Partly this is because the big companies are diverting vast amounts of money towards building data centers, instead of hiring new grads. I expect young people who learn AI skills will be fine, once the data center spending binge is over.
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AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds
21–30 of 188 posts
Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds
#22The article assumes that jobs that can be automated are vulnerable. But in the postmortem of the AI driven layoffs so far, it's more that expectations about AI and productivity are driving the job cuts. In other words shareholders and senior management are being shown the appearance of expectations about AI being met, whether or not it's working. Entry-level jobs are an obvious place to look things that can be cut to…
> Entry-level jobs are an obvious place to look things that can be cut to create an AI budget. Kitchen potwasher, day labourer, apprentice welder etc none of these entry level jobs are affected by an LLM. But nobody on HN works in those industries.... connection maybe?
It's not what the article or study are about. Theyre about entry level white collar jobs.
Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds
#23The article assumes that jobs that can be automated are vulnerable. But in the postmortem of the AI driven layoffs so far, it's more that expectations about AI and productivity are driving the job cuts. In other words shareholders and senior management are being shown the appearance of expectations about AI being met, whether or not it's working. Entry-level jobs are an obvious place to look things that can be cut to…
> Entry-level jobs are an obvious place to look things that can be cut to create an AI budget. Kitchen potwasher, day labourer, apprentice welder etc none of these entry level jobs are affected by an LLM. But nobody on HN works in those industries.... connection maybe?
I think "junior software engineer" is more like the entry level job that people on HN care about
Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds
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Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds
#25this is a super non-popular take on HN. but the entry-level job market has always been tough. with AI, outside the big tech world, it is hard to justify hiring entry level engineers as the time to train them ( 1 year+ ) to be productive enough is such a drag on the seniors, when the agents deliver things more care and more edge cases.
From personal experience, back in the 2010s it was particularly harsh for those with a non-standard background. What few "opportunities" that existed were a handful of unpaid or grossly underpaid internships which were closed off to those who weren't students or recent graduates. Everybody wanted employees who were ready to start pumping out code with little or no training.
That's not to diminish how much more difficult it's become since then but breaking into the industry has never been easy.
Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds
#26To the surprise of who, exactly? Sometimes it feels like HN has never used an AI model past ChatGPT in 2022. Modern AI is so capable nowadays that it _does_ obviate most of the work you'd normally give an entry level person.
Im mostly speaking about software engineering, but the "juniors" I've seen be hired now are basically the equivalent of mid (maybe even low senior) levels of yesteryear. AI is most certainly raising the bar.
Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds
#27The implosion in junior quality exacerbates this.
The cohort that started during COVID were first knee-capped by remote classes and exams, and then they lobotomized themselves with ChatGPT.
Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds
#28So we have a crunch of expiring/retiring workers on the senior end and a cutoff of the flow of new talent from the junior end. They’d better pray that we see automation gains above and beyond what we’ve seen so far or else we’ll be paying the price in a single generation.
My really big worry is that the people making these choices just do not care about a single thing beyond this single generation
Not a psychologist but my take on most of the wealthy people in the world is they are essentially narcissistic hedonists. They only care about growing wealth as a means to the end of maximizing the amount of fun they can have and to keep their egos happy that they have the most.
They don't seem to care about the future at all
Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds
#29this is a super non-popular take on HN. but the entry-level job market has always been tough. with AI, outside the big tech world, it is hard to justify hiring entry level engineers as the time to train them ( 1 year+ ) to be productive enough is such a drag on the seniors, when the agents deliver things more care and more edge cases.
I've been telling people the same thing. The tech industry has been cargo-culting "scaling the organization" where people are rewarded for org size. That zeitgeist has ended, and we've not even overcorrected much the other way.
Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds
#30Partly this is because the big companies are diverting vast amounts of money towards building data centers, instead of hiring new grads. I expect young people who learn AI skills will be fine, once the data center spending binge is over.
What does "learning AI skills" even mean? You're typing into a prompt box. You are not applying any skill, the model is. At best, the skill you need is discernment about _what_ to type in this magical box. But if that gets cheaper and the output of your company doesn't necessarily scale horizontally that well. Why would I need as many people as before?