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The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

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Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#251

Post by phailhaus »

CKMo wrote: post #185

There's definitely a big problem with entry-level jobs being replaced by AI. Why hire an intern or a recent college-grad when they lack both the expertise and experience to do what an AI could probably do? Sure, the AI might require handholding and prompting too, but the AI is either cheaper or actually "smarter" than the young person. In many cases, it's both. I work with some people who I believe have the capacity…

I don't get this because someone has to work with the AI to get the job done. Those are the entry-level roles! The manager who's swamped with work sure as hell isn't going to do it.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#252

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

geraneum wrote: post #249
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is where the horrific disloyalty of both companies and employees, comes to bite us in the ass. The whole idea of interns, is as training positions. They are supposed to be a net negative. The idea is that they will either remain at the company, after their internship, or move to another company, taking the priorities of their trainers, with them. But nowadays, with corporate HR, actively doing everything they ca…

> horrific disloyalty of both companies and employees There’s no such a thing as loyalty in employer-employee relationships. There’s money, there’s work and there’s [collective] leverage. We need to learn a thing or two from blue collars.

> We need to learn a thing or two from blue collars.

A majority of my friends are blue-collar.

You might be surprised.

Unions are adversarial, but the relationships can still be quite warm.

I hear that German and Japanese unions are full-force stakeholders in their corporations, and the relationship is a lot more intricate.

It's like a marriage. There's always elements of control/power play, but the idea is to maximize the benefits.

It can be done. It has been done.

It's just kind of lost, in tech.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#253

Post by einpoklum »

sevensor wrote: post #12

What AI is going to wipe out is white collar jobs where people sleepwalk through the working day and carelessly half ass every task. In 2025, we can get LLMs to do that for us. Unfortunately, the kind of executive who thinks AI is a legitimate replacement for actual work does not recognize the difference. I expect to see the more credulous CEOs dynamiting their companies as a result. Whether the rest of us can surviv…

I haven't worked in the US; and - have not yet worked in a company where such employees exist. Some are slower, some are fast or more efficient or productive - but they're all, everyone, under the pressure of too many tasks assigned to them, and it's always obvious that more personnel is needed but budget (supposedly) precludes it.

So, what you're describing is a mythical situation for me. But - US corporations are fabulously rich, or perhaps I should say highly-valued, and there are lots of investors to throw money at things I guess, so maybe that actually happens.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#254

Post by hooverd »

MattSayar wrote: post #165
hooverd wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you talk about Rust without your friend computer?

Can you talk about assembly without the internet? I fully understand your point and even agree with it to an extent. LLMs are just another layer of abstraction, like C is an abstraction for asm is an abstraction for binary is an abstraction for transistors... we all stand on the shoulders of giants. We write code to accomplish a task, not the other way around.

I think friction is important to learning and expertise. LLMs are great tools if you view them as compression. I think calculators are a good example, people like to bring those up as a gotcha, but an alarming amount of people are now innumerate on basic receipt math or comprehending orders of magnitude.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#255

Post by chongli »

brookst wrote: post #211
CKMo wrote: post #185

There's definitely a big problem with entry-level jobs being replaced by AI. Why hire an intern or a recent college-grad when they lack both the expertise and experience to do what an AI could probably do? Sure, the AI might require handholding and prompting too, but the AI is either cheaper or actually "smarter" than the young person. In many cases, it's both. I work with some people who I believe have the capacity…

I just can't agree with this argument at all. Today, you hire an intern and they need a lot of hand-holding, are often a net tax on the org, and they deliver a modest benefit. Tomorrow's interns will be accustomed to using AI, will need less hand-holding, will be able to leverage AI to deliver more. Their total impact will be much higher. The whole "entry level is screwed" view only works if you assume that companies…

Tomorrow's interns will be accustomed to using AI, will need less hand-holding, will be able to leverage AI to deliver more.

Maybe tomorrow's interns will be "AI experts" who need less hand-holding, but the day after that will be kids who used AI throughout elementary school and high school and know nothing at all, deferring to AI on every question, and have zero ability to tell right from wrong among the AI responses.

I tutor a lot of high school students and this is my takeaway over the past few years: AI is absolutely laying waste to human capital. It's completely destroying students' ability to learn on their own. They are not getting an education anymore, they're outsourcing all their homework to the AI.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#256

Post by FirmwareBurner »

alephnerd wrote: post #245
nyarlathotep_ wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony now is that 120k is basically minimum wage for major metros (and in most cases that excludes home ownership). Of course, that growth in wages in this sector was a contributing factor to home/rental price increases as the "market" could bear higher prices.

