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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

#11

Post by NewCzech »

kotaKat wrote: post #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 t…

One of the things that surprised me in Silicon Valley is that my colleagues who were making $500K-$1M a year levered up their lives and saved surprisingly little. Multiple houses, $200K cars, nannies, very expensive vacations, you name it.

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

#12

Post by blitzar »

NewCzech wrote: post #11
kotaKat wrote: post #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 t…

One of the things that surprised me in Silicon Valley is that my colleagues who were making $500K-$1M a year levered up their lives and saved surprisingly little. Multiple houses, $200K cars, nannies, very expensive vacations, you name it.

People are yet to realise that the "tech bro" genome isn't different from the "finance bro" genome.

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

#13

Post by branon »

kotaKat wrote: post #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 t…

My thoughts were along this line too. Being laid off is unfortunate, but being laid off after making $500k/yr for a mid-level managerial position is a karmic self-correction.

The opening sentence of the article even tacitly admits this - "Susan Smith considered herself a winner in the American economic lottery" - the operative word here is "lottery" and I am not altogether surprised the type of person to coast on Facebook money for decades found themselves hard up after it got cut off.

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

#14

Post by pjc50 »

pir8life4me wrote: post #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.

Offshoring is passé. If you want to give out a set of written instructions, get back something which literally meets the spec but is otherwise inadequate, and babysit overseeing trying to get the results you actually wanted, you can feed it to an LLM for a lot less a lot quicker.

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

#15

Post by pir8life4me »

pjmlp wrote: post #6
pir8life4me wrote: post #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.

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, a…

The lady in the article was a $500k/yr exec, not an illustrator.

Neither was her husband iirc.

Layoffs are usually across teams not "illustrators and translators".

AI isn't killing jobs.

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

#16

Post by pir8life4me »

aurareturn wrote: post #4
nlpnerd wrote: 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.

So then why aren't bad decision making execs being let go?

If they can't forecast demand or headcount they should be replaced by confident sounding AI.

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

#17

Post by lux-lux-lux »

aurareturn wrote: post #4
nlpnerd wrote: 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.

We’re going to be well into the Diamond Age before people stop attributing layoffs to ‘Covid overhiring.’

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

#18

Post by aurareturn »

lux-lux-lux wrote: post #17
aurareturn wrote: post #4

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.

We’re going to be well into the Diamond Age before people stop attributing layoffs to ‘Covid overhiring.’

Big tech employee counts are still nearly 2x higher now than 2019.

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

#20

Post by 0xmattf »

kotaKat wrote: post #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 t…

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

Seriously. It boggles my mind how people can earn this much money, yet face difficulties when they lose their job. I guess they're people who didn't grow up poor and/or are too hungry for material things.

There's very little I want or need in this world; if I were making $500k, I'd be able to somewhat retire within 2-3 years.

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