Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Where is the AI jobs crisis?

apollo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 283 posts

Re: Where is the AI jobs crisis?

#131

Post by themafia »

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…

> actual tech companies

Are you talking the big 10? Or "tech companies" in general?

> AI really just can't replace productive work

Okay. Show me the productivity gains. Those are measurable. Why is the "AI is ready" crowd never prepared to show this?

> that if an AI can do junior-engineer-level coding work

Then you have no competitive edge and most of your output probably cannot be copyrighted.

Re: Where is the AI jobs crisis?

#132

Post by emp17344 »

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.

This is - quite literally - the fixed-pie fallacy, which has been thoroughly debunked by now. Read up on basic economics before commenting on this topic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy

Re: Where is the AI jobs crisis?

#133

Post by themafia »

voidfunc wrote: post #51
dywilby wrote: post #29

Anecdotally, there's an AI job crisis for juniors right now

Yea, we're basically not hiring anyone that isn't a senior developer already. That's going to be a huge problem eventually but not my problem to deal with. My best advice for folks that want to get into software now is be willing to do it cheap for awhile and then jump once you've developed some skills. If you were getting into this industry for the money you're properly fucked and I hope you didn't load up on debt.…

> is be willing to do it cheap for awhile

Then you might as well work for yourself.

> getting into this industry for the money

I can make more money doing HVAC but I'm tired of being on hot roofs.

> the path forward is a lot murkier.

If you're just here for the money go somewhere else. If you're here because you love computer science then ignore these people and do the work. If you can't find a company get a dayjob and do it for yourself.

Re: Where is the AI jobs crisis?

#134

Post by emp17344 »

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…

If you’re so confident, show us some data to debunk the article. You have a weird chip on shoulder, but no economic evidence to justify it.

Re: Where is the AI jobs crisis?

#135

Post by piloto_ciego »

These analyses always crack me up. "There's 1 at least 1 job per person, why are people complaining" is the vibe I always get.

As though the decades of work I've put into my career means I should want a job as the hamburger man or working as a ditch digger. No shade to burger flippers or ditch diggers, but these are not jobs that I'm trained for, nor are they jobs that I remotely want to do. So for me, aviation expert, programmer, ML engineer, weird IT generalist, guy with a math degree who speaks a couple languages, and isn't exactly fully capable anymore, the idea that jobs in some other field (like an RN or an Oncologist or Electrician) are just something I can pivot into is just hilarious. It's such a shallow and ignorant take. Even the premise that all jobs are equally distributed and there aren't jobs that are more or less in demand at any time is a real funny take too.

I'm so glad I started working for myself, because honestly, seeing this dogshit analyses from supposed experts means I'll be able to keep making money for a long time just be actually trying when I need to think about something.

Re: Where is the AI jobs crisis?

#136

Post by ryukoposting »

kevinob11 wrote: post #25
ryukoposting wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, zooming out really puts the 2021-2022 hiring frenzy into perspective.

Sort of, that it crosses so many lines makes it seem like it must be 6X, but it peaks at 230 based on a baseline of 100, so just 2.3X their baseline. Still a ton, but not as much as I thought at first glance.

The "edit graph" button reveals some pretty sweet ways to mess with the chart, yet I don't see an option to fix the Y axis at zero. Weird.

Maybe words work better?

There were roughly 28 months' worth of tech job postings within the 15 month period from July 2021 to October 2022.

If you change the baseline to a rough average of the last 2 years, 0.66, that ratio becomes 42 months' worth of job postings within 15 months.

I'd be curious to see what the numbers look like as a percentage of the existing tech workforce. Like, if there are 100 workers and the number of job postings doubled from 5 to 10, that's a huge deal. But if there are 1000000 workers and the number of job postings doubled from 1 to 2, well that's not a huge deal.

Re: Where is the AI jobs crisis?

#137

Post by ubercore »

The jobs AI crisis is me being stressed and overworked as management demands more AI, showy (but shallow) "look I made a skill" presentations grab attention, and my PR review queue grows every day as people generate more code than ever.

But to keep this out of a low-value vent, my experience has been that the _threat_ of it is there, but in my small corner of the world/industry, lots of layoffs that would have happened anywhere may just be categorized as "AI" layoffs, but the wild manpower reducing benefits aren't really there. The larger an org gets, the more of your job is dedicated to human stuff, and you can just get some of the code part done a little more quickly.

Would be interesting if we could measure how much effort is put into agentic coding harnesses, frameworks, and theory, vs labor saved using them.

Re: Where is the AI jobs crisis?

#138

Post by gruez »

heathrow83829 wrote: post #121
gruez wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if they're using the CPI then it can be very misleading. One need only compare nominal wages vs nominal rents per square foot for the last 50 years to see that actual wages have dropped by 30% and yet the "real" hourly average wage calculated via the CPI is flat, falsly implying that actual wages have not dropped. Yes, if you get to pick prices of arbitrary items to compare against, it's easy to come to whatever co…

shelter isn't just a cherry picked item. It's by an far the largest spending category, that and healthcare. I couldn't care less about all the other categories, personally.

>shelter isn't just a cherry picked item. It's by an far the largest spending category, that and healthcare.

The BLS agrees. That's why "shelter" is weighted 35.6% in the CPI basket, by far the biggest item.

> I couldn't care less about all the other categories, personally.

If we're going by what people "care" about (whatever that means), the basket would probably be like 70% gas prices, 20% grocery prices, and 10% for everything else. Empirically speaking, those two are far more salient politically than housing.

Re: Where is the AI jobs crisis?

#139

Post by gruez »

10xDev wrote: post #104
Ancapistani wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would cause an increase in the number of open lower paid and/or service industry jobs while simultaneously reducing the number of openings in tech?

World Cup / Summer.

typically unemployment rates are seasonally adjusted.
Post reply on HN