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IBM tripling entry-level jobs after finding the limits of AI adoption

fortune.com

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Re: IBM tripling entry-level jobs after finding the limits of AI adoption

#141

Post by robocat »

xp84 wrote: post #122
slopinthebag wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does it say those cuts were senior software developers? Obviously they want new workers to use AI but I don't really see anything to suggest they're so successful with AI that they're firing all their seniors and hiring juniors to be meatbags for LLMs.

This just doesn't make any sense. Juniors + AI just does not equal seniors, except for prototyping greenfield projects. Who knows about 2 months from now, it moves fast and stuff, but not right now.

> just doesn't make any sense

I suspect the gap is that you don't know enough about IBM's business model.

When something doesn't make sense, a very common cause is a lack of context: many things can be extremely sensible for a business to do; things which appear insane from an outsider's point of view.

Re: IBM tripling entry-level jobs after finding the limits of AI adoption

#142

Post by pfdietz »

SoftTalker wrote: post #130
belter wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to write bugs in 8 hours. Now I write the same bugs in 4. My Productivity doubled. \s

Even better, I write more bugs in 4 hours than I used to in 8.

A 10x employee creates enough bugs to keep 10 other employees busy.

Re: IBM tripling entry-level jobs after finding the limits of AI adoption

#143

Post by [deleted] »

surajrmal wrote: post #114
ahmeni wrote: post #65

Huh, weird, another "technological marvel" whose primary effect just seems to be devaluing labour.

Technologies entire job is to make it less work to accomplish something and therefore easier and cheaper. In some cases that will make it possible to do things you couldn't do before but in many cases it'll just end up causing the value of said labor to fall. The problem isn't change, but the rate of change and the fact it's affecting our own field rather than someone else's.

[deleted]

Re: IBM tripling entry-level jobs after finding the limits of AI adoption

#144

Post by bawolff »

slopinthebag wrote: post #76

You know when someone is singing the praises about AI and they get asked "if you're so much more productive with AI, what have you built with it"? Well I think a bunch of companies are asking this same question to their employees and realising that the productivity gains they are betting on were overhyped. LLM's can be a very useful tool and will probably lead to measurable productivity increases in the future, at th…

Meh, i think a lot of companies just wanted an excuse to do lay-offs without the bad press, and AI was convinent.

Re: IBM tripling entry-level jobs after finding the limits of AI adoption

#145

Post by sarchertech »

pickettd wrote: post #136
Morromist wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this every day, and I'm sure its true sometimes, but where is the tsunami of amazing software LLM users are producing? Where are the games that make the old games look like things from a bygone era? Where are the updates to the software that I currently use that greatly increase it capabilities? I have seen none of this. I get that it takes a long time to make software, but people were making big promises a ye…

Reddit and GitHub are littered with people launching new projects and appear to be way more feature-rich than new tool/app launches from previous years. I think it is a lot harder to get noticed with a new tool/app new because of this increase in volume of launches. Also weekend hackathon events have completely/drastically changed as an experience in the last 2-3 years (expectations and also feature-set/polish of wor…

I have no way of verifying any of those. Something I can easily verify, new games launched on steam.

January numbers are out and there were fewer games launched this January than last.

Re: IBM tripling entry-level jobs after finding the limits of AI adoption

#146

Post by sarchertech »

milchek wrote: post #140
slopinthebag wrote: post #76

You know when someone is singing the praises about AI and they get asked "if you're so much more productive with AI, what have you built with it"? Well I think a bunch of companies are asking this same question to their employees and realising that the productivity gains they are betting on were overhyped. LLM's can be a very useful tool and will probably lead to measurable productivity increases in the future, at th…

I think for a lot of folks it basically comes down to just using AI to make the tasks they have to do easier and to free up time for themselves. I’d argue the majority use AI this way. The minority “10x” workers who are using it to churn through more tasks are the motivated ones driving real business value being added - but let’s be honest, in a soulless enterprise 9-5 these folks are few and far between.

Sure but why haven’t you seen a drastic increase in single person startups.

Why are there fewer games launched in steam this January than last?

Re: IBM tripling entry-level jobs after finding the limits of AI adoption

#147

Post by culi »

chasd00 wrote: post #116

Some stats are trickling out in my company. Code heavy consulting projects show about 18% efficiency gains but I have problems with that number because no one has been able to tell me how it was calculated. Story points actual vs estimated is probably how it was done but that’s nonsensical because we all know how subjective estimates and even actuals are. It’s probably impossible to get a real number that doesn’t hav…

More interesting imo would be a measure of maintainability. I've heard that code that's largely written by AI is rarely remembered by the engineer that submitted even a week after merging

You're almost "locked in" to using more AI on top of it then. It may also make it harder to give estimates to non-technical staff on how long it'd take to make a change or implement a new feature

Re: IBM tripling entry-level jobs after finding the limits of AI adoption

#148

Post by wayeq »

altcunn wrote: post #29

[dead]

> The "AI will replace all junior devs" narrative never accounted for the fact that you still need humans who understand the business domain, can ask the right questions, and can catch when the AI is confidently wrong.

You work with junior devs that have those abilities? Because I certainly don't.

Re: IBM tripling entry-level jobs after finding the limits of AI adoption

#149

Post by belter »

SoftTalker wrote: post #130
belter wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to write bugs in 8 hours. Now I write the same bugs in 4. My Productivity doubled. \s

Even better, I write more bugs in 4 hours than I used to in 8.

"If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in."

- Edsger Dijkstra

Re: IBM tripling entry-level jobs after finding the limits of AI adoption

#150

Post by halamadrid »

I pay $20 for OpenAI and codex makes me incredibly productive. With very careful prompts aimed at tiny tasks, I can review, fix and get a lot of things done.

I’ll happily pay up to $2k/month for it if I was left with no choice, but I don’t think it will ever get that expensive since you can run models locally and it could have the same result.

That being said, my outputs are similarish in the big picture. When I get something done, I typically don’t have the energy to keep going to get it to 2x or 3x because the cognitive load is about the same.

However I get a lot of time freed up which is amazing because I’m able to play golf 3-4 times a week which would have been impossible without AI.

Productive? Yes. Time saved? Yes. Overall outputs? Similar.

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