tribal knowledge, and improvements that can be made by those with that knowledge and experience within the business.

It's a mistake that businesses keep repeating, over and over again, yet never actually learning the lesson. And now the industry is going to repeat it again, until there's enough pain that they realize that lost value and start rehiring again.

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