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Entry-level jobs down by a third since launch of ChatGPT

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Re: Entry-level jobs down by a third since launch of ChatGPT

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe all the strong Eastern European SWEs head to Western Europe for the higher pay? Let's also not forget, India is a massive and growing market in its own right. Literally the 4th-largest economy in the world, soon to be 3rd. It's like China at the turn of the century.

India has a (very) low base effect so it's absolute GDP growth is high. But it is growing much slower than China at the same point. Currently India is growing at about 6-7%, at the same GDP per capita China was growing at ~12%. If growth doesn't slow down, it'll take ~30 years to reach where China is now. There are lots of structural problems about the economy, and growth will likely be uneven and slower in the futur…

> it'll take ~30 years to reach where China is now

And it's been 25 years since the turn of the century. So I was approximately correct.

> There are lots of structural problems about the economy, and growth will likely be uneven and slower in the future.

It could be better than expected, or it could be worse. Predictions are hard, especially about the future.

> But it is not a great place for these firms because disposable income is so low

That matters for advertising revenue. A $30m contract for cloud services is still a $30m contract. And in any case, software is famously high-margin. Low revenue per user often isn't a problem if you have a lot of users. They're still profitable, just not wildly profitable.

> the US generates the most revenue per user for Google because it has a really high income

It's also saturated. The market demands growth.

Even though India will be relatively poor per-capita, in absolute terms it will be a bigger economy than Japan or Germany in the next 5 years (it's already bigger than one of them). Would any serious multinational company ignore the Japanese or German markets or deem them irrelevant to business?

Re: Entry-level jobs down by a third since launch of ChatGPT

#172

Okay. It also coincides with the end of the post-pandemic hiring boom and the UK bank rate going from 0.1% to 5.25%. It's kind of funny that reliable data analysis has never been part of the AI hype when you consider that AI is used for data analysis.

In the US I think it’s may be driven more by r&d cost amortization changes since 2023. It’s attributed to AI but I believe tax implications are to blame as well apart from interest rates and the covid hiring.

Hopefully that will be fixed this year, or tech layoffs and outsourcing in the US will pick up pace. Without the R&D write off, each dev in the US is a massive financial black hole vs hiring outside the US.

Re: Entry-level jobs down by a third since launch of ChatGPT

#173
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

interest rates are controlled by central bankers, not magic. they make decisions based on their analysis of the economy. they raised rates to slow down the rate of investment and to suppress wages, in order to get inflation under control. Less money in circulation means reduced demand means prices stay lower, meaning lower inflation. that's the theory anyway, and the explictly expressed reason for raising rates by ce…

So here you are suggesting that when we observe that interest rates have been raised, we should conclude that the economy was strong? (Otherwise the central bankers wouldn't have raised.) But the original comment I first replied to seemed to suggest that high interest rates should lead us to deduce a weak economy.

I don't know if you're being intentionally obtuse but it doesn't matter what caused the increase in rates. The increase results in people and companies having less money to spend and investment being more expensive (by design). This means less hiring.

Re: Entry-level jobs down by a third since launch of ChatGPT

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is little substance to this comment other than stereotypes about India. I don't like this kind of generalization -- there are over a billion Indians, let's not lump them all together in a caricature

I think it was a fair characterization, if only because employers know that H1-B visaholders are desperate to not be deported (i.e. must maintain employment/sponsorship). Wages are kept suppressed, keeping people (citizens and not) desperate. The people that have (e.g.) immigrated into America, but not naturalized yet, are in extremely perilous positions, beholden to a corporate entity which would rather employ them…

[deleted]

Re: Entry-level jobs down by a third since launch of ChatGPT

#175
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

interest rates are controlled by central bankers, not magic. they make decisions based on their analysis of the economy. they raised rates to slow down the rate of investment and to suppress wages, in order to get inflation under control. Less money in circulation means reduced demand means prices stay lower, meaning lower inflation. that's the theory anyway, and the explictly expressed reason for raising rates by ce…

So here you are suggesting that when we observe that interest rates have been raised, we should conclude that the economy was strong? (Otherwise the central bankers wouldn't have raised.) But the original comment I first replied to seemed to suggest that high interest rates should lead us to deduce a weak economy.

you raise interest rates to slow economic activity, you lower them to speed it up. yes, if interest rates are raised, that means employment is too high, basically, and they want to lower it.

Re: Entry-level jobs down by a third since launch of ChatGPT

#176

These jobs are being offshored to India. You can tell by how they're massively hiring there. Google launches largest office in India https://www.entrepreneur.com/en-in/news-and-trends/google-la... Microsoft India head says no layoffs in India https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/mic...

Did you miss this: "Google in India has a workforce of over 10,000 spread across major cities in India." That's out of a total workforce of about 200,000.

And spread across a nation of ~1,450,000,000 people.

Re: Entry-level jobs down by a third since launch of ChatGPT

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's kind of funny that reliable data analysis has never been part of the AI hype when you consider that AI is used for data analysis. If you've ever tried to use AI to help with this kind of analysis, you might find this to be more inevitable than it is funny. It's really, really, really good at confidently jumping to hasty conclusions and confirmation bias. Which perhaps shouldn't be surprising when you consider…

I presume when they say "AI is used for data analysis" they're talking about traditional AI (more frequently referred to as "machine learning") rather than generative AI (LLMs).

Traditional AI isn't "referred to" as Machine Learning, they're separate things. ML is a subset of the field of AI, that focuses on AI algorithms that (loosely speaking) "learn" from data, as opposed to being AI that is explicitly defined.

Re: Entry-level jobs down by a third since launch of ChatGPT

#178
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I presume when they say "AI is used for data analysis" they're talking about traditional AI (more frequently referred to as "machine learning") rather than generative AI (LLMs).

Traditional AI isn't "referred to" as Machine Learning, they're separate things. ML is a subset of the field of AI, that focuses on AI algorithms that (loosely speaking) "learn" from data, as opposed to being AI that is explicitly defined.

And LLMs belong to this subset. They're largely built using supervised machine learning.

But also, "AI" is polysemous. There's "AI" the academic field, and machine learning is a subset of that field. But there's also "AI" the marketing term, which is much more well-known nowadays. And for that meaning of the term, it's the other way around -- it's a subset of machine learning.

Under either definition, though, I agree it doesn't make much sense to talk about them as if they are two different things, because either way one is just a particular kind of the other.

Re: Entry-level jobs down by a third since launch of ChatGPT

#179

These jobs are being offshored to India. You can tell by how they're massively hiring there. Google launches largest office in India https://www.entrepreneur.com/en-in/news-and-trends/google-la... Microsoft India head says no layoffs in India https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/mic...

Did you miss this: "Google in India has a workforce of over 10,000 spread across major cities in India." That's out of a total workforce of about 200,000.

Yes, and Google has laid off ~12000+ (including some churn). Googles current head count is only ~7k below peak. The new office building alone will hold 5k, not to mention other hiring in other indian offices.
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