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Where is the AI jobs crisis?

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Re: Where is the AI jobs crisis?

#171

Post by mohamedkoubaa »

OptionOfT wrote: post #108
atleastoptimal wrote: post #69

It's crazy that so often I see articles, here on HN and elsewhere, where some pundit claims that there is no AI job crisis, AI isn't replacing any jobs, that layoffs are actually due to post-pandemic ZIRP overhiring, etc. But then people who work in actual tech companies come in and explicitly say they are not hiring any juniors anymore specifically because AI is good enough to do most of what juniors do, and that se…

> There seems to be a desire for a narrative that AI really just can't replace productive work, and that it's all a mirage. Yes, and juniors aren't known for their productive work in the beginning. That's not their purpose. Their purpose is to do the mundane work, because it is important for them to become less junior and more senior. That is robbed of them. Which in 5-10 years means the need for senior developers is…

Exactly. Now most new hires are apprentices, before they might have been hired to do chores

Re: Where is the AI jobs crisis?

#172

Post by t-3 »

sublinear wrote: post #118
atleastoptimal wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people keep saying that assuming that in 5-10 years AI won’t be as good as senior engineers

What makes you think that? AI isn't as good as any human in any field. Why would it be capable of replacing anyone at all in 10 years?

5 years ago AI was a joke, today it is a major industry tool.

Re: Where is the AI jobs crisis?

#173

Post by rootusrootus »

prerok wrote: post #28
rootusrootus wrote: post #17

Maybe AI will finally be the tool that allows us to get rid of some of the people we have who do nothing more than push paper around. Maybe. But somehow I doubt it, at least not in a typical big corporate environment. And I have zero concern about us letting actual software devs go. Things will have to change pretty dramatically before we get that far.

You mean the middle management? I have been in environments where they were almost literally made up of pencil pushers. Wouldn't be too sad to see them go. Only half joking, but it is written in jest.

Nope, just people who basically swivel chair information from one place to another. Useful in some way, should have been automated a long time ago, and yet persist.

But yes, middle management would qualify ;-). My manager seems spooked by LLMs. Loves to use them to write his emails, but seems to internalize that since they're doing his job for him at this point, his boss may figure it out.

Re: Where is the AI jobs crisis?

#174

Post by dragandj »

deadbabe wrote: post #166
OptionOfT wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There seems to be a desire for a narrative that AI really just can't replace productive work, and that it's all a mirage. Yes, and juniors aren't known for their productive work in the beginning. That's not their purpose. Their purpose is to do the mundane work, because it is important for them to become less junior and more senior. That is robbed of them. Which in 5-10 years means the need for senior developers is…

The need for seniors isn’t going to “shoot through the roof” if they are using AI. If senior engineers are even 2x more productive with AI, then it’s like there are 2x as many senior engineers. Most likely, seniors will be 10x more productive in 5 years using AI. This outpaces the retirement rate. All the software engineers we need for the next 20-30 years are already in the current workforce. Only way juniors can ri…

... and by the year 50, they will be a trillion times more productive?

Re: Where is the AI jobs crisis?

#175

Post by jason_oster »

5701652400 wrote: post #72
mirsadm wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems pretty unlikely. If it turns out to be true then you don't need a junior or senior dev you can just get a random person from the street and they could do the job.

that is what CEO of NVIDIA is telling everyone. "everyone is a programmer now".

I don't follow. Aren't you arguing something more like "no one is a programmer now"?

Re: Where is the AI jobs crisis?

#176

Post by marcosdumay »

Hum... That's a huge conclusion from a single graph, I expected to see more data.

The jobs openings / unemployed close but a bit larger than 1 is the expected value when nothing is turning the economy completely upside down right now. It means there is no new shock that is too fast for people to adapt.

What is surprising, yes, because I could easily name half a dozen shocks that I would expect to see there. But it seems US people are adapting quickly right now, or things are canceling out.

Re: Where is the AI jobs crisis?

#178

Post by packetlost »

mindcandy wrote: post #170

AFAICT, the "Rising layoffs year after year" news lately has been an intentional misreporting of "Layoff rates slowly returning to normal after the hiring spree during COVID stimulation" https://blog.glassdoor.com/site-us/wp-content/uploads/sites/... https://www.glassdoor.com/blog/worklife-trends-2026/ But, CEOs figured out that if they blame layoffs on AI, stock go up a lot. Reporters know that anxiety about AI driv…

I don't recall there being regular, industry-wide layoffs effecting software engineers for basically the entirety of my career up until the last couple of years. I'm sure my memory is bad and there's data to refute that, but this doesn't feel like "normal" at all.

Re: Where is the AI jobs crisis?

#180

Post by fluoridation »

jason_oster wrote: post #156
dustymcp wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me and most of my friends from school started in low paying consultant jobs, in fact most from my class dont do software at all only 5 of us had jobs after education ended, this is like 12 years ago, it was also hard back then to get a job, maybe people forgot or something.

This. I have been out of the tech startup labor market for many years. But when I was doing hiring in a startup around 2017, we had to put specific, conscious effort into accepting inexperienced candidates. The default mode for hiring is finding like-minded individuals whose experience overlaps with the existing team. Using AI as a scapegoat for hiring freezes or layoffs is just more FUD. Like all propaganda campaign…

This has been my experience as well. I tried my hand at switching jobs in 2018 and it was a tough market. It feels like people don't have any concept of transferable skills, and just want a clone of someone who just left and can pick right up from where the other person left off, with no on-boarding period. Nothing seems to have really changed in the intervening 8 years.
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