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

economist.com

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

#151

Post by lateforwork »

yabutlivnWoods wrote: post #142
lateforwork wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are plenty of Americans who can do these jobs. This thinking is wrong. For IT jobs, the work is pre-defined and you go find people who can do the job. For product development this is sometimes the case, but for truly innovative products, such as AI models, this is not the case. You have to hire the best in the world and give them the resources they need, as opposed to defining the project upfront and hiring p…

"Truly innovative". I wrote my first neural net in the late 90s. Based on nothing but an old geocities post some rando put up about training a model to only unlock a pet door for their cat. I implemented the same and it worked. Where you see true innovation I see run of the mill. OpenAI, Google, etc are propping up data center rental business they came to rely on to titillate biology with whatever spaghetti that stic…

> I wrote my first neural net in the late 90s

Why aren't we using it, if that's all the world needs?

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

#152

Post by ethanwillis »

Spooky23 wrote: post #144
Longlius wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

.

"listless rednecks"

Yea, keep that same energy and see how it plays out.

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

#153

Post by lateforwork »

newfriend wrote: post #146
lateforwork wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> having workers with limited negotiating power Sorry, this is 100% false. Companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Meta etc. do not hire H-1Bs in order to depress wages. That does happen, but not at these companies. It typically happens when hiring IT workers.

The mere presence of H1-B workers depresses wages systemically.

In the early 1990s a good software engineer was paid $40K starting salary, and good companies like Sun Microsystems paid $45K. If you adjust that for inflation it is around $100K. But good companies in silicon valley today pay $120K plus stock grants (so around $170K or so), and Meta and Google pay much more.

So software engineer salaries have gone up dramatically in the last 35 years H-1B visa has been around. In fact, the H-1B visa is the reason the salaries have gone up. Without it the industry would be stagnant, just like non-tech S&P 500 companies and most companies in Europe in the same time period.

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

#154

Post by clapthewind »

mikert89 wrote: post #70

Two big tech FAANG jobs, org is 95% h1b engineers from china/india. Tons of resumes from american grads somehow never hit my desk, continue to interview random candidates from india with some low quality USA masters from missisipi state. Candidate has spent the last year locked in a room memorizing algorithm interview questions

DSA itself may now not be as indicative, but grinding is absolutely a key trait in good hires. That type of person will put in very effort at work.

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

#156

Post by andsoitis »

Esophagus4 wrote: post #16
downrightmike wrote: post #2

The only reason to blame AI is that it doesn't live up to promises, so corps are betting that scale will solve the problem. So datacenter after datacenter wants to be built in areas that can't supply them water/power. And that money sink is causing the layoffs. If AI really helped like it expected to, you would grab any dev you could so that you could have a army of 100x devs. Humans are still cheaper for the real co…

> If AI really helped like it expected to, you would grab any dev you could so that you could have an army of 100x devs. This seems maybe a bit reductionist. AI will have diminishing returns because at a certain point, coding is not the bottleneck and coordination is or some other thing that hasn’t been optimized yet. The exact bottleneck seems like it depends on the organization. My theory is that in general, augmen…

What you say is accurate. Just remember that generating code is not the only way for an engineer to amplify themselves.

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

#157

Post by andsoitis »

bitwize wrote: post #6
mountainofdeath wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same thing was said about the crazy build-out of fiber and telecommunications infrastructure. That infrastructure did prove useful but it took about 10-20 years before that was the case. It took 4G becoming broadly available and the ensuing increase of mobile devices to use at least of the overbuilt network capacity.

The difference is that fibre is infrastructure, LLMs are an application. Who knows, maybe they will pass and leave behind that server infra, and that's where our digital consciousnesses will live once our bodies die.

> The difference is that fibre is infrastructure, LLMs are an application

When I zoom out, I see “token generation” as an infrastructural layer, with applications built upon it.

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

#158

Post by y0eswddl »

mikert89 wrote: post #131
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve seen two interns through to FTE jobs at a FAANG, both were at least second generation immigrants (so citizens I guess, though I never asked). So kids are still getting jobs, they come from reasonable universities, I haven’t seen UW resumes yet (my Alma mater), for some reasons those kids are all scooped up before I can take a look (I work at an office in Seattle so I find it weird that we can hire from the local…

the weird thing is seeing american kids from a top 20 american school (duke, carnegie melon, etc) mixed with a much larger majority of h1bs from absolute no name schools. its almost like the bar for americans is higher

Americans are more expensive. More pressure to justify yourself these days.

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

#159

Post by yabutlivnWoods »

lateforwork wrote: post #151
yabutlivnWoods wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Truly innovative". I wrote my first neural net in the late 90s. Based on nothing but an old geocities post some rando put up about training a model to only unlock a pet door for their cat. I implemented the same and it worked. Where you see true innovation I see run of the mill. OpenAI, Google, etc are propping up data center rental business they came to rely on to titillate biology with whatever spaghetti that stic…

> I wrote my first neural net in the late 90s Why aren't we using it, if that's all the world needs?

Oh this game, huh?

If your powers of analysis were worth anything you would be running the world not copy-pasting hype straight from CNBC and Big Tech PR

As you are not running the world your analysis is worthless. As such I say; good day, sir.

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

#160

Post by newfriend »

lateforwork wrote: post #153
newfriend wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mere presence of H1-B workers depresses wages systemically.

In the early 1990s a good software engineer was paid $40K starting salary, and good companies like Sun Microsystems paid $45K. If you adjust that for inflation it is around $100K. But good companies in silicon valley today pay $120K plus stock grants (so around $170K or so), and Meta and Google pay much more. So software engineer salaries have gone up dramatically in the last 35 years H-1B visa has been around. In fa…

Are you trying to argue that increased supply of labor is responsible for increasing wages?

As others have said, H1-B has been good for companies, and bad for American workers. The same companies who were found to be colluding to keep wages down.

Europe is stagnant because of regulation, not because of immigration.

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