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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

#811

Post by wcfrobert »

danenania wrote: post #776
wcfrobert wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If AI makes everyone 10x engineers, you can 2x the productive output while reducing headcount by 5x. Luckily software companies are not ball bearings factories.

> If AI makes everyone 10x engineers, you can 2x the productive output while reducing headcount by 5x. Why wouldn't you just 10x the productive output instead?

I don't think it would be trivial to increase demand by 10x (or even 2x) that quickly. Eventually, a publicly traded company will get a bad quarter, at which point it's much easier to just reduce the number of employees. In both scenarios, there's no need for any new-hire.

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

#812

Post by vharish »

tdeck wrote: post #416

Maybe someone can help me wrap my head around this in a different way, because here's how I see it. If these tools are really making people so productive, shouldn't it be painfully obvious in companies' output? For example, if these AI coding tools were an amazing productivity boost in the end, we'd expect to see software companies shipping features and fixes faster than ever before. There would be a huge burst in in…

Overall, the amount of code that's being deployed to production has definitely increased.

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

#813

Post by hombre_fatal »

tdeck wrote: post #416

Maybe someone can help me wrap my head around this in a different way, because here's how I see it. If these tools are really making people so productive, shouldn't it be painfully obvious in companies' output? For example, if these AI coding tools were an amazing productivity boost in the end, we'd expect to see software companies shipping features and fixes faster than ever before. There would be a huge burst in in…

This is like asking if tariffs are so bad, why don't you notice large price swings in your local grocer right now?

In complex systems, you can't necessarily perceive the result of large internal changes, especially not with the tiny amount of vibes sampling you're basing this on.

You really don't have the pulse on how fast the average company is shipping new code changes, and I don't see why you think you would know that. Shipping new public end-use features isn't even a good signal, it's a downstream product and a small fraction of software written.

It's like thinking you are picking up a vibe related to changes in how many immigrants are coming into the country month to month when you walk around the mall.

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

#814

Post by aikinai »

oblio wrote: post #807
simonsarris wrote: post #465

I think the real white collar bloodbath is that the end of ZIRP was the end of infinite software job postings, and the start of layoffs. I think its easy to now point to AI, but it seems like a canard for the huge thing that already happened. just look at this: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1JmOr In terms of magnitude the effect of this is just enormous and still being felt, and never recovered to pre-2020 lev…

> People a decade from now will think Elon slashed Twitter's employee count by 90% because of some AI initiative, and not because he simply thought he could run a lot leaner. That part is so overblown. Twitter was still trying to hit moonshots. X is basically in "keep the lights on" mode as Musk doesn't need more. Yeah, if Google decides it doesn't want to grow anymore, it can probably cut it's workforce by 90%. And…

What moonshots has Twitter gone for in the last decade? Feature velocity is also higher since the acquisition.

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

#815

Post by mNovak »

tdeck wrote: post #416

Maybe someone can help me wrap my head around this in a different way, because here's how I see it. If these tools are really making people so productive, shouldn't it be painfully obvious in companies' output? For example, if these AI coding tools were an amazing productivity boost in the end, we'd expect to see software companies shipping features and fixes faster than ever before. There would be a huge burst in in…

I mean, if a mega corp like Google or Amazon had plus/minus 10% of their headcount, as a lay observer I don't think I'd really be able to detect the difference in output either.

That doesn't mean it isn't a real productivity gain, but it might be spread across enough domains (bugs, features, internal tools, experiments) to not be immediately or "painfully obvious".

It'll probably get more obvious if we start to see uniquely productive small teams seeing success. A sort of "vibe-code wonder".

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

#816

Post by yellow_lead »

leptons wrote: post #809
simonsarris wrote: post #465

I think the real white collar bloodbath is that the end of ZIRP was the end of infinite software job postings, and the start of layoffs. I think its easy to now point to AI, but it seems like a canard for the huge thing that already happened. just look at this: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1JmOr In terms of magnitude the effect of this is just enormous and still being felt, and never recovered to pre-2020 lev…

What's happening now is similar to what happened during the 2000's "dot-com bubble burst". Having barely survived that time, I saw this one coming and people told me I was crazy when I told them to hold on to their jobs and quit job-hopping, because the job-hopper is very often the first one to get laid off. In 2000 I was moved cities and I had a job lined-up at a company that was run by my friends, I had about 15 go…

Those are some great friends. Aside from job hoppers, I noticed there are a lot of company loyalists getting canned too though (i.e worked at MSFT 10 years)

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

#817

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

rule2025 wrote: post #610

The real "white-collar massacre" is not caused by AI, but you have no irreplaceable, or the value created by hiring you is not higher than using AI. Businesses will not hesitate to use AI, you can't say that companies are ruthless, but that's the pursuit of efficiency. Just as horse-drawn carriages were replaced by cars and coachmen lost their jobs, you can't say it's a problem with cars. History is always strikingly…

There's a popular saying, e.g. used by NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, that "AI won't replace you - a human using AI will replace you", which may be temporarily true while AI isn't very capable, but the AI CEOs are claiming AGI will be here in 2 years, and explicitly saying that it will be a "drop-in replacement remote worker". Obviously one of these is wrong - it's either just a tool to be learnt and used, or it is in fact a drop-in replacement for a human.

