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What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality

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

#321

Post by rileymat2 »

torginus wrote: post #314
DanielHB wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If junior devs are productively producing software that then goes unused then how productive were they really Most ways of measuring productivity across an economy (in macro sense) takes into account only the transfer of capital. Meaning someone paying for something. So in this case it will be measurably zeo in most macro-economics studies.

Wonder if that means if I knock out an app using a Claude Code sub in an afternoon, that would've taken me a week previously, and the result is better than what I could've done, does that mean that gross productivity went down? - I didn't make money, since I got paid for my time - Anthropic didn't make money, since the amount I paid them for AI is tiny This sounds wrong to me.

Presumably, someone bought the app.

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

#322

Post by iLoveOncall »

simonw wrote: post #253
iLoveOncall wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Paul Ford wrote a great piece about this in the NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/18/opinion/ai-software.html?... > November was, for me and many others in tech, a great surprise. Before, A.I. coding tools were often useful, but halting and clumsy. Now, the bot can run for a full hour and make whole, designed websites and apps that may be flawed, but credible. I spent an entire session of therapy talking abou…

Okay so you have no names of experienced developers saying that coding agents are now useful when they weren't before. The only two you have actually saying that are... not working as software engineers.

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

#323

Post by AndrewKemendo »

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…

I’ve been playing with LLMs since 2021 that’s what, 5 years now? I was lucky cause I knew David Holz and he gave me early access, but that’s what companies want to hire, people who get early access to frontier stuff.

People forget that prompt engineering all started with midjourney and diffusion vision tools way back.

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

#324

Post by simonw »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #322
simonw wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paul Ford wrote a great piece about this in the NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/18/opinion/ai-software.html?... > November was, for me and many others in tech, a great surprise. Before, A.I. coding tools were often useful, but halting and clumsy. Now, the bot can run for a full hour and make whole, designed websites and apps that may be flawed, but credible. I spent an entire session of therapy talking abou…

Okay so you have no names of experienced developers saying that coding agents are now useful when they weren't before. The only two you have actually saying that are... not working as software engineers.

I don't think you are arguing in good faith here.

Max Woolf and DHH are clearly experienced developers who continue to write code for money.

Linus too - 11 commits to the kernel today! https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commits?author=torvalds

Plus this very thread is full of experienced developers who are saying that "coding agents are now useful when they weren't before":

- ACS_Solver: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49052570#49057367

- suzzer99: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49052570#49060743

- IshKebab: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49052570#49056074

- smrtinsert: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49052570#49055294

- qarl2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49052570#49053318

A few bonuses:

Mitchell Hashimoto: https://mitchellh.com/writing/my-ai-adoption-journey

> While I was still a heavy AI skeptic [... through to ...] At this point I was firmly in the "no way I can go back" territory.

Steve Klabnik: https://steveklabnik.com/writing/getting-started-with-claude...

> 2025 was an interesting year in many ways. One way in which it was interesting for me is that I went from an AI hater to a pretty big user.

Nolan Lawson: https://nolanlawson.com/2026/01/24/ai-tribalism/

> 2025 was a weird year for me. If you had asked me exactly a year ago, I would have said I thought LLMs were amusing toys but inappropriate for real software development. [...] Today, I would say that about 90% of my code is authored by Claude Code.

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

#325

Post by iLoveOncall »

simonw wrote: post #324
iLoveOncall wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay so you have no names of experienced developers saying that coding agents are now useful when they weren't before. The only two you have actually saying that are... not working as software engineers.

I don't think you are arguing in good faith here. Max Woolf and DHH are clearly experienced developers who continue to write code for money. Linus too - 11 commits to the kernel today! https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commits?author=torvalds Plus this very thread is full of experienced developers who are saying that "coding agents are now useful when they weren't before": - ACS_Solver: https://news.ycombinator.com/i…

> I don't think you are arguing in good faith here.

Funny coming from a guy using Linus saying "There's no doubt AI is useful today" and interpreting that as "Yeah last year AI coding agents were garbage but now they're really useful".

There's no denying AI is useful. I use AI, my project at work is all about using LLMs. They're even useful for coding, when I don't give a fuck about the quality of the output (which is almost never in a work scenario).

But to claim that there has been some magical shift late last year is simply laughable. Anyone working as a software engineer and claims that is either lying to themselves or simply bad.

Oh and don't try with the "you're not prompting it right".

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

#326

Post by noosphr »

StilesCrisis wrote: post #160
noosphr wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again I've heard this since 2022 when gpt3.5 came out. This is like microprocessors in the 80s. Sure they double in capability every 18 months but the start is so pathetic it will be 30 years before they are good enough for everyday tasks.

CPUs in the 90s were amazing! They were over-specced for "everyday tasks." Our problem is that we overbuilt CPUs too much, so software is now written with ten unnecessary layers of abstraction because there's no real reason to simplify.

