201–210 of 283 posts
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It's quite frustrating that they track average rather than median wages. As wealth inequality increases, average will be less and less representative of worker health.
Old joke: Bill Gates walks into a bar. On average everyone there is a millionaire
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…
the job description of a junior engineer can change. junior engineers can use AI to make themselves more productive too
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I have a suspicion that Twitter laying off so much of the software staff was very influential for people with hiring abilities. The company didn't crash, and they (relatively slowly) began shipping new features again. I think that coincided with the pandemic-era overhiring, and we've been working against that combo ever since. Every now and then, I actively try to make an LLM replace my tasks, and fully do greenfield…
I hate to be "that guy" but you're crazy if you don't see AI being able to do greenfield projects you'd accept. I mean, in your defense, last year I think you would have been right, but right now? Codex rocks, as does Claude. I am literally making money shipping a greenfield project to a customer right now. I'm basically a cheap consultant that is incrementally adding features to make something exactly what they want…
Exactly. Much of the "AI job crisis" rhetoric was PR comms to manage conversations around corporate restructuring (even ZIRP is a lazy PR comms excuse). Most decisionmakers by 2025 already agreed they didn't expect AI to have a significant impact on hiring [0]. I've pointed out the reasons ad nauseum on here but no one listens [1]. [0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-10/wall-stre... [1] - https://ne…
For US SWE labor, off-shoring was and still is a big contributor. I do think AI is a factor too though. You almost get laughed at asking for headcount now. For junior positions in particular, there are close to zero openings. AI has grown dramatically in capability since last year as well so I'm not sure 2025 data holds today.
That said, I agree with you that AI capabilities have grown massively, but the only way you aren't burning tokens with marginal RoI is having someone with credible domain experience using Claude Code or Codex hand-in-hand.
Basically, no one wants to spend $200K TC on training a junior who will most likely be using an AI tool already. The math works out more positively at a significantly lower TC.
I know plenty of people looking for job for months at this point. I am looking for 3+ months and have a few leads finally but nowhere close to offer. Remember, people have to live in these high cost GEOs (SF, Seattle, NYC and others). Since COVID, the US economy is effy at best with housing prices doubled, rents and household expenses doubled. Just for something simple it costs $200 subscription like mowing the lawn. Pulling stats out of some dashboard that a rando made is not how people live day to day life. Remember, people lie with statistics all the time.
So yes, there is a significant job crisis. Because Ycombinator invested in AI companies this narrative is suppressed here and moderator DANG (one of the worst) heavily moderates anything critical of AI and YC.
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Why would you assume that’s from AI You talk to any SE and it’s obvious we’re not running out of work to do since these tools became available
don't know whom you talk to. I see people laid of left-and-righ, in FAANG, banks, startup, pretty much everywhere.
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The median would be interesting than the mean, as you can be hollowing out the middle, leaving more low-wage workers and a few very highly paid ones and the "average" still looks good.
Median is also up: Median weekly earnings of the nation's 121.0 million full-time wage and salary workers were $1,235 in the first quarter of 2026 (not seasonally adjusted), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. This was 3.4 percent higher than a year earlier, compared with a gain of 2.7 percent in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) over the same period. https://www.bls.gov/news.re…
Edit: 4.2% (2025) vs 4.3% (2026).