Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The tech jobs bust is real. Don't blame AI (yet)

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 207 posts

Re: The tech jobs bust is real. Don't blame AI (yet)

#101

Post by ikr678 »

dvwcf wrote: post #13
0xAntonioo wrote: post #8

Feels early to blame AI for most of this. A lot of it still looks like a reset from 2021-era hiring assumptions rather than actual labor replacement

Over hiring is one thing.. but that wouldnt be a problem if there was an endless stream of projects to take that are value creating. So the issue is not necessarily the over-hiring.. more that the large tech firms are running out of projects to take that are value-creating. Which is not surprising - the labour market in its currently state is absolutely not perfect in allocating labour. It should be noted that fixing…

Market saturation for tech products + new competition from vibe coded startups moving into mature enterprise spaces.

The rate of non-tech business growth has slowed, who is going to continue to buy all these cloud software services? Tricking consumers into subscribing to AI tools or extra storage only goes so far.

Re: The tech jobs bust is real. Don't blame AI (yet)

#102

Post by ethanwillis »

Spooky23 wrote: post #96
Madmallard wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are we letting tech companies in the USA do this?

It generates economic activity and taxes in the US and suppresses wages. Most of the H1 candidates are in shitty roles that are well defined low/moderate skill jobs for giant companies. Hire people whom you can’t actively exploit and those are the kind of jobs where unions can organize. The alternative is offshoring the work, not hiring Americans. The smart thing would be to just let people immigrate. Instead we have…

Offshoring isn't a given. It's simply permitted.

Re: The tech jobs bust is real. Don't blame AI (yet)

#103

Post by sebmellen »

throwaway13337 wrote: post #95
sebmellen wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this is true to an extent, oftentimes the important context is not in the code but in the head of the writer. The code is just the fence in the Chesterton’s Fence analogy. And that is still non-fungible and will (presumably) forever be. > There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes…

You're correct that it doesn't answer the why. But it answers the what, how, and allows one-off features. So the guy that wrote might (or might not) still have the edge with the why. But that's not the moat it used to be.

In big companies, the why is 80% of the work. I could swear actual dev work is less than 20% of a “developer’s” job at a standard large (non-SV/FAANG/tech-first) company. The rest is holding a lot of really weird organization-specific context in your head to make the right decision.

Re: The tech jobs bust is real. Don't blame AI (yet)

#104

Post by shimman »

cute_boi wrote: post #43

AI + Outsourcing is the major reason of tech job bust. But, I think politician won't care as they are here for corporation not for the people.

Politicians would deeply care about a specialized highly paid workforce that was politically active, but what we have is mostly a do-nothing industry that has nearly 100% ceded to their corporate masters.

I mean look at what the coal mining industry is able to get and their numbers are quite small. There's more fast food workers at Wendy's than coal miners, but something tells me that Congress doesn't care about the baconator over rolling coal.

Start doing some advocacy work and this can easily change.

Re: The tech jobs bust is real. Don't blame AI (yet)

#105

Post by dozerly »

dfdsjsdklfjs wrote: post #82
ang_cire wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we live in a techno-oligarchy now? Because the leaders of the top tech companies (by revenue) literally sat behind the President at his inauguration? Because they can afford to buy the 'right' to do what they want, and you can't, and what they want is cheaper labor who they have more control over, and H1B workers will never rock the boat because the visa is a sword hanging over their heads. Downvote all you w…

[flagged]

You can’t just write off everyone downvoting you for being conspiratorial as government plants lol

Re: The tech jobs bust is real. Don't blame AI (yet)

#106

Post by Hawkenfall »

lateforwork wrote: post #92
Madmallard wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are we letting tech companies in the USA do this?

Because if we didn't we wouldn't have a tech industry? The main problem with immigrant talent in computer field is that legislators don't understand the difference between IT and Tech product development jobs. IT jobs don't need immigrant talent, so companies like Accenture, Infosys etc. should not be given H-1B visas. But tech companies like Google, Meta, Apple, OpenAI etc. absolutely need immigrant talent, or they…

Not sure how you came to draw this conclusion, as there's lots of data out there showing droves of Computer Science graduates here in the states unable to land jobs.

Re: The tech jobs bust is real. Don't blame AI (yet)

#107

Post by ghaff »

0xchamin wrote: post #48

One of my mentor at my company got redundant exactly a year ago. He is still looking for the next role. I really feel bad.

Post dot-com, a LOT of people basically left the industry. They may have continued on in somewhat adjacent roles but people can only afford to keep looking for the sort of employment they had for so long.

Re: The tech jobs bust is real. Don't blame AI (yet)

#108

Post by thesmtsolver2 »

shimman wrote: post #99
lateforwork wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if we didn't we wouldn't have a tech industry? The main problem with immigrant talent in computer field is that legislators don't understand the difference between IT and Tech product development jobs. IT jobs don't need immigrant talent, so companies like Accenture, Infosys etc. should not be given H-1B visas. But tech companies like Google, Meta, Apple, OpenAI etc. absolutely need immigrant talent, or they…

We had a tech industry prior to H1Bs before the 90s. What we didn't have was Silicon Valley corporatism that doesn't value American labor nor American education. It's why SV is so gun-ho on charter schools and devaluing American labor. Let's not act like we need to import 80k "high tech" workers that amount to writing react components and spring endpoints. Hardly anything hard that we couldn't force companies to trai…

Do you share the same thoughts for blue collar immigrants?

Re: The tech jobs bust is real. Don't blame AI (yet)

#109

Post by Longlius »

Spooky23 wrote: post #96
Madmallard wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are we letting tech companies in the USA do this?

It generates economic activity and taxes in the US and suppresses wages. Most of the H1 candidates are in shitty roles that are well defined low/moderate skill jobs for giant companies. Hire people whom you can’t actively exploit and those are the kind of jobs where unions can organize. The alternative is offshoring the work, not hiring Americans. The smart thing would be to just let people immigrate. Instead we have…

Then offshore the work. Americans aren't getting the jobs anyway and the imported labor now competes for things like groceries, gas, housing, etc. which drives up prices.

Re: The tech jobs bust is real. Don't blame AI (yet)

#110

Post by Madmallard »

lateforwork wrote: post #92
Madmallard wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are we letting tech companies in the USA do this?

Because if we didn't we wouldn't have a tech industry? The main problem with immigrant talent in computer field is that legislators don't understand the difference between IT and Tech product development jobs. IT jobs don't need immigrant talent, so companies like Accenture, Infosys etc. should not be given H-1B visas. But tech companies like Google, Meta, Apple, OpenAI etc. absolutely need immigrant talent, or they…

Doesn't sound accurate. Please list some sources here that are credible that explain your point. Just sounds like dismissive bias.
Post reply on HN