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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

#351

Post by lamename »

rekenaut wrote: post #299
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.

I feel that saying "120k is basically minimum wage for major metros" is absurd. As of 2022, there are only three metro areas in the US that have a per capita income greater than $120,000 [1] (Bay Area and Southwest Connecticut). Anywhere else in the US, 120k is doing pretty well for yourself, compared to the rest of the population. The average American working full time earns $60k [2]. I'm sure it's not a comfortable…

I disagree. Your data doesnt make the grandparent's assertion false. Cost of living != per capita or median income. Factoring in sensible retirement, expensive housing, inflation, etc, I think the $120k figure may not be perfect, but is close enough to reality.

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

#352

Post by JSR_FDED »

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 don’t doubt there’s a lot of knowledge workers who aren’t adding value.

I’m worried about the shrinking number of opportunities for juniors.

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

#353

Post by lokar »

kstrauser wrote: post #331
ajmurmann wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am VERY pro-immigration. I do have concerns about the H1B program though. IMO it's not great for both immigrant workers, as well as non-immigrant workers because it creates a class of workers for whom it's harder to change employers which weakens their negotiation position. If this is the case for enough of the workforce it artificially depresses wages for everyone. I want to see a reform that makes it much easier…

I agree with all of that. I've seen employers treat workers with H1B visas as slaves, basically. Local employees had a pretty decent work-life balance, but H1B employees got calls at 8PM on a Friday night to add a feature. And why not? What were they going to do quit (and have, what is it, something like 48 hours to get out of the country)? I felt enormous sympathy for my coworkers here with that visa. Their lives su…

It sucks that people are treated that way.

While working at Google I worked with many many amazing H1B (and other kinds) visa holders. I did 3 interviews a week, sat on hiring committees (reading 10-15 packets a week) and had a pretty good gauge of what we could find.

There was just no way I could see that we could replace these people with Americans. And they got paid top dollar and had the same wlb as everyone else (you could not generally tell what someone’s status was).

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

#354

Post by rightbyte »

Spooky23 wrote: post #346
ajmurmann wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am VERY pro-immigration. I do have concerns about the H1B program though. IMO it's not great for both immigrant workers, as well as non-immigrant workers because it creates a class of workers for whom it's harder to change employers which weakens their negotiation position. If this is the case for enough of the workforce it artificially depresses wages for everyone. I want to see a reform that makes it much easier…

In context of tech, H1B is great for the money people in the US and India. It suppresses wages in both countries and is a powerful plum for employee “loyalty”. There’s a whole industry of companies stoking the pipeline of cheap labor and corrupting the hiring process. In big dollar markets, the program is used more for special skills. But when a big bank or government contractor needs marginally skilled people onshor…

How does H1B suppress wages in India?

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

#355

Post by matthest »

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.…

Does anyone else think the fact that companies hire superfluous employees (i.e. bullshit jobs) is actually fantastic?

Because they don't have to do that. They could just operate at max efficiency all the time.

Instead, they spread the wealth a bit by having bullshit jobs, even if the existence of these jobs is dependent on the market cycle.

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

#356

Post by janalsncm »

CSMastermind wrote: post #349

Huge amounts of white collar jobs have been automated since the advent of computers. If you look at the work performed by office workers in the 1960s and compared it to what people today do it'd be almost unrecognizable. They spent huge amounts of time on things that software either does automatically or makes 1,000x faster. But by and large that actually created more white collar jobs because those capabilities mean…

I don’t like this argument because 1) it doesn’t address the social consequences of rapid onset and large scale unemployment and 2) there is no law of nature that a job lost here creates a new job there.

On the first point, unemployment during the Great Depression was “only” 30%. And those people were eventually able to find other jobs. Here, we are talking about permanent unemployment for even larger numbers of people.

The Luddites were right. Machines did take their jobs. Those individuals who invested significantly in their craft were permanently disadvantaged. And those who fought against it were executed.

And on point 2, to be precise, a lack of jobs doesn’t mean a lack of problems. There are a ton of things society needs to have accomplished, and in a perfect world the guy who was automated out of packing Amazon boxes could open a daycare for low income parents. We just don’t have economic models to enable most of those things, and that’s only going to get worse.

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

#357

Post by lanstin »

catigula wrote: post #327
lostlogin wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea that literally massive amounts of this workforce couldn't possibly be filled by domestic grads is pretty hard to engage with. I hear this argument where I live for various reasons, but surely it only ever comes down to wages and/or conditions? If the company paid a competitive rate (ie higher), locals would apply. Surely blaming a lack of local interest is rarely going to be due to anything other than pay…

The company having access to the global labor force is the problem we're explicitly discussing. This isn't seen as something desirable by US workers.

I was born in NC, and I mostly have experienced the large amount of immigration as a positive. Most of the people I grew up were virulently anti-intellectuals, mocking math and science learning, and most of them have gone on to be realtors and business folks, bankers even. All the people I've met from China or South Asia (the two demographics I work most closely worth) value learning and science and math - not as some "lets have STEM summer camps" but when they meet some new 8 year old will ask them to solve some math problems (like precisely 1 of my kids' dozens of relatives).

I enjoy meeting the very smart people from all sorts of backgrounds - they share the values of education and hard work that my parents emphasized, and they have an appreciation for what we enjoy as software engineers; US born folks tend to have a bit of entitlement, and want success without hard work.

I interview a fair number of people, and truly first rate minds are a limited resource - there's just so many in each city (and not everyone will want to or be able to move for a career). Even with "off-shoring" one finds after hiring in a given city for a while, it gets harder, and the efficient thing to do is to open a branch in a new city.

I don't know, perhaps the realtors from my class get more money than many scientists or engineers, and certainly more than my peers in India (whose salaries have gone from 10% of mine to about 40% of mine in the past decade or two), but the point is the real love of solving novel problems - in an industry where success leads to many novel problems.

Hard work, interesting problems, and building things that actual people use - these are the core value prop for software engineering as a career; the money is pretty new and not the core; finding people who share that perspective is priceless. Enough money to provide a good start to your children and help your family is good, but never the heart of the matter.

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

#358

Post by 827a »

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.…

Half of everyone at most large companies could be retired with no significant impact to the company's ability to generate revenue. The problem has always been figuring out which half.

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

#359

Post by phatfish »

baxtr wrote: post #250
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 think it’s the other way around. If LLMs continue to become more powerful, hiring more juniors who can use them will be a no-brainer.

Yup, apart from a few companies at the cutting edge the most difficult problems to solve in a work environment are not technical.

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

#360

Post by hluska »

catigula wrote: post #231
gedy wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was working at a SoCal company a couple years ago (where I’m from), and we had a lot of Chinese and Indian folks. I remember cracking up when one of the Indian fellows pulled me aside and asked me where I was from, because I sounded so different with my accent and lingo. He thought I was from some small European country, lol.

Just to note interpersonally I find pretty much any group to be great on average but being a participant of US labor and sympathetic to other US laborers this is clearly not something I can support.

You can’t support having a good enough relationship with coworkers from outside of your country that you can relate cheerful anecdotes about them?
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