CoL in London or Dublin is comparable to much of the US, but new grad salaries are in the $30-50k range. The issue is salary expectations in the US are much higher than those in much of Western Europe despite having similar CoL. And $120k for a new grad is only a tech specific thing. Even new grad management consultants earn $80-100k base, and lower for other non-software roles and industries.

>but new grad salaries are in the $30-50k range

But in UK an Ireland they get free healthcare, paid vacation, sick leave and labor protections, no?

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#257

Post by necheffa »

CKMo wrote: post #185

There's definitely a big problem with entry-level jobs being replaced by AI. Why hire an intern or a recent college-grad when they lack both the expertise and experience to do what an AI could probably do? Sure, the AI might require handholding and prompting too, but the AI is either cheaper or actually "smarter" than the young person. In many cases, it's both. I work with some people who I believe have the capacity…

> Why hire an intern or a recent college-grad when they lack both the expertise and experience to do what an AI could probably do?

AI can barely provide the code for a simple linked list without dropping NULL pointer dereferences every other line...

Been interviewing new grads all week. I'd take a high performing new grad that can be mentored into the next generation of engineer any day.

If you don't want to do constant hand holding with a "meh" candidate...why would you want to do constant hand holding with AI?

> I often find myself choosing to just use an AI for work I would have delegated to them, because I need it fast and I need it now.

Not sure what you are working on. I would never prioritize speed over quality - but I do work in a public safety context. I'm actually not even sure of the legality of using an AI for design work but we have a company policy that all design analysis must still be signed off on by a human engineer in full as if it were 100% their own.

I certainly won't be signing my name on a document full of AI slop. Now an analysis done by a real human engineer with the aid of AI - sure, I'd walk through the same verification process I'd walk through for a traditional analysis document before signing my name on the cover sheet. And that is something a jr. can bring to me to verify.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#258

Post by deadbabe »

Something I’ve come to realize in the software industry is: if you have more smart engineers than the competition, you win.

If you don’t snatch up the smartest engineers before your competition does: you lose.

Therefore at a certain level of company, hiring is entirely dictated by what the competition is doing. If everyone is suddenly hiring, you better start doing it too. If no one is, you can relax, but you could also pull ahead if you decide to hire rapidly, but this will tip off competitors and they too will begin hiring.

Whether or not you have any use for those engineers is irrelevant. So AI will have little impact on hiring trends in this market. The downturn we’ve seen in the past few years is mostly driven by the interest rate environment, not because AI is suddenly replacing engineers. An engineer using AI gives more advantage than removing an engineer, and hiring an engineer who will use AI is more advantageous than not hiring one at all.

AI is just the new excuse for firing or not hiring people, previously it was RTO but that hype cycle has been squeezed for all it can be.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#259

Post by ikrenji »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #67
roenxi wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being confused by the numbers. We aren't trying to maximise consumer spending, the point is to maximise living standards. If the market equilibrium price of all goods was $0 consumer spending would be $0 and living standards would be off the charts. It'd be a great outcome. It just happens that up to this point there have been things that couldn't be done by capital. Now we're entering a world where there isn'…

In theory. In reality, how are the benefits of all this efficiency going to be distributed to the people who aren't working? I sure don't see any calls for higher taxes and more wealth redistribution.

Let's face it ~ almost all work will be automated in the next 50 years. Either capitalism dies or humanity dies

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#260

Post by dasil003 »

diogolsq wrote: post #239
CKMo wrote: post #185

There's definitely a big problem with entry-level jobs being replaced by AI. Why hire an intern or a recent college-grad when they lack both the expertise and experience to do what an AI could probably do? Sure, the AI might require handholding and prompting too, but the AI is either cheaper or actually "smarter" than the young person. In many cases, it's both. I work with some people who I believe have the capacity…

You’re right that AI is fast and often more efficient than entry-level humans for certain tasks — but I’d argue that what you’re describing isn’t delegation, it’s just choosing to do the work yourself via a tool. Implementation costs are lower now, so you decide to do it on your own. Delegation, properly defined, involves transferring not just the task but the judgment and ownership of its outcome. The perfect delega…

You said exactly what I came here to say.

Maybe some day AI will truly be able to think and reason in a way that can approximate a human, but we're still very far from that. And even when we do, the accountability problem means trusting AI is a huge risk.

It's true that there are white collar jobs that don't require actual thinking, and those are vulnerable, but that's just the latest progression of computerization/automation that's been happening steadily for the last 70 years already.

It's also true that AI will completely change the nature of software development, meaning that you won't be able to coast just on arcane syntax knowledge the way a lot of programmers have been able to so far. But the fundamental precision of logical thought and mapping it to a desirable human outcome will still be needed, the only change is how you arrive there. This actually benefits young people who are already becoming "AI native" and will be better equipped to leverage AI capabilities to the max.

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