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Graduates are booing pep talks on AI at college commencements

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Re: Graduates are booing pep talks on AI at college commencements

#171

Post by tavavex »

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #53
delecti wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I was looking for jobs the other day (because the market as a whole is kinda cooked), and one fairly small company had a half-dozen openings for Staff level engineers, and nothing else. If I'm having this much trouble with staff level experience, I can't imagine how new grads are doing.

Check your schools alumni jobs board postings, and have a look at local telecom offerings. Few will want to spend $50k in resources to train knowing you will jump to a better job in 1 year. These people have been around a long time, and may be able to get you started: https://www.aerotek.com/ Would also recommend talking with companies you find interesting at local trade-shows. Don't get lazy with the online gauntlet…

Sorry, I don't want to sound too blunt, but as someone who's young and fighting in this job market, this kind of advice comes off as the 'Come into the office, look the manager in the eyes and shake his hand' of our age. All of yesterday's clever hacks that helped you get lined up with a job faster are today's bare essentials that everyone knows about.

The main issue isn't in finding good jobs, it's that every posting is flooded with hundreds of applicants, many of whom have an edge over the average graduate. Some experienced workers are agreeing to take junior jobs out of desperation. Online postings, if they're not fake/reposted, are swamped; alumni/university job boards are doubly swamped; in-person events consist of rows of company representatives who are happy to hand out flyers but will tell you that they're not looking for anyone right now, or only hiring for a rare or highly specialized position, or they'll just refer you to their website to apply with everyone else. There's almost no advantage anymore.

This is true for me and everyone I know - people who get jobs are the ones who have strong connections and continue working after internships at the same company (and even that's far from a guarantee), everyone else is an exception and not the rule. And no one in their right mind is going to job hop now, the average mentality is to work hard and cower in hopes of not getting laid off.

FWIW, I wasn't the one who downvoted either, but what I talked about might be a reason why someone reacted that way.

Re: Graduates are booing pep talks on AI at college commencements

#172

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

tavavex wrote: post #169
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " Are you in the top 10%? " The answer is obviously yes for the majority of HN readers. Hacker News is a site maintained by a huge venture capital fund for startup founders and employees and other venture capitalists plus a lot employees of FAANG and other big tech. You are preaching against the 10% to the 10%.

Definitely not the majority. Looking at the US, which is probably home to the most users of this website, the threshold for top 10% net worth is at $1.8m, and the threshold for top 10% income is $210k. There's many rich people like that here, but I think the average person is just a standard tech worker, maybe a senior, but not someone from a top company. They're overrepresented here, no doubt about that, but most pe…

I'm choosing not to use wealth because wealth is a function of both time and income. Not everybody on Hacker News is the same age so it's hard to normalize; someone might reach that threshold if they were elderly even if their income was modest. I would understand if you disagreed though.

I think your value for income is for household income, not for individual income. My quick Google of top 10% individual income for the U.S. says it's $155k, which is well within the range of incomes for senior developers and other techies in the major metros even outside the tech hubs.

Re: Graduates are booing pep talks on AI at college commencements

#174

Post by soundworlds »

It is incredibly important for people to be aware that this is one of the few new technologies where older generations are far more optimistic than younger generations. Less than 1/5 of Gen Z are optimistic about it, and the number is falling: https://news.gallup.com/poll/708224/gen-adoption-steady-skep...

To me this signals something very fragile about the current frontier AI Org's strategies.

Re: Graduates are booing pep talks on AI at college commencements

#175

Post by Sabinus »

jandrese wrote: post #104
mbgerring wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who are faced with this question are so far removed from the idea that losing your job means not being able to eat or pay rent that it seems pointless to ask them. Whenever I try to get serious answers to this question I get far-future projections about how much better people’s lives will be in the aggregate, at some point in the future, on the assumption that their baseless, faith-based projections about…

Elon Musk is a great example of what happens when you lose grasp on reality. He's been spouting post-scarcity nonsense for some time now like humanity is anywhere close to achieving it. And worst of all, his grand plan is to build expensive sentient humanoid robot slaves to achieve it. The timeline to achieve it is really short, like 20 years. It's like the ultimate end-game of capitalism. Once Elon has every single…

Why is capitalism innovating itself into irrelevance and ending the need for toil a bad thing? We can redistribute resources differently when that's the economic reality. If Elon wins capitalism and we change to a different economic model isn't that progress?

