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What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality

siepr.stanford.edu

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Re: What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality

#11

Post by 01100011 »

simonw wrote: post #2

A challenge with this kind of study is that coding agents (Claude Code, OpenAI Codex) only started working really well in late November, which for most people meant early January due to the December break. General agents (OpenClaw, Anthropic Copilot, ChatGPT "Work") started working even later than that. This category of software may have a much more meaningful impact on work than the mostly-chat systems we were using…

This. Also I'm finding out that, after being blown away by agent mode lately, non-agent mode still kind of sucks across frontier models. Using GPT and Gemini in non-agent mode is asking for inaccurate information confidently presented as the truth. Turning on agent mode fixed a lot of that for me.

Re: What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality

#12

Post by caminante »

fathermarz wrote: post #4

Recently poked around the job market to see what I qualify for in this day and age. Working as a solo builder in my org I would say that I have done enough in the last 18 months to consider myself “with it”. What I found was pretty brutal. Companies asking for 4 years of agentic AI experience… pardon? Then it hit me. Oh they are all making shit up now and have no bar that anyone can hit because they are believing in…

Use it in your favor.

You just have to get past the recruiter/talent acquisition where everyone else is getting auto-rejected. You should be doing that anyway.

Re: What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality

#13

Post by nicce »

bloaf wrote: post #7

Organizational inertia is a real thing. There are still fortune 500 companies with internal bans on AI. A lot of the answer to "how much impact has AI had" comes down to "how much have we even attempted?" In my workplace, we're going to decline to renew some software subscriptions because a non-programmer vibe-coded their replacement in a week. The impacts are here, they're just not evenly distributed yet.

> In my workplace, we're going to decline to renew some software subscriptions because a non-programmer vibe-coded their replacement in a week. The impacts are here, they're just not evenly distributed yet.

Interesting to see the impact in the long term when battle tested software gets replaced with vibecoded variants by non-programmers. Does it increase data breaches or quality actually goes up?

Re: What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality

#14

Post by JSR_FDED »

By now I feel I can write these articles:

- benefits of AI murky to slightly positive

- hiring impact limited except for junior level

The problem is that these two statements each have massive implications, so instead of treating these findings as point in time snapshots they are the whole ballgame and should be explored in depth.

Re: What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality

#15

Post by bluecheese452 »

usef- wrote: post #10
01100011 wrote: post #8

I don't feel like reading an article that will probably be out of date in 6 months, but from what I've seen, if agents keep improving at this rate, 80% of SWEs are going to be looking for new careers in 5 years.

Or the amount of software increases tremendously

No one will use it.

Re: What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality

#16

Post by nicce »

usef- wrote: post #10
01100011 wrote: post #8

I don't feel like reading an article that will probably be out of date in 6 months, but from what I've seen, if agents keep improving at this rate, 80% of SWEs are going to be looking for new careers in 5 years.

Or the amount of software increases tremendously

Seems like all companies think that their products are good enough and can’t offer more, as they always want to remove people instead of offering better and bigger products.

Re: What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality

#17

Post by majormajor »

simonw wrote: post #2

A challenge with this kind of study is that coding agents (Claude Code, OpenAI Codex) only started working really well in late November, which for most people meant early January due to the December break. General agents (OpenClaw, Anthropic Copilot, ChatGPT "Work") started working even later than that. This category of software may have a much more meaningful impact on work than the mostly-chat systems we were using…

Anecdotally I'm seeing a lot more recruiter activity/interest now than this time last year.

But it seems more correlated with hype-cycle-stage than anything else. Right now a lot of founders seem to be convincing a lot of VCs that they can make $LOTS by replacing/changing $BIG_INDUSTRY/$BIG_PRODUCT with an agent-first blah blah replacement, and then using that money to hire more people to manage/execute/coordinate the coding agents...

Last year, by comparison, there seemed to be a mood of "software will stay the same but will require less people" while right now there's a lot of hype around "we can build different types of software or build it in different ways" and those early-stage things are in growth-mode. That guarantees nothing about how many people they'd need in the future, or their success at all, ofc.

The news that I'm getting from contacts in non-startup-land is a bit different - still layoff threats. Still pressure to use AI tools more. Mixed confidence on whether or not longer-running "agent" modes are that much more effective-without-breaking-things in legacy code if not used with care.

Re: What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality

#18

Post by georgemcbay »

fathermarz wrote: post #4

Recently poked around the job market to see what I qualify for in this day and age. Working as a solo builder in my org I would say that I have done enough in the last 18 months to consider myself “with it”. What I found was pretty brutal. Companies asking for 4 years of agentic AI experience… pardon? Then it hit me. Oh they are all making shit up now and have no bar that anyone can hit because they are believing in…

> Companies asking for 4 years of agentic AI experience… pardon?

Not that I am trying to excuse it, but this is not a new thing, nor specific to AI.

Job listings that ask for X years of experience where X years is sometimes literally longer than the technology has even existed has been a staple complaint of developers over my entire career, and I'm old af.

Re: What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality

#20

Post by ValentineC »

usef- wrote: post #10
01100011 wrote: post #8

I don't feel like reading an article that will probably be out of date in 6 months, but from what I've seen, if agents keep improving at this rate, 80% of SWEs are going to be looking for new careers in 5 years.

Or the amount of software increases tremendously

I'm surprised the layoffs worldwide hasn't produced more entrepreneurs building their own software product.
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