One can argue about the timeline and technology (maybe not LLM based), but it does seem that human-level AGI will be here relatively soon - next 10 or 20 years, perhaps, if not 2. When this does happen, history is unlikely to be a good predictor of what to expect... AGI may create new jobs as well as detstroy old ones, but what's different is that AGI will also be doing those new jobs! AGI isn't automating one industry, or creating a technology like computers that can help automate any industry - AGI is a technology that will replace the need for human workers in any capacity, starting with all jobs that can be conducted without a physical presence.

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

#818

Post by uludag »

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 thought the whole idea of automation though was to lower the skill requirement. Everyone compares AI to the industrial revolution and the shift from artisan work to factory work. If this analogy were to hold true, then what employers should actually be wanting is more junior devs, maybe even non-devs, hired at a much cheaper wage. A senior dev may be able to outperform a junior by a lot, but assuming the AI is good enough, four juniors or like 10 non-devs should be able to outperform a senior.

This obviously not being the case shows that we're not in a AI driven fundamental paradigm shift, but rather run of the mill cost cutting measures. Like suppose a tech bubble pops and there are mass layoffs (like the Dotcom bubble). Obviously people will loose their jobs. AI hype merchants will almost definitely try to push the narrative that these losses are from AI advancements in an effort to retain funding.

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

#819

Post by chucksmash »

komali2 wrote: post #678
hoseyor wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He also lived in a time when the intense importance and function of a moral and cultural framework for society was taken for granted. He would have never imagined the level of social and moral degeneration of today. I will not go into specifics because the authoritarians still disagree and think everything is fine with degenerative debauchery and try to abuse anyone even just pointing to failing systems, but it all d…

That a capitalist society might achieve a 15 hour workweek if it maintained a "non debauched culture" and "culture homogeneity" is an extraordinary claim I've never seen a scrap of evidence for. Can you support this extraordinary claim? That there's any cultural "degenerative debauchery" is an extraordinary claim. Can you back up this claim with evidence? "Decimated," "muddled," and "polluted" imply you have an objec…

> That there's any cultural "degenerative debauchery" is an extraordinary claim. Can you back up this claim with evidence?

What's the sense in asking for examples? If one person sees ubiquitous cultural decay and the other says "this is fine," I think the difference is down to worldview. And for a pessimist and an optimist to cite examples at one another is unlikely to change the other's worldview.

If a pessimist said, "the opioid crisis is deadlier than the crack epidemic and nobody cares," would that change the optimist's mind?

If a pessimist said, "the rate of suicide has increased by 30% since the year 2000," would that change the optimist's mind?

If a pessimist said, "corporate profits, wealth inequality, household debt, and homelessness are all at record highs," ...?

And coming from the other side, all these things can be Steven Pinker'd if you want to feel like "yes there are real problems but actually things are better than ever."

There was a book that said something about "you will recognize them by their fruit." If these problems are the fruit born of our culture, it's worth asking how we got here instead of dismissing it with "What do you know that the anthropologists and sociologists don't?"

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

#820

Post by madaxe_again »

hansmayer wrote: post #805
madaxe_again wrote: post #777

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the dot-com bubble never happened.

We're talking technology adoption here, no need to sidetrack (although I would argue, the bubble of technology sector burning 200B to produce 10B in revenue will be so much more painful). Back in the day everyone was running to do something on the web, commercial or not, be it out of enthusiasm, greed, noble aspirations, art or even criminal (warez, anyone?). I won't even mention the iPhone moment here. Compare that…

Right - adoption was slower than people expected at the time, but it did happen, and a lot of the stuff that got thrown at the wall back then did eventually stick.

We are absolutely in a hype and market bubble around AI right now - and like the dot com bubble, the growth came not in 2000, but years later. It turns out it takes time for a new technology to percolate through society, and I use the “mom metric” as a bellwether - if your/my mother is using the tech, you’d better believe it has achieved market penetration.

Until 2011 my mum was absolutely not interested in the web. Now she does most of her shopping on it, and spends her days boomerposting.

She recently decided to start paying for ChatGPT.

Sure, it’s a fuzzy thing, but I think the adoption cycle this time around will be faster, as the access to the tech is already in peoples’ hands, and there are plenty of folks who are already finding useful applications for genai.

Robotaxis, whether they end up dominated by Tesla or waymo or someone else entirely, are inarguably here, and the adoption rates (the USA is not the only market in the world) are ramping significantly this year.

I’m not sure I get your point about smartphones? They’re in practically every pocket on the planet, now, they’re not some niche thing.

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