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AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds

arstechnica.com

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Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds

#71

Post by FpUser »

pianopatrick wrote: post #37
jdw64 wrote: post #3

I wish there were studies on when this situation will normalize. Will the lost jobs ever come back? Or not?

I would plan based on the lost jobs not coming back. I would also plan that the trend of AI getting better and taking more jobs will continue. Plan for the worst, hope for the best. A lot of people may have to transition to careers that people do not want to have AI do, like nursing. The earlier you start such a transition the easier it is because you still have resources to make moves.

>"A lot of people may have to transition to careers that people do not want to have AI do, like nursing."

Becoming bum or going off the grid would be way more attractive to me than working my ass of in stressful conditions for meager pay so some motherfuckers can buy yet another yacht

Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds

#72

Post by RivieraKid »

augment_me wrote: post #11
jdw64 wrote: post #3

I wish there were studies on when this situation will normalize. Will the lost jobs ever come back? Or not?

You have market theory saying that at some point, you will not have enough seniors because no juniors were trained. So seniors will become more and more expensive due to lack of supply. At some point, it will be cheaper to take the risk and train the junior entry person again, and things will stabilize out. The sad part is that there will be a generation of 10 years or so of lost juniors while seniors are abundant.

At that point AI will be significantly more advanced than today.

Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds

#73

Post by [deleted] »

randycupertino wrote: post #40
dver wrote: post #32

It's brutal, my son with a CS degree hasn't been able to get to single live interview ina year. A couple of screens has been it. I've reached out to my network, and the reply is always we're not hiring any juniors.

Right now my company seems to be only hiring people they already know or have worked with before. Every single hire in the last 4 months I've seen get on-boarded has been back-channeled. I've had 4 direct referrals and none of them have gotten in but all made it to the final round just to be surpassed by someone the hiring manager already knew and liked from their previous teams. Even with a strong referral it's hard…

[deleted]

Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds

#74

Post by stefan_ »

georgeburdell wrote: post #39
dver wrote: post #32

It's brutal, my son with a CS degree hasn't been able to get to single live interview ina year. A couple of screens has been it. I've reached out to my network, and the reply is always we're not hiring any juniors.

I don’t understand this logic. If I’m being honest, the most productive people with AI on my team are the two youngest. They don’t have product wisdom, yes, but the gap is so noticeable that I pushed my manager to forego the full-time work experience requirement that we have always had so that new hires don’t even know the old way of working and can just reframe the field in terms of AI. AI is the biggest threat in o…

The juniors I have seen don't even try to understand anymore what they are building. They don't understand the product, they don't understand the technology. So everything AI is building for them is nonsense. "Reviewing" it is impossible. Some of them think they are being extra clever having Claude process review comments for them. Even if you hire one, this way they are out the door within the month.

Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds

#76

Post by lovich »

suriyaG wrote: post #8

this 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.

The United States corporate culture has reached a failure mode of game theory. The average corporation is allergic to spending any money on training and has pushed all of the costs onto labor.

They hope that some other moron will take up the costs and then they can poach the trained employee for cheap, while any corporation that does actually train feels like they should get the employee for cheap afterwards instead of compensating the employee at market rate.

Simultaneously the average corporation refuses to do something like have a contract with the employee for X years of labor at a set rate in the exchange for the training because they are also allergic to not being able to change their minds and lay off half their staff the next year.

This would be a place for the government to come in and force everyone to pick the good square on the prisoner’s dilemma, but yet again, our corporate culture is allergic to regulation or cooperation.

You can still get through a winter or two by eating your seed corn so I guess we’ll just continue barreling down this path.

Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds

#77

Post by augment_me »

RivieraKid wrote: post #72
augment_me wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have market theory saying that at some point, you will not have enough seniors because no juniors were trained. So seniors will become more and more expensive due to lack of supply. At some point, it will be cheaper to take the risk and train the junior entry person again, and things will stabilize out. The sad part is that there will be a generation of 10 years or so of lost juniors while seniors are abundant.

At that point AI will be significantly more advanced than today.

Sure but we can't work on hypotheticals. Otherwise we can also say that information work is 90% automated, society has 50% unemployment of white-collar workers and capitalism is over because there is no purchasing power. There is enough incentives from people in power to keep status quo(bread and circuses) that if we are trying to answer the question using another framework than the current one we are just speculating

Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds

#78

Post by throwayay4929 »

1. The papers author's never claim causality. 2. There are other large macro forces at play, like firm consolidation, proliferation of NDAs, interest rates*, lack of growth (without Nvidia, the US economy would basically be in a recession?) and probably many more that are putting the job market into a low hire/low fire state.

Consider how we're actually not seeing much layoffs (some, but not much). So what were seeing in tech specifically is more like hiring freeze, so people with experience or in jobs aren't feeling much of the pressure, but new grads are hitting a wall.

Im posting this to resist the "ai is taking away people's jobs" narrative. It's definitely a factor but it's probably one of many and it's sloppy thinking to point fingers at ai and not other probably bigger factors.

* To their credit, the papers author's try to factor for zirp.

Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds

#80

Post by 8cvor6j844qw_d6 »

dver wrote: post #52
y-curious wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We hired one junior out of maybe 10 hires. I don’t really know where to slot them in currently, as they lack the background knowledge of what is good or bad from AI. It’s a shame because years ago, I would have hired them and pointed them at a million small projects. Best of luck to your son. I wish I had advice

Thanks, it's been tough on him. I'm glad we're able to support him through this, others are not as fortunate. He's looking into pivots now and taking flight lessons.

Just curious if there's really no offer at all or offers with lowballs?

I know a 2 of senior devs that got laid off from different times and one is approaching nearly a year of unemployment with no offers and another approaching half a year with few offers but elected to continue looking due the offered salary not matching their expectations.

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