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

The tech jobs bust is real. Don't blame AI (yet)

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 207 posts

Re: The tech jobs bust is real. Don't blame AI (yet)

#41

Post by gerdesj »

bookofjoe wrote: post #26
cheschire wrote: post #23

Without an archive link I think 90% of these comments will be in response to the title only.

I'd happily provide one but I've had enough of being repeatedly trashed and denigrated here for posting too many archive links.

You could look at your denigrators and decide: "fuck you". Internet points are strangely attractive but not vital. You can always post with another account with a bit of effort too.

I understand that you are pissed off (as am I too) but debating with an army of bots, LLMs, wankers and Russians is unfortunately the status quo, quotidien.

On the bright side there are lots of lovely folk hereabouts with a large thing between their ears.

Re: The tech jobs bust is real. Don't blame AI (yet)

#42

Post by xdennis »

jmyeet wrote: post #38

So I want to talk about the Claude Mythos mega-model that had a real marketing push in the last week. Marcus Hutchins (of IWannaCry fame) posted about the economics of this [1]. The upshot here is this was a longstanding BSD bug but mostly because nobody is paying BSD bug bounties and a null-pointer dereference may induce a crash but rarely (if ever) leads to privilege escalation as buffer overflows generally do so i…

> $50k gets you a lot of developer time, upwards of 2 months.

God, I wish I was American sometimes...

Re: The tech jobs bust is real. Don't blame AI (yet)

#44

Post by menzoic »

AlBugdy wrote: post #12

Can anyone provide historical data for "job busts" or other types of declines in tech employment, massive layoffs or hire freezes? I seem to read about something like this every few years. Would like some data to see if this trend is stronger than the previous ones or not.

I just put your question into GPT-5 Pro

Re: The tech jobs bust is real. Don't blame AI (yet)

#45

Post by Aurornis »

dvwcf wrote: post #13
0xAntonioo wrote: post #8

Feels early to blame AI for most of this. A lot of it still looks like a reset from 2021-era hiring assumptions rather than actual labor replacement

Over hiring is one thing.. but that wouldnt be a problem if there was an endless stream of projects to take that are value creating. So the issue is not necessarily the over-hiring.. more that the large tech firms are running out of projects to take that are value-creating. Which is not surprising - the labour market in its currently state is absolutely not perfect in allocating labour. It should be noted that fixing…

I don't think it's that simple. The 2021 over-hiring was a weird time where hiring as many people as possible became a goal in itself.

There were companies growing organizations faster than they could be made productive. They acquired a lot of bureaucracy, excess structure, and inefficiency. The current backlash is trying to reverse the excess structure and middle management buildout so they can get back to more functional teams.

Re: The tech jobs bust is real. Don't blame AI (yet)

#46

Post by fluoridation »

wmf wrote: post #7
HerbManic wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I get this stream of thought, the major difference is that the internal hardware will age much faster than the core infrastructure. The real question is, how much of these build out costs is the center itself and the hardware within. That fiber build out will last for decades, a Blackwell GPU, not so much.

I could be wrong but it seems like in the case of a crash no one will be buying new GPUs and thus the existing ones could hold their value longer. Of course that value will no longer be massively inflated by bubble FOMO.

>in the case of a crash no one will be buying new GPUs and thus the existing ones could hold their value longer.

No, because no one has any use for those monstrous GPUs outside of ML and some research projects. They can't even be dropped onto the consumer market because a SOHO is not equipped to house devices like that. The best case scenario is that the boards get dismantled and the VRAM gets salvaged for refurbishing. They've built these machines so specialized that they're essentially disposable.

Re: The tech jobs bust is real. Don't blame AI (yet)

#47

Post by Uhhrrr »

bookofjoe wrote: post #26
cheschire wrote: post #23

Without an archive link I think 90% of these comments will be in response to the title only.

I'd happily provide one but I've had enough of being repeatedly trashed and denigrated here for posting too many archive links.

I have only ever gotten thanks and net positive points for posting archive links.

Re: The tech jobs bust is real. Don't blame AI (yet)

#49

Post by ianm218 »

jmyeet wrote: post #38

So I want to talk about the Claude Mythos mega-model that had a real marketing push in the last week. Marcus Hutchins (of IWannaCry fame) posted about the economics of this [1]. The upshot here is this was a longstanding BSD bug but mostly because nobody is paying BSD bug bounties and a null-pointer dereference may induce a crash but rarely (if ever) leads to privilege escalation as buffer overflows generally do so i…

You’re missing the cost curve of inference. What costs $20-50k now will cost 2-5k in a year or two at which point the math is a no brainer. It makes a lot of sense to build products that almost work now or are almost economical and ride the trend line.

Re: The tech jobs bust is real. Don't blame AI (yet)

#50

Post by calepayson »

mchusma wrote: post #29

developer jobs are up: postings ~11% YoY, tech workforce +1.9% projected for 2026, BLS 15% long-term growth. Rebound from 2024-25 lows Jevons paradox

I think a big part is that the hiring market for juniors feels apocalyptic rn. Jobs may be up in aggregate but that doesn’t necessarily mean everyone’s feeling it equally.
Post reply on HN