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AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds

arstechnica.com

41–50 of 188 posts

Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds

#41
post #32

It's brutal, my son with a CS degree hasn't been able to get to single live interview ina year. A couple of screens has been it. I've reached out to my network, and the reply is always we're not hiring any juniors.

We hired one junior out of maybe 10 hires. I don’t really know where to slot them in currently, as they lack the background knowledge of what is good or bad from AI. It’s a shame because years ago, I would have hired them and pointed them at a million small projects. Best of luck to your son. I wish I had advice

Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds

#43
post #5

The article assumes that jobs that can be automated are vulnerable. But in the postmortem of the AI driven layoffs so far, it's more that expectations about AI and productivity are driving the job cuts. In other words shareholders and senior management are being shown the appearance of expectations about AI being met, whether or not it's working. Entry-level jobs are an obvious place to look things that can be cut to…

Mortgaging the future to pay for the present.

All of these executives are operating under the pretense that they won’t be held accountable when in 10-15yr their middle bench is a disaster, and they’re probably right.

Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds

#44
post #8

this is a super non-popular take on HN. but the entry-level job market has always been tough. with AI, outside the big tech world, it is hard to justify hiring entry level engineers as the time to train them ( 1 year+ ) to be productive enough is such a drag on the seniors, when the agents deliver things more care and more edge cases.

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Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds

#46

So we have a crunch of expiring/retiring workers on the senior end and a cutoff of the flow of new talent from the junior end. They’d better pray that we see automation gains above and beyond what we’ve seen so far or else we’ll be paying the price in a single generation.

My really big worry is that the people making these choices just do not care about a single thing beyond this single generation Not a psychologist but my take on most of the wealthy people in the world is they are essentially narcissistic hedonists. They only care about growing wealth as a means to the end of maximizing the amount of fun they can have and to keep their egos happy that they have the most. They don't s…

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Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds

#47
post #8

this is a super non-popular take on HN. but the entry-level job market has always been tough. with AI, outside the big tech world, it is hard to justify hiring entry level engineers as the time to train them ( 1 year+ ) to be productive enough is such a drag on the seniors, when the agents deliver things more care and more edge cases.

From personal experience, back in the 2010s it was particularly harsh for those with a non-standard background. What few "opportunities" that existed were a handful of unpaid or grossly underpaid internships which were closed off to those who weren't students or recent graduates. Everybody wanted employees who were ready to start pumping out code with little or no training. That's not to diminish how much more diffic…

I feel like I never see anyone else say this. That was about when I got my career started and it was always difficult for me. And now it seems over despite all that work in the begining.

Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds

#48
post #32

It's brutal, my son with a CS degree hasn't been able to get to single live interview ina year. A couple of screens has been it. I've reached out to my network, and the reply is always we're not hiring any juniors.

I don’t understand this logic. If I’m being honest, the most productive people with AI on my team are the two youngest. They don’t have product wisdom, yes, but the gap is so noticeable that I pushed my manager to forego the full-time work experience requirement that we have always had so that new hires don’t even know the old way of working and can just reframe the field in terms of AI. AI is the biggest threat in o…

But the AI transition is different than old technological changes in that you don't really have to learn anything. You don't have to memorize keywords and new concepts like you'd have to for, say, a new JavaScript framework. If you don't know something about AI, you can just ask it and it will tell you.

Basically the only hard part for old people is getting USED to using AI. Some haven't, but it only takes a few weeks to do. After that, experience and taste really comes in handy and that can't be developed overnight.

Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My really big worry is that the people making these choices just do not care about a single thing beyond this single generation Not a psychologist but my take on most of the wealthy people in the world is they are essentially narcissistic hedonists. They only care about growing wealth as a means to the end of maximizing the amount of fun they can have and to keep their egos happy that they have the most. They don't s…

You’re probably not wrong. I’ve gone from being essentially destitute as a child to what people would call “well-off” and having the context of both experiences is…eye opening. I have moneyed acquaintances now that I never would have had before. For some of them the mere hint of their income being reduced in any way is enough to send them into spasms. These are people with enough money for their next 3 generations to…

I had a similar trajectory to you. Not destitute as a child but my family was lower class. Pretty well off now though

I have a rough idea of how much it would cost me to retire immediately and maintain my life in a way I'm happy until I am 100 if I lived that long

I see executives get bonus packages yearly that are more than that number would be for me. Their bonus nevermind their actual salaries.

And yet they act like their lives are hard and their jobs are hard.

I don't get it either

Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds

#50
post #27

The implosion in junior quality exacerbates this. The cohort that started during COVID were first knee-capped by remote classes and exams, and then they lobotomized themselves with ChatGPT.

I consider myself a high-quality junior, rivaling my senior industry peers on flexibility, systems thinking, low-level engineering, and understanding of user experience. yet all I found this year was a place I got fired from 2 weeks after getting hired. the reason? I called Claude Code "a decent search engine" on a meeting. perhaps I would have been fired anyway because the heatwave was building in Ukraine and I had absolutely nothing but a basement (where I can't move my desktop to) to cool off.
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