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US Job Market Visualizer

karpathy.ai

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Re: US Job Market Visualizer

#291

Post by pc86 »

kitten_mittens_ wrote: post #275
matthest wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitionally the 1% is people making ~$800k+ a year. Upper-middle class is people making ~$200k/year. A lot of people have moved from middle class to upper middle class over the last decade. Both those categories are outside the 1%.

When did upper middle class start meaning upper class? Something like 90% of Americans identify as middle class now.

That's why someone's self-described position means nothing. Something like 80-85% of drivers describe themselves as "above average" at driving, too.

The upper limit and the median of the household income quintiles as of 2022 are:[0]

  Lowest: $ 30,000 / $ 16,120
  Second: $ 58,020 / $ 43,850
  Middle: $ 94,000 / $ 74,730
  Fourth: $153,000 / $119,900
     Top:        - / $277,300
I think getting into the weeds on whether $80k or $100k or $120k/yr is a middle class sort of misses the point, but at least with my eyes it is hard to argue you're middle class if you're making more than about $150k at the most.

Even the GP, which I directionally agree with, says "upper-middle class is people making ~$200k/yr" but you're deep into the top quintile by that point, probably top 10%. I don't know what percentile I consider "upper middle" but it's definitely lower than top 10%.

[0] https://taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/household-income-quin...

Re: US Job Market Visualizer

#292

Post by guywithahat »

bequanna wrote: post #279
dfadsadsf wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every year US absorbs 120k+ H1B+L1+OPT new visa holders. Considering there are 1.9M software engineers, market has to grow by 5% every year just to stand still. Add US graduates and you are talking about 10% growth required just to maintain employment. It's not realistic long term. Congress/president should pause H1B visas or hike up fee to 200-500K so that only truly exceptional talent are allowed in. Right now it's…

Are new H1Bs a thing anymore? Since the fee went up to $100k, I’m not aware of any companies still sponsoring hires who need a new H1B

I think a lot of people have just moved to L1/O1/etc visas to get around it as OP pointed out, although a lot of people are still hiring H1B's. Amazon has applied for over 2000 H1B's so far this year, which puts them on track for ~7000 for the year https://www.uscis.gov/tools/reports-and-studies/h-1b-employe...

Re: US Job Market Visualizer

#293

Post by givemeethekeys »

quietsegfault wrote: post #178
givemeethekeys wrote: post #99

Question for those in the know: are IT jobs being affected the same as software engineering jobs with all the consolidation and AI? Whats the outlook like? Thank you!

Like, IT helpdesk? Yes. Almost all of the tickets I create as a "knowledge worker" to my enterprise helpdesk are sloved by an AI assistant - group ownership, adding me to an app, etc.

I meant more generally - IT administration, Networking, DevOps etc.. as in, is it a shrinking field or a growing one?

Re: US Job Market Visualizer

#294

Post by kingstnap »

jameslk wrote: post #186

> You are an expert analyst evaluating how exposed different occupations are to AI. You will be given a detailed description of an occupation from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. > Rate the occupation's overall AI Exposure on a scale from 0 to 10. Are LLMs good at scoring? In my experience, using an LLM for scoring things usually produces arbitrary results. I'm surprised to see Karpathy employ it

In my experience LLMs often have really solid insights in the thinking chains then vomit a nonsense score that doesn't make sense.

Now I'm not sure if this is actually an LLM only thing. Because I think people probably do similar when you ask them to give a number to things without providing a concrete grading rubric...

Re: US Job Market Visualizer

#295

Post by guywithahat »

Dig1t wrote: post #286
bequanna wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are new H1Bs a thing anymore? Since the fee went up to $100k, I’m not aware of any companies still sponsoring hires who need a new H1B

We have hit the cap for H1B's every year and we will always do so until we get rid of the program. Cheap labor will always be in demand. A 100k one-time fee is nothing for big employers. That's 25k/year for 4 years, and if you realize that H1B's can't easily leave their job it's obviously worth it. Compare hiring an H1B that is stuck at their job, to an American who can leave at any time. You can pay the H1B a lower…

There's an X account which just posts universities hiring H1B's for ~half of what it would normally cost to hire people. An 80k/yr senior software developer will always be in demand, especially if the team is already predominantly non-american

Re: US Job Market Visualizer

#296

Post by tavavex »

gzread wrote: post #151
dwroberts wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI has already won. It's taking over. It might be a year or two, or five, or ten, but AI isn't slowing down, nobody is going to pause, and there's a whole shit ton of work people do that won't be meaningful or economically relevant in the very near term Maybe it was linked from a comment somewhere on HN but just today I saw a post saying “Microwaves are the future of all food: if you don’t think so, you better get…

This is a great analogy, because just like AI, microwaves are good for quick fixes, tasks where you don't really care about the quality and would rather minimise the effort.