Re: Graduates are booing pep talks on AI at college commencements

#176

Post by bryanlarsen »

bryan0 wrote: post #35
ethanplant wrote: post #5

I’m genuinely confused as to why the speakers are baffled by the boos. Everyone, and especially new grads constantly hear that AI is going to replace every job. And absolutely no one seems to be interested in answering the question of “okay, then what?” Of course people are going to react negatively when they hear, “the machines are going to take your jobs from you. No, we don’t care how you’ll be able to pay your re…

> Schmidt offered a similar message to graduates: Their fear is rational, but they have the power to shape how AI develops. This doesn't sound like being baffled by it. It sounds like they are trying to shake the students and say: "fine boo, but you need do something about it." You can't just wallow and complain about it. I mean you can but it's a path to failure.

And the best mechanism to do something about it they likely have is to influence Schmidt. By booing.

Nothing concrete they do will likely have any effect. But Schmidt can affect it, so influencing Schmidt is their best path. A poor path, but the best one.

Re: Graduates are booing pep talks on AI at college commencements

#177

Post by jandrese »

Sabinus wrote: post #175
jandrese wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon Musk is a great example of what happens when you lose grasp on reality. He's been spouting post-scarcity nonsense for some time now like humanity is anywhere close to achieving it. And worst of all, his grand plan is to build expensive sentient humanoid robot slaves to achieve it. The timeline to achieve it is really short, like 20 years. It's like the ultimate end-game of capitalism. Once Elon has every single…

Why is capitalism innovating itself into irrelevance and ending the need for toil a bad thing? We can redistribute resources differently when that's the economic reality. If Elon wins capitalism and we change to a different economic model isn't that progress?

Elon winning means everybody else loses. The different economic model you get afterward is corporate feudalism.

Re: Graduates are booing pep talks on AI at college commencements

#178

Post by mancerayder »

ethanplant wrote: post #5

I’m genuinely confused as to why the speakers are baffled by the boos. Everyone, and especially new grads constantly hear that AI is going to replace every job. And absolutely no one seems to be interested in answering the question of “okay, then what?” Of course people are going to react negatively when they hear, “the machines are going to take your jobs from you. No, we don’t care how you’ll be able to pay your re…

>I’m genuinely confused as to why the speakers are baffled by the boos

My friend, do you see how C-suites, even in our own companies, are talking? Here's one that made headlines all over the business-press, I think it speaks for itself:

May 19th, 2026

StanChart CEO Winters Says AI to Replace "Lower-Value Human Capital"

“It’s not cost cutting; it’s replacing in some cases lower-value human capital.” Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters delivered a blunt message on the future of the bank’s workforce. Aisha S. Gani explains the growing trend among finance leaders acknowledging the realities of AI technology replacing jobs."

Re: Graduates are booing pep talks on AI at college commencements

#179

Post by soraminazuki »

bryan0 wrote: post #35
ethanplant wrote: post #5

I’m genuinely confused as to why the speakers are baffled by the boos. Everyone, and especially new grads constantly hear that AI is going to replace every job. And absolutely no one seems to be interested in answering the question of “okay, then what?” Of course people are going to react negatively when they hear, “the machines are going to take your jobs from you. No, we don’t care how you’ll be able to pay your re…

> Schmidt offered a similar message to graduates: Their fear is rational, but they have the power to shape how AI develops. This doesn't sound like being baffled by it. It sounds like they are trying to shake the students and say: "fine boo, but you need do something about it." You can't just wallow and complain about it. I mean you can but it's a path to failure.

I mean you're talking about the guy who said with a straight face, "if you have got nothing to hide, you have have nothing to fear" while building the biggest machinery for surveillance capitalism mankind has ever seen. Also appeared in the Epstein files 193 times btw.

https://www.wired.com/story/epstein-files-tech-elites-gates-...

Re: Graduates are booing pep talks on AI at college commencements

#180

Post by mancerayder »

havblue wrote: post #67
ethanplant wrote: post #5

I’m genuinely confused as to why the speakers are baffled by the boos. Everyone, and especially new grads constantly hear that AI is going to replace every job. And absolutely no one seems to be interested in answering the question of “okay, then what?” Of course people are going to react negatively when they hear, “the machines are going to take your jobs from you. No, we don’t care how you’ll be able to pay your re…

When I was in high school, the guidance counselors never really talked about job headwinds. Those were things that would presumably happen to other kids. The recipient of a motivational speech has infinite potential. It's the same logic with discussing AI. The audience is the cream of the crop and will adapt to the future and benefit from technology. It's those other kids who didn't get your advice that might have to…

Things felt a lot more optimistic when I was in high school!

I knew people dropping out to work in tech, back in the late 90s. Even after two recessions, we tech workers with hot and difficult to gain skills always bounced back, and back then indeed older skills (as in older or easy to hire tech stacks) had problems finding new roles.

This time feels different. Is it really?

It feels like it to me, but then I spend my entire existence planning for some sort of scarcity situation and every day I think of what if. I did this before any AI threats, unfortunately for me.

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