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

The AI jobs apocalypse probably isn't coming anytime soon

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 96 posts

Re: The AI jobs apocalypse probably isn't coming anytime soon

#51

Post by kakacik »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #13

Then what is causing hiring to be so low, or the layoffs? Just a soft job market in general? The economy is actually tanking, not just "AI" jobs. Did hiring managers just pump the brakes "just in case this AI thing is real". So we should see some big spike in hiring now that we know AI isn't going to do everything? Or, the actual real numbers of hiring, is for real an indicator that AI is already taking jobs, or redu…

It has been said here ad nausea - overhiring during covids, everybody was cargo culting amazon but there was only 1 amazon. Some folks were fired right when that whole charade with massive restrictions ended overnight, some were left around because times were good and money cheap. Thats over now so next waves.

In many corporate places including mine, software dev team's work is maybe 20% coding, and rest is simply getting things delivered to production and maintaning existing stuff. Nothing keeps working for long if left unattended. And there always multiple layers of test envs to manage, syncing with rest of the projects, troubleshooting/bugfixing, deliveries.

Llms won't help a nanometer here unless companies restructuralize their IT from ground up, firing entrenched teams/managers doing half-nothing. So ie if our team would went from 5->2, we would have 40% of the velocity, maaaybe 50%. Realistically, probably even less (since env maintenance is constant drag on productivity regardless on team's size)

Re: The AI jobs apocalypse probably isn't coming anytime soon

#52

Post by rawgabbit »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #13

Then what is causing hiring to be so low, or the layoffs? Just a soft job market in general? The economy is actually tanking, not just "AI" jobs. Did hiring managers just pump the brakes "just in case this AI thing is real". So we should see some big spike in hiring now that we know AI isn't going to do everything? Or, the actual real numbers of hiring, is for real an indicator that AI is already taking jobs, or redu…

CEOs say we are in a low fire, low hire economy. They view AI as important but not transformative.

https://www.conference-board.org/topics/CEO-Confidence/

Re: The AI jobs apocalypse probably isn't coming anytime soon

#53

Post by samrus »

xnx wrote: post #26
datakan wrote: post #7

Judging by the IT maturity of most of the companies I have worked with in the last 30 years, my guess is we're about 10-15 years from any serious changes, solely because adopting AI will require a few things. Most are running razor thin margins and wont be able to afford any of this, others have so much technical debt piled up that even if they could afford it they couldn't do anything without identifying ancient sys…

AI is different than previous technologies in that a sufficiently advanced AI can "adopt" itself. That is, it can analyze the situation of a company (asking questions when necessary), describe the benefits, and deploy itself. This sounds like science fiction, but is very plausible in 3 years of trends hold.

The whole thing is that the trend wont hold steady. Its a n s curve and will taper off. The onky question is if the asympote is tapers to is above a certain threshold or not. Like the threshold needed to achieve what your talking about.

I dont know about the capability your talking about, but anyone who thinks these things are guaranteed, or a matter of time, is in for a rude awakening over the next few years

Re: The AI jobs apocalypse probably isn't coming anytime soon

#54

Post by great_psy »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #13

Then what is causing hiring to be so low, or the layoffs? Just a soft job market in general? The economy is actually tanking, not just "AI" jobs. Did hiring managers just pump the brakes "just in case this AI thing is real". So we should see some big spike in hiring now that we know AI isn't going to do everything? Or, the actual real numbers of hiring, is for real an indicator that AI is already taking jobs, or redu…

I think to some extent is that the right candidates and employers are not meeting.

Working at a ~1k employee company, we have been trying to hire both junior and senior devs. Out of ~10 interviews I conducted for junior, only 2 was able to program a linked list, and even that was with hints. It was not much better for senior(more system design question instead).

I understand that leetcode questions are (and have been) outdated, but linked list for somebody fresh out of school seems reasonable.

And this overlooks all the people using ai to cheat on the interview.

I would expect in this market we would have better candidates. But for us it was a challenge to hire.

And let’s not even get started with all the ai generated resumes and candidates that don’t actually exist, or have the experience they say they do. Really a waste of my time to interview.

The recruitment process is not made for a world where anybody can just copy paste the job req and generate a resume that fits everything.

Re: The AI jobs apocalypse probably isn't coming anytime soon

#55

Post by alephnerd »

Brotkrumen wrote: post #48
consensus1 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sample size of 1 here, but my inbox is absolutely overflowing with recruiters. Sample size of more than 1 - the SWE who were laid off recently from my company are finding new jobs quickly. Certainly the job market is more brutal than it was during the covid mass hiring spree, but it doesn't seem any worse than historical average. My view is anecdotal but I haven't seen any real data on the other side of it either.

More anecdata, but around me, the opportunities for recent grads and self-taughts are less than try were. If I was to bet, it seems that tasks that were given to new hires are now done by senior engineers and a prompt. A collegue claims that the difference between an MBA and a mediocre compsci grad have disappeared due to vibe coding, so the compscis grads feel the job market is tougher because of increased competiti…

> the opportunities for recent grads and self-taughts are less than try were.

