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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

#351

Post by satvikpendem »

ballsac wrote: post #27
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…

> A challenge with this kind of study is that coding agents (Claude Code, OpenAI Codex) only started working really well in 2026? 5? 4? 3? Heard this one way too many times.

Step changes in functions exist.

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

#352

Post by simonw »

wolvesechoes wrote: post #346
simonw wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> How about DHH, Max, Nolan, Steve, Mitchell Oh yes, dev celebs that rely on constant validation through social media. Very reliable source of data.

OK, now do ACS_Solver, suzzer99, IshKebab, smrtinsert, and qarl2.

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

#353

Post by saghm »

bojan wrote: post #291
bicx wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I’m a senior engineer at a 3-engineer startup, and there isn’t “junior-level” or “senior-level” work here. It’s all just work. Claude allows me to tear through the kind of gruntwork I’ve been doing ad nauseam for the last 15 years. If my tasks were things like squeezing 3% more efficiency out of an algorithm, that might be different. Although, even then, my PM (!) used Claude to boost the efficiency of one of ou…

> Although, even then, my PM (!) used Claude to boost the efficiency of one of our more complex Postgres queries by up to 5x Would you be kind to describe what test set-up do you have that a PM felt safe enough to deploy the changed query without the fear they'll break something?

Who said they deployed it themselves? I would expect that they made a PR (probably with some benchmarks), and that there are tests ensuring that the results are the same independent of timing, so then the author of the comment could verify whether it still worked and reproduce the benchmark results and then chose where to approve and merge based on that.

The same techniques that were used to try to prevent regressions before we had LLMs still work for LLM-generated code, provided that you actually use them. If you have an insufficient test suite and a lax policy around who reviews code before merging, you're going to have a bad time even if you only have your seniors writing the code by hand.

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

#354

Post by pjmlp »

nozzlegear wrote: post #334
GeoAtreides wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Long story short, I think narrative of job loss is way overblown. Long story short, I ate dinner so I think the narrative of people over the world being hungry is way overblown.

How many studies do we need showing that AI isn't causing massive job loss before you'll believe it? This isn't the first one showing these results.

I won't believe in it, because I have seen it happen in agency work.

What used to be contracts for translations or asset creations for CMS projects, is now handled by the AI tooling of CMS products.

The adoption of SaaS, iPaaS and serverless, meant delivery projects could be done with smaller teams.

Now with iPaaS adoption of agentic workflows, and AI tooling to transform those serverless actions into MCP tools, the team sizes have been further reduced.

Most agencies aren't winning enough projects to justify those that land on bench.

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

#355

Post by pjmlp »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #37
ballsac wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A challenge with this kind of study is that coding agents (Claude Code, OpenAI Codex) only started working really well in 2026? 5? 4? 3? Heard this one way too many times.

Yep, the goalposts just keep shifting. In reality: they still don't work well, unless you're content with producing low quality work.

Which means good enough for all those companies that outsource their IT, especially for offshoring.

What they care about isn't software delivery, is physical goods or services that aren't related to software, for them software is a cost center.

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

#356

Post by nobodywillobsrv »

I've noticed while not really looking but taking some chats that turn into interviews is that the job market seems covered with spam, semi scams, weird processes and teams and people that are living in the dark ages still in terms of AI and how they do interviews.

Never have I had such poor matching and triage as I have over the last 6 months.

It's truly bizarre. I get the feeling that some of the humans left in companies are gatekeeping on some kind of guess my password game.

A common pattern is a company will reach out and see if you want to chat and then suddenly act as if you are interested and give you a weird interview before you even get a sense of it's a good match.

It feels like this might be that less competent teams are relying on less competent recruiters or AI recruiting? Just a guess. Also finding that the AI recruiters are sounding nice but doing very little work in the end.

H2H still largely unsolved. DM if anyone is also interested in h2h reco in age of ai

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

#357

Post by qsera »

satvikpendem wrote: post #350
qsera wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the mistakes are real but increasingly don't matter... I think it would start to matter once again. People will get fed up of AI posters and art. I think they already are...and once some threshold is crossed, the business won't dare to use AI generated assets/designs. Turns out humans are much better at recognizing patterns in stuff that is generated ONLY using patterns from human generated content.

It's the exact opposite. Humans will hedonically adapt to anything. If they see enough AI posters pretty soon they will start to not care, at least the majority, while some minority will disagree. We've seen this pattern many times, from data privacy and people still using social media, to using non free software.

>If they see enough AI posters pretty soon they will start to not care..

Wrong analogy. A marketing item wants you to look at it. It takes advantage of an involuntary impulse. A repetitive boring AI artwork will not trigger the impulse to look it. So it is not about "caring"....

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

#358

Post by jarek-foksa »

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…

> General agents (OpenClaw, ...) started working even later than that.

There is nothing special about the OpenClaw thing other than the enormous astroturfing campaign that benefited various "crypto" influencers and other scammers. Anyone who endorses it is either manipulated or trying to manipulate you.

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

#359

Post by simianwords »

wolvesechoes wrote: post #346
simonw wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> How about DHH, Max, Nolan, Steve, Mitchell Oh yes, dev celebs that rely on constant validation through social media. Very reliable source of data.

What about Uncle Bob of clean code? This is a bit embarrassing for you.

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

#360

Post by simianwords »

wolvesechoes wrote: post #345
Kiro wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can see these tropes all over social media near constantly. You should stop using social media as your yardstick.

> You should stop using social media as your yardstick. Yes, don't believe people posting on HN.

What about terry tao?
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