AI code is only buggy if no-one is guiding or reviewing it
I'm not sure how long we'll need someone in the middle to actually review the code
That said, we will need less coders overall. Just like you don't need human drafters or calculators in the same way. It will cut the bottom out of the industry, and entry level will be expected operate like a senior from 10 years ago.
Always will, it's a question of how many people we need, not if. Well, until AGI (which I'm very bearish on in the near or even intermediate term) or some other monumental shift
You chose to invest in the downward career slope. That’s why your opinion has changed. If you continued to resist it you wouldn’t be looking to remove yourself from the auditing/coding position.
While we engineers understand how to judge and evaluate AI solutions, I am not sure Business Owners (BO) care.
BO's are ok with a certain percentage of bugs/rework/inefficiency/instability. And the tradeoff of eliminating (or marginalizing) Engineering may be worth the increased percentage of unfavorable outcomes.
I would say that the current capabilities of genAI is like a junior dev, sometimes even a mid-level. But one main difference is that a dev is slowly learning and improving and at some point will become a senior dev and also domain specialist.
If there is a codebase created by genAI, then it’s equivalent as if all devs left the company, so no one knows why some piece of code was created in a certain way, if it was part of the business logic or some implementation detail
You can most often “get used” to a codebase because they authors tend to stick to the same patterns in many ways, and they are somewhat coherent across time. After a bit you can kinda guess in what file is a feature implemented etc etc.
Will this still be true with ai doing most of the work?
The reality is lots of software problems can’t be solved with the level of “intelligence” LLMs have. And if they could, it wouldn’t be just software in danger - it’d be every human profession. Even the physical ones, since AI would quickly figure out how to build machinery to automate those.
Turns out, they never needed those humans in the first place.
That doesn't answer the other side of the problem though, that it's so hard to find work right now, even for folks who would typically be very easy to employ.
As far as more employable candidates go, I don't think executives realize the vast limitations of LLM. You have to remember they aren't technical people. They're thinking managers with no training are going to replace skilled employees--that there was a secret magic button that the lowly employees all knew about and it's now in their hands.
Sam Altman said there were now going to be one-person, billion-dollar companies. Reading between the lines, since there's not enough money for every person to do that, what does he intend for the remainder to become?
I was laid off as part of the initial panic in early 2020. The job market for IT for the entirety of 2020 was dead. D-E-A-D. There was a _very_ small pickup in the summer when people got more optimistic about the vaccines but it waned very quickly.
I'm in the Midwest so it might have been different in the West but I doubt it was that much different.
There was _some_ pickup in 2021, when companies realized the end of the world isn't happening soon, but it was not very significant. IT job market never really normalized, there was some pickup in 2022 but by then LLM hype started causing layoffs to go up and openings down.
I’m just one consumer but due to inflation my spending is down massively. Also because of all the doom predictions. I’m saving way more money.
I’m sure this is slowing things down and as I said, because of the piece of eggs , I’m can’t be the only one spending less.
If you look at reality. Companies at the top of the revenue pyramid just don’t pay enough tax, and it’s borked everything.
But I'm not sure that 40hrs is the sweet spot. Other countries have chosen differently (with comparisons difficult to draw).
There are several competing influences here: inflation, AI productivity gains (TBD but nonzero), existing legislation around health insurance obligations, social/economic inertia, etc. And definitely others I'm not smart enough to think of!
It'd be interesting, if it was possible, to ramp down the 40hrs by an hour or two every year, keeping other components (esp healthcare) in step, to see where the inflection point is. I feel confident that we could get down to 32hrs without major negative drama. I agree that 18hrs (suggested elsewhere) would be violent.
Some “it takes a village” type of mentoring for children. Or programs to spend time with the elderly. Get outside and get involved in public works projects like repairing parks and waterways.
Total fantasy, for sure, but that’s what revolutionary new tech like AI could actually benefit society by letting humans be more human.
UBI, like any government spending, needs to be paid for. By taxes or financial disaster. I prefer taxes, personally.
One wonders though what impact that will have on society — so much additional free time. More television binging? I hope not.
The chickens are flocking around the roost now.
The OBBB, championed by the so-called "fiscally conservatives", accelerated this, but this will largely get ignored until/if a Democrat is in office again. Then large swaths of people will suddenly start caring about the national debt.
I am surprised this has not already happened. The combination of rampant inequality and lax gun laws (in some states) is very explosive.
we're never had more effective 'circensis' (Tiktok, video-games, etc.)
the 'panem' part? yeah, that might be a problem, given (further) inflation
Until that happens--IMO it's just an excuse to reduce the overhired workforce without tanking their stock.
