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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

#131

Post by jghn »

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…

There are effectively 2 schools of thought on this.

One states that more junior people will excel. Younger people tend to be more hip to new tech trends, more natively immersed in changing times. And the contemporary AI tools eradicate any knowledge & wisdom gap that the seniors may hold over them. Thus, they'll be faster.

The other school states that the most important thing right now is the wisdom of experience. That the AI tools have made everything *but* the wisdom pretty much an afterthought. Thus, there's no point in having someone who doesn't have deep wisdom.

Which is right? Probably a little bit of both, depending on one's exact needs.

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

#132

Post by boshalfoshal »

vanuatu wrote: post #54
boshalfoshal wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

- knowing what to prompt - directing the model and knowing when its going off the rails - verification - setting up the right loops, harness, graphs around the models economics still apply to hiring people. if all your competitors are using ai and there's market share to fight over and people still are a productivity positive vs. only ai, hiring will increase as we've seen recently with swes

The only thing here that _maybe_ has a durable long term moat is the first point. Even then, I don't see why stronger models can't also have discernment once more companies close the loop with their AI and their relevant company metrics.

The other 3 you literally just get for free as models improve. The "state of the art" of "prompting" changes literally every week. It was loops, then graphs, now its harnesses (and self automating harnesses)? Why are these not just obviated by better models? These are barely skills, and are imo, just the tech equivalent of tabloids advertising 5 minute exercises or pills to get rid of stubborn belly fat. No amount of prompt engineering or graphs or loops could get your previous version of GPT to perform like Fable, and yet somehow Fable can do all of that and more without any random built in "ai engineering skills."

The labor chart for SWEs will look like a slope up as productivity with AI increases, and then past a certain point where AI is like 99% good enough, employment will fall off a cliff. We are already seeing this with junior hiring, and who is to say that AI will magically only ever be as capable as a junior engineer?

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

#133

Post by eli_gottlieb »

glimshe wrote: post #69
Tade0 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds much like the civil engineering crisis in my region of the world after the 2008 financial crisis. There was barely any new construction going on for a couple of years and once it started anew, there was a gap as while people were retiring, new hires weren't replacing them. I guess we're just going to shrink as a field until the market won't be able to handle it.

Our field started as a niche for geeks. For a long time, CS paid you the average for engineering work - hardly equivalent to six figures today for most with the exception of seniors. It's still like that on most of the world. Many people here lived through ridiculous times. It was possible to make 1M in a year without incredible skills/hard work. Big tech was and still is full of these people. I'm not saying that was…

Seconded. The year I graduated from college, the median CS graduate was employed making about $65k/year USD. I got offers for $80k/year and thought that was pretty hot shit.

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

#134

Post by seahawks78 »

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.

2022-30 will be known as the lost generation in tech. I think the situation will improve in 2030s and AI/coding will become hot again. Or may be perhaps as soon as Feds start to open their purse to print money again aka QE.

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

#135

Post by Kim_Bruning »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #110
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you don't know something about AI, you can just ask it and it will tell you. If your questions are sharp, probing for detail, and intelligent . Have you seen how people question AIs? It's as if they can't even conceive of the AI being able to supply specific detail.

I'd love to see examples of that! Just from debates on HN alone, I get the idea that there's huge deltas, and I'm getting really really curious.

Point of order: On the one hand I'm not sure people quoting output from software where relevant is entirely what the 'no ai' rule is about. But it's arguable, fine.

For this kind of task, is linking to pastebin etc acceptable instead?

Either way thank you tstrimple for going in and looking!

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

#136

Post by smcg »

Tade0 wrote: post #56
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.

This sounds much like the civil engineering crisis in my region of the world after the 2008 financial crisis. There was barely any new construction going on for a couple of years and once it started anew, there was a gap as while people were retiring, new hires weren't replacing them. I guess we're just going to shrink as a field until the market won't be able to handle it.

Civil engineering will keep shrinking unless pay goes up. I know a very good civil engineer with 10+ years of experience who switched to software development and doubled his salary.

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

#137

Post by ghaff »

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…

This isn't new. Every job dating back multiple decades was through my network. I had a resume but it was essentially a formality. The last two long-term ones were through very senior folks at the companies.

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

#138

Post by georgeburdell »

francisofascii wrote: post #119
georgeburdell wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How are the youngest more productive than the seniors? As an aside, I have seen that the newest employees are performing better than those hired during Covid. I think the quality of recent hires are just better because no one is hiring, and so many quality candidates are available.

I didn’t say “most productive”, there was a qualifier attached. A person productive with AI is capable in a different way than the existing folks who are struggling to keep up with their jobs and retool to AI

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

#139

Post by georgeburdell »

risyachka wrote: post #105
georgeburdell wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you find a proper senior dev - it will be like 10 or more of that junior you described. Because you can’t shortcut experience. And AI multiplies that. I’ve seen what ai-focused good senior dev can do and it is scary.

We can’t find seniors like that yet, even though our pay is nearly top tier, because hiring is so broken right now. Most hires come from referrals so it’s recycling the same people between different companies, and those people don’t have good AI experience.

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

#140

Post by smcg »

remotedreamer wrote: post #122

Sadly, this is just the beginning.. As AI models improve in performance and cost, each technical job level will be replaced until it's just C-suites managing a bunch of ai agents.

hmm, I wonder what happens if we reach mass unemployment and homelessness...
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