Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 1001 posts

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

#301

Post by rcpt »

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.

Maybe the EU is different but in the US there's no software engineering union. Our wages are purely what the market dictates.

Think they're too high? You're free to start a company and pay less.

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

#302

Post by monkeyelite »

michaeldoron wrote: post #78

Every time an analyst gives the current state of AI-based tools as evidence supporting AI disruption being just a hype, I think of skeptics who dismissed the exponential growth of covid19 cases due to their initial low numbers. Putting that aside, how is this article called an analysis and not an opinion piece? The only analysis done here is asking a labor economist what conditions would allow this claim to hold, and…

> I think of skeptics who dismissed the exponential growth of covid19 cases due to their initial low numbers.

But that didn’t happen. All of the people like pg who drew these accelerating graphs were wrong.

In fact, I think just about every commenter on COVID was wrong about what would happen in the early months regardless of political angle.

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

#303

Post by duderific »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #105
johnbenoe wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You ever thought there’s more to life than work lol. Maybe humans can approach a new standard of living…

If someone is going to suggest UBI, I wish they could explain to me how Reservations have failed so hard in the U.S.. I think that would be a cautionary tale.

Decades and decades of mistreatment are not going to be remedied by some modest handouts. That doesn't mean that UBI as a whole could never work.

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

#304

Post by icedchai »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #188
idkwhattocallme wrote: post #23

I worked at two different $10B+ market cap companies during ZIRP. I recall in most meetings over half of the knowledge workers attending were superfluous. I mean, we hired someone on my team to attend cross functional meetings because our calendars were literally too full to attend. Why could we do that? Because the company was growing and hiring someone to attend meetings wasn't going to hurt the skyrocketing stock.…

This is so true. We had a (admittedly derogatory) term we used during the rise in interest rates, "zero interest rate product managers". Don't get me wrong, I think great product managers are worth their weight in gold, but I encountered so many PMs during the ZIRP era who were essentially just Jira-updaters and meeting-schedulers. The vast majority of folks I see that were in tech that are having trouble getting hir…

I worked at a small company with more PMs than developers. It was incredible how much bull it created.

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

#305

Post by absurdo »

catigula wrote: post #206
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so true. We had a (admittedly derogatory) term we used during the rise in interest rates, "zero interest rate product managers". Don't get me wrong, I think great product managers are worth their weight in gold, but I encountered so many PMs during the ZIRP era who were essentially just Jira-updaters and meeting-schedulers. The vast majority of folks I see that were in tech that are having trouble getting hir…

Off-shoring is pretty big right now but what shocks me is that when I walk around my company campus I see obscene amounts of people visibly and culturally from, mostly, India and China. The idea that literally massive amounts of this workforce couldn't possibly be filled by domestic grads is pretty hard to engage with. These are low level business and accounting analyst positions. Both sides of the aisle retreated fr…

[flagged]

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

#306

Post by trhway »

bachmeier wrote: post #68
idkwhattocallme wrote: post #23

I worked at two different $10B+ market cap companies during ZIRP. I recall in most meetings over half of the knowledge workers attending were superfluous. I mean, we hired someone on my team to attend cross functional meetings because our calendars were literally too full to attend. Why could we do that? Because the company was growing and hiring someone to attend meetings wasn't going to hurt the skyrocketing stock.…

> I mean, we hired someone on my team to attend cross functional meetings because our calendars were literally too full to attend. Some managers read Dilbert and think it's intended as advice.

AI has been also consuming Dilbert as part of its training...

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

#307

Post by lukev »

idkwhattocallme wrote: post #23

I worked at two different $10B+ market cap companies during ZIRP. I recall in most meetings over half of the knowledge workers attending were superfluous. I mean, we hired someone on my team to attend cross functional meetings because our calendars were literally too full to attend. Why could we do that? Because the company was growing and hiring someone to attend meetings wasn't going to hurt the skyrocketing stock.…

Whenever I think about AI and labor, I can't help thinking about David Graeber's [Bullshit Jobs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs).

And there's multiple confounding factors at play.

Yes, lots of jobs are bullshit, so maybe AI is a plausible excuse to downside and gain efficiency.

But also the dynamic that causes the existence of bullshit jobs hasn't gone away. In fact, assuming AI does actually provide meaningful automation or productivity improvemenet, it might well be the case that the ratio of bullshit jobs increases.

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

#309

Post by qgin »

michaeldoron wrote: post #78

Every time an analyst gives the current state of AI-based tools as evidence supporting AI disruption being just a hype, I think of skeptics who dismissed the exponential growth of covid19 cases due to their initial low numbers. Putting that aside, how is this article called an analysis and not an opinion piece? The only analysis done here is asking a labor economist what conditions would allow this claim to hold, and…

This is the exact thing I’ve expressed as well.

This moment feels exactly to me like that moment when we were going to “shut down for two weeks” and the majority of people seemed to think that would be the end of it.

It was clear where the trend was going, but exponentials always seem ridiculous on an intuitive level.

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

#310

Post by jayd16 »

catigula wrote: post #206
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so true. We had a (admittedly derogatory) term we used during the rise in interest rates, "zero interest rate product managers". Don't get me wrong, I think great product managers are worth their weight in gold, but I encountered so many PMs during the ZIRP era who were essentially just Jira-updaters and meeting-schedulers. The vast majority of folks I see that were in tech that are having trouble getting hir…

Off-shoring is pretty big right now but what shocks me is that when I walk around my company campus I see obscene amounts of people visibly and culturally from, mostly, India and China. The idea that literally massive amounts of this workforce couldn't possibly be filled by domestic grads is pretty hard to engage with. These are low level business and accounting analyst positions. Both sides of the aisle retreated fr…

I mean, aren't 3 out of 8 humans from India or China? If the company is big enough to appeal to a global applicant pool its a bit expected.
Post reply on HN