3gb of ram aren't enough everyday tasks at any sane resolution. That we still don't have 1200 ppi desktop monitors is as stupid as using black and white screens in 2000.

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

#327

Post by janussunaj »

simonw wrote: post #186
janussunaj wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because I no longer succumb to the temptation to cut corners due to lack of time No offense, but that says much more about the way you approach programming than about the quality of LLM outputs. In my experience, LLMs are the ultimate corner-cutting tool. With LLMs, I now succumb to the temptation to cut corners, build something I haven't properly researched and don't fully understand, prioritize shipping quantity…

Software engineering is about tradeoffs. The single most important tradeoff is always time: this feature would be better if I did X, but doing X would take me Y hours, is it worth the time or should I spend that time on something else? Not having to type in and then iterate on the code manually has a material effect on those time calculations. I absolutely agree that you need to understand the domain and code and too…

I agree, good software engineering is largely about making good trade-offs.

However, I completely disagree with your characterization of LLM coding as saving you "typing in the code and sweating over every line of syntax".

Claude will happily architect complex layers of OOP, multithreading, SIMD (a "personal favorite" of both Claude and ChatGPT).

If you don't immerse yourself in the details, you will never know if you made the correct engineering trade-offs, let alone whether the various "optimizations" and clever solutions by the LLM actually work.

I think you're referring more to product strategy trade-offs than engineering trade-offs here; so yeah, getting something you don't understand out the door is often the fastest path to sales. This is also how we get so much low quality and unnecessary software out there (it was true before LLM coding, just amplified now).

I think a reasonable tradeoff, in theory, would be: use the LLM to help you explore the space of solution, then dive into the details and choose the path that feels right. However, I highly doubt most people do that. It's also easy to let the LLM's first solution influence your understanding of the problem, so that you will never truly explore novel solutions that fall outside of the most likely token sequence prediction.

Oh and LLMs when properly constrained can also do pretty good "auto-complete on steroids", which can definitely save you typing a lot of boilerplate. If that's how you use them, then your characterization is correct.

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

#328

Post by simonw »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #325
simonw wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you are arguing in good faith here. Max Woolf and DHH are clearly experienced developers who continue to write code for money. Linus too - 11 commits to the kernel today! https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commits?author=torvalds Plus this very thread is full of experienced developers who are saying that "coding agents are now useful when they weren't before": - ACS_Solver: https://news.ycombinator.com/i…

> I don't think you are arguing in good faith here. Funny coming from a guy using Linus saying "There's no doubt AI is useful today" and interpreting that as "Yeah last year AI coding agents were garbage but now they're really useful". There's no denying AI is useful. I use AI, my project at work is all about using LLMs. They're even useful for coding, when I don't give a fuck about the quality of the output (which i…

OK, you won't except Linus. How about DHH, Max, Nolan, Steve, Mitchell, and those five HN commenters?

Or to strengthen the case for Linus, here he is on June 16th 2926 saying: https://youtu.be/YKkEe-PxW10?t=1687

> we certainly saw more junk being generated by LLMs than we saw useful code up until the like early this year

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

#329

Post by AbsurdCensor »

underlipton wrote: post #43
AbsurdCensor wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t the first study showing this though. It’s pretty simple, programmers and IT were severely overhired during the pandemic, there are massive job losses now, and it’s easy to blame AI when in reality there are a lot of economic factors and AI isn’t increasing productivity as much as anyone would think. Maybe the future will change that for very specific things, but I think people should be learning and prepar…

>programmers and IT were severely overhired during the pandemic 1) I hesitate to believe that losses were disproportionately technical roles as opposed to administrative. 2) Over-hired by what metric? It's well known that hiring never fully recovered after the GFC; was the recruitment post-pandemic just bringing us to parity with where we had been 20 years earlier? Not to say that I disagree with your following point…

They were hired at a higher rate than anytime since the 90s. In the US they ballooned by almost 50%. So when you take layoffs in consideration, the US is still has 25% more programmers than it did prior to the pandemic. And looking at the hiring rates and who is getting hired in programming, it looks like companies aren’t hiring entry level basically at all at this point, so shows the market is still over saturated. No wonder coding camps and CS majors are not being pushed any longer because it’s not a great market for them.

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

#330

Post by bluefirebrand »

simonw wrote: post #55
bluefirebrand wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much of it is real and how much of it is people just being worn down by the hype to the point they can't fight it anymore Very smart people aren't immune to being worn down over time

I really don't think that's how it works. Smart, experienced developers who thought coding agents were junk for most of 2025 and think they're useful now in 2026 are not saying that because they got "worn down over time".

You're being one of the voices trying to do the wearing down right now in this very thread imo

Of course it doesn't seem that way to you. Preachers view themselves as spreading the good word, they don't see how annoying it is being preached at

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