I think the analogy is a bit inaccurate here when people are talking about automation.

Microwaves do one thing, but they do it reliably. Microwaves didn't affect the culinary industry because cooking is far more than just heating food, and many tasks are very difficult to automate. LLMs are more general-purpose - the average Joe is now relying on them as a source of truth, advice and mental work across the board. However, LLMs can't be guaranteed to always be reliable, it's all probabilistic. The threat of automation here is in taking away a lot of the less important or less complex work. Low impact + high precision (microwave) vs. high impact + low precision (AI)

Re: US Job Market Visualizer

#298

Post by klipt »

buzer wrote: post #288
bequanna wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are new H1Bs a thing anymore? Since the fee went up to $100k, I’m not aware of any companies still sponsoring hires who need a new H1B

As far as I understand the $100k fee applies only to consulate issued H1Bs. L1 -> H1B path (via AOS) is possible without fee. (Recent) US university graduates can also use similar path from what I understand. We will see how much the $100k fee affects things during this H1B lottery round in few weeks.

Exactly https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/few-us-busi...

> Only about 70 employers have paid a $100,000 Trump fee on H-1B workers from outside the US since it was imposed through a September White House proclamation, a government attorney said Thursday.

Re: US Job Market Visualizer

#299

Post by ea550ff70a »

dfadsadsf wrote: post #274
ravenstine wrote: post #250

Wow, I had no idea the reason my peers and I can't find another position in less than 12 months is because the market for software developers is growing faster than average!

Every year US absorbs 120k+ H1B+L1+OPT new visa holders. Considering there are 1.9M software engineers, market has to grow by 5% every year just to stand still. Add US graduates and you are talking about 10% growth required just to maintain employment. It's not realistic long term. Congress/president should pause H1B visas or hike up fee to 200-500K so that only truly exceptional talent are allowed in. Right now it's…

this comment has so many bad assumptions is not even worth debating

Re: US Job Market Visualizer

#300

Post by shagie »

doomslayer999 wrote: post #285
shagie wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes the assumption that every H1B, L1, and OPT is going into software development. https://apnews.com/article/teacher-jobs-h1b-j1-visa-online-s... Like many school systems facing teacher shortages, South Carolina’s Allendale County has looked overseas for help. A quarter of the teachers in the rural, high-poverty district come from other countries. The superintendent praises the international educators — mostl…

[flagged]

I personally believe that the H1 visa should get split into more distinct fields.

That was the way that it started... the H-1A ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1A_visa ) was for nurses and H-1B was for other specialty occupations.

Nurses transitioned to the H-1C visa (which expired in 2009 https://www.uscis.gov/archive/h-1c-registered-nurse-working-... )

So, split out technology careers from H-1B so that they can be regulated with less impact on the other careers that are currently under the H-1B.

The other part would be to properly fund DOL so that they have the resources to inspect H-1B-dependent employers ( https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/62c-h1b-depende... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B-dependent_employer ) more carefully and prosecute visa fraud in a more timely manner (note that this also gets to other parts that got struck down with Chevron deference so instead of DOL being able to do things administratively it requires going through the courts).

And yes, I do believe that upping the filing fees for H-1B-dependent employers would be a good thing... and auditing them to make sure that they have a butt in seat position for their employees and aren't hiring to try to make a deeper bench of poorly qualified individuals doing routine tasks that do not require a specialty technology degree.

The current (rather hamfisted) approach to trying to cut back on immigration has knock on effects that are impacting rural and remote parts America to a much greater degree than urban areas.

https://kansasreflector.com/2025/10/18/how-new-foreign-worke...

https://www.alaskasnewssource.com/2026/03/14/sen-murkowski-i...

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