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Tech Workers Face Evaporating Financial Security as AI Transforms Industry

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Re: Tech Workers Face Evaporating Financial Security as AI Transforms Industry

#2
Big company layoffs are probably more aligned with offshoring than AI, but they'll never admit it.

Zuckerbergs 8 billion dollar VR metaverse flop has something to do with this maybe?

Last time I checked AI isn't killing jobs if the other news is to be believed.

Re: Tech Workers Face Evaporating Financial Security as AI Transforms Industry

#3

Big company layoffs are probably more aligned with offshoring than AI, but they'll never admit it. Zuckerbergs 8 billion dollar VR metaverse flop has something to do with this maybe? Last time I checked AI isn't killing jobs if the other news is to be believed.

OP here, and I agree it's probably not AI directly and more of dealing with the post Covid overhiring, and CAPEX for AI investments.

Enterprise adoption is definitely not happening as fast as the AI proponents (startups, frontier labs, big tech) would like people to believe (probably the reason why frontier labs are going the FDE/consulting path). So it's unlikely that the impact on productivity is enough to produce the alleged impact.

Re: Tech Workers Face Evaporating Financial Security as AI Transforms Industry

#4
post #3

Big company layoffs are probably more aligned with offshoring than AI, but they'll never admit it. Zuckerbergs 8 billion dollar VR metaverse flop has something to do with this maybe? Last time I checked AI isn't killing jobs if the other news is to be believed.

OP here, and I agree it's probably not AI directly and more of dealing with the post Covid overhiring, and CAPEX for AI investments. Enterprise adoption is definitely not happening as fast as the AI proponents (startups, frontier labs, big tech) would like people to believe (probably the reason why frontier labs are going the FDE/consulting path). So it's unlikely that the impact on productivity is enough to produce…

It's a combination of Covid over hiring, CapEx for AI hardware, AND you don't need as many software developers anymore per product.

Re: Tech Workers Face Evaporating Financial Security as AI Transforms Industry

#5

Big company layoffs are probably more aligned with offshoring than AI, but they'll never admit it. Zuckerbergs 8 billion dollar VR metaverse flop has something to do with this maybe? Last time I checked AI isn't killing jobs if the other news is to be believed.

Zuck has spent more than 8 billion on the metaverse

Re: Tech Workers Face Evaporating Financial Security as AI Transforms Industry

#6

Big company layoffs are probably more aligned with offshoring than AI, but they'll never admit it. Zuckerbergs 8 billion dollar VR metaverse flop has something to do with this maybe? Last time I checked AI isn't killing jobs if the other news is to be believed.

It certainly is killing jobs in agency work, plenty of stuff that used to be done by content teams like translations or image assets, now are 100% AI generated.

Also delivery teams have been decreased, as now there is more that can be done with less folks.

Which started with move to cloud, focus on SaaS ready made products instead of custom development, serverless instead of microservices, low code/no code tooling, and now AI agents for SaaS product integrations.

This is the usual meme only happens when it comes to me kind of thing.

Re: Tech Workers Face Evaporating Financial Security as AI Transforms Industry

#7
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP here, and I agree it's probably not AI directly and more of dealing with the post Covid overhiring, and CAPEX for AI investments. Enterprise adoption is definitely not happening as fast as the AI proponents (startups, frontier labs, big tech) would like people to believe (probably the reason why frontier labs are going the FDE/consulting path). So it's unlikely that the impact on productivity is enough to produce…

It's a combination of Covid over hiring, CapEx for AI hardware, AND you don't need as many software developers anymore per product.

I doubt very much that COVID over-hiring has any relevance today.

COVID is now ancient history and there have already been several years of big layoffs when every time I hear the attempt of explaining them through COVID over-hiring.

That may have been right a couple of years ago, but since then every company that had over-hired must have already disposed of the surplus.

Re: Tech Workers Face Evaporating Financial Security as AI Transforms Industry

#8
"Tech workers"?

"a salary of more than $500,000 in her most recent position, as a mid-tier executive at Meta"

I'm sorry, but if you're making over half a million in TC a year, you can have an emergency fund set aside as an overpaid executive.

How many actual tech workers (the ones making under $100k, lol) are facing even harder financial security than the first-world-problems of some Facebook exec who could afford two nannies?

Re: Tech Workers Face Evaporating Financial Security as AI Transforms Industry

#9
post #5

Big company layoffs are probably more aligned with offshoring than AI, but they'll never admit it. Zuckerbergs 8 billion dollar VR metaverse flop has something to do with this maybe? Last time I checked AI isn't killing jobs if the other news is to be believed.

Zuck has spent more than 8 billion on the metaverse

By literal order of magnitude

Re: Tech Workers Face Evaporating Financial Security as AI Transforms Industry

#10
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a combination of Covid over hiring, CapEx for AI hardware, AND you don't need as many software developers anymore per product.

I doubt very much that COVID over-hiring has any relevance today. COVID is now ancient history and there have already been several years of big layoffs when every time I hear the attempt of explaining them through COVID over-hiring. That may have been right a couple of years ago, but since then every company that had over-hired must have already disposed of the surplus.

The mad rush and overhiring didn't stop immediately after Covid. I know of cases where experienced software engineers were getting picked up by big tech with huge increments as late as end of 2023.

My impression is that the current trend for layoffs only really began around early 2025. For reference, the layoffs during the dotcom bubble I was told took around 2 years to plateau

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