It's also becuase the T20 CS/CE/ECE/EECS programs now graduate around 15-20K students a year.

If you don't attend a target you are going to have a hard time landing a job.

If you didn't do CS/CE/EE/ECE/EECS at MIT, CMU, Stanford, Cal, UIUC, GT, UT Austin, Purdue, UW, UCLA, UCSD, Ivies, UChicago, NYU, UNC Chapel Hill, Duke, USC, UMinn, UMich, the Military academies or you weren't a Vet, it's hard to justify hiring. Throw in 1-2 well regarded regional schools in the mix and that becomes your entire hiring pipeline.

Geography also plays a role - early career remote work is over. You will have to start your career in the Bay or NYC, and maybe Austin and Seattle.

Re: The AI jobs apocalypse probably isn't coming anytime soon

#56

Post by therealdrag0 »

650 wrote: post #4

You still need handholding, you can’t just give a few junior devs Claude Opus 5 and expect them to recreate Instagram in a few weeks. Frontend and backend basics sure, but security, scale, etc. need prior knowledge.

I totally agree, but a lot of this debate comes down to the definition of apocalypse a 20% reduction in jobs will affect a huge amount of people who will fill all forums with complaints of job getting difficulty without being an apocalypse.

Re: The AI jobs apocalypse probably isn't coming anytime soon

#57

Post by pdimitar »

consensus1 wrote: post #27
Gualdrapo wrote: post #12

All I know is that trying to get a job now is being way more brutal than before. The closest thing I got this month was a scam email from an alleged "independent global senior recruiter" "currently supporting a confidential search for a company developing AI-powered digital products". The made-with-ai smell was all over the place, the company in mention allegedly was adobe, and am pretty sure they got my email from t…

Sample size of 1 here, but my inbox is absolutely overflowing with recruiters. Sample size of more than 1 - the SWE who were laid off recently from my company are finding new jobs quickly. Certainly the job market is more brutal than it was during the covid mass hiring spree, but it doesn't seem any worse than historical average. My view is anecdotal but I haven't seen any real data on the other side of it either.

Which business areas, programming languages / frameworks, which geo areas?

Re: The AI jobs apocalypse probably isn't coming anytime soon

#58

Post by therealdrag0 »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #13

Then what is causing hiring to be so low, or the layoffs? Just a soft job market in general? The economy is actually tanking, not just "AI" jobs. Did hiring managers just pump the brakes "just in case this AI thing is real". So we should see some big spike in hiring now that we know AI isn't going to do everything? Or, the actual real numbers of hiring, is for real an indicator that AI is already taking jobs, or redu…

AI could be good enough to dampen hiring without being good enough to cause an apocalypse. for all we know it’s plateauing at its ability to write code to match predefined specs (simplification), which is not sufficient to replace most jobs entirely.

Re: The AI jobs apocalypse probably isn't coming anytime soon

#59

Post by stephenitis »

bonoboTP wrote: post #35
datakan wrote: post #7

Judging by the IT maturity of most of the companies I have worked with in the last 30 years, my guess is we're about 10-15 years from any serious changes, solely because adopting AI will require a few things. Most are running razor thin margins and wont be able to afford any of this, others have so much technical debt piled up that even if they could afford it they couldn't do anything without identifying ancient sys…

> It's just a nonissue for most people. I'm not sure how relevant the sentiment of average people are regarding the future. People are generally not well tuned in to any such things. Things just happen to most of us and we spend our lives thinking about gossip and life stuff, family, friends, chores etc., not musing about the future which we have little impact on. Think about people's views on the coronavirus in Febr…

I agree with the sentiment entirely. I moved from the Bay Area to the DC Maryland Virginia area. the viewpoints out here have been strangely stuck on opinion pieces written during the gpt-3 era. Same goes for electric vehicles.

It’s slowly changing for some of the holdouts out here given how immediately useful certain personal and business use cases can be.

Re: The AI jobs apocalypse probably isn't coming anytime soon

#60

Post by FrustratedMonky »

great_psy wrote: post #54
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #13

Then what is causing hiring to be so low, or the layoffs? Just a soft job market in general? The economy is actually tanking, not just "AI" jobs. Did hiring managers just pump the brakes "just in case this AI thing is real". So we should see some big spike in hiring now that we know AI isn't going to do everything? Or, the actual real numbers of hiring, is for real an indicator that AI is already taking jobs, or redu…

I think to some extent is that the right candidates and employers are not meeting. Working at a ~1k employee company, we have been trying to hire both junior and senior devs. Out of ~10 interviews I conducted for junior, only 2 was able to program a linked list, and even that was with hints. It was not much better for senior(more system design question instead). I understand that leetcode questions are (and have been…

checking in with my kids that just graduated.

linked lists aren't really emphasized anymore. languages have built in lists now. they had heard of them, knew what they were, but would probably struggle to do one from scratch.

of course i'm old school and kind of think that is basic, but colleges now aren't teaching it much anymore.

Post reply on HN