There's a ton of middle managers and high-ranking roles whose jobs are to basically supervise other people.
If the people go, they do too.
- corporate social responsibility (CSR)
Does this mandate self-termination when financially reasonable?
1. The tax deduction change where costs couldn't be classified as an expense.
2. The saturation in people joining coding. At one point in time everyone wanted to be part of a bootcamp to earn that sweet coding salary.
3. Rising interest rates means the era of borrowing at low costs is over.
etc.
AI is last on my list for the reasons that people are being laid off. And its not because AI isn't helping people, rather it isn't helping people enough to justify the current layoffs.
And lets be honest - AI and employment is the hot topic right now. You should expect executives to say that they are jumping on the AI bandwagon and looking at time savings.
Once upon a time everyone wanted to add ML to their product. This is just going with the flow. Otherwise their stock prices will take a massive hit. Others yet want to showcase that they are doing everything to extract better margins. These statements can be slightly deceiving.
What does 30% of the code mean exactly? How much of it is going into the products and making into the market?
For now, AI is a convenient scapegoat. Maybe it becomes a force to reckon with and truly leads to people being laid off. Not today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwMVMbmQBug
Here’s the thing: We’re in the complaining stage. It doesn’t hurt enough yet. When it does, we’ll stop complaining and do something.
Complaining is a good first step! That’s how it starts.
- "knowing is half the battle" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c71nqMqmiaw
- "be the change you want to see in the world" - https://josephranseth.com/gandhi-didnt-say-be-the-change-you...
Personally I want a more human-first world, and a less money-first world. This touches on many areas needing change.
I don't see how nobody will feel that loss of purchasing... Then again, we all know how detached the market is, someone from Schwab just yesterday telling me how things have "never been better."
Us "regular folk" are really just in for the ride now aren't we?
Humans are not necessary for an economy. It’s an easily missed assumption, because until now we are the only intelligent units of labor, capital ownership and demand.
But corporations long ago become units of all three, and AIs effectively become citizens simply by acting through an umbrella corporation. Corporations are (in)famously already first class political participates, via their money.
As long as AIs/corporations are motivated to compete and survive, demand from humans won’t be necessary for the economy to keep growing.
If anything, the ease with which AI/robotics will adapt to space habitats, and the vast resources untapped in the solar system, will enable a potentially human-independent economic explosion.
Edit: removed a comment about Ai investors getting bailed out because it was secondary to my main point
I give it a 85%+ chance of a bailout when the tech bubble pops.
I’ll just skip over the part where you ignored a lot of those jobs going overseas and are not coming back.
[1]: https://qz.com/tech-layoffs-tax-code-trump-section-174-micro...
1. Layoffs and slowdown are global, not only in US.
2. Expenses are still deductable, but over longer period. It makes no difference for big corporations.
Dunno about that. I've moved twice since 2022 (in Ireland), and the market is definitely less crazy but there's still (apparently) lots of work about. To be fair, I interview well and am pushing 15 years experience with a bunch of "prestigious" companies.
Definitely seemed like it much worse in the US. Then again, it was never as insane as the 2010's seemed for the US so maybe there was less over-hiring.
> 2. Expenses are still deductable, but over longer period. It makes no difference for big corporations.
The rate of change between full and 20% deduction definitely had a big impact on smaller companies hiring of software/data people. If you were a megacorp it mattered less but still not trivial.
This is the really scariest part to me.
Does verifying the difference between whole milk and oat milk qualify the barista as a knowledge worker?
BLS link 404’d for me:
https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-5/pdf/what-is-the-gig-ec...
Well, what do you know, the author just happens to sell an AI system that aims to "make humans better, rather than replacing them".
Surely his takes on the topic of how good AI is, and AI taking jobs, is impartial and objective, and not tied in any way to how he makes money if he manages to convince people of such thoughts.
Part of recognizing bias and conflicts of interest is also being able to recognize when, despite that, they’re still right.
There's a correction coming, but not the one Daniel's fearmongering about.
> We start to see unrest and/or riots against "the rich" because there are no jobs, and people are being evicted
> Crime goes up significantly
Arguably once a good percentage of people become unhoused, we are no longer living in a fair society. IT SHOULD break down into violence. But then so say "Crime goes up significantly". What crime? There is no society where a crime can be defined.
Where my views differ are when it comes to the leap between layoffs and AI.
Corporate leadership is eager to reduce the biggest source of cost (employees) and happy to use AI as cover. But it's not the reality. AI isn't adding productivity to the company's bottom line in numbers big enough to rationalize the layoffs.
I can point to zero tech roles eliminated where AI performed the same function. Despite the fact me and everyone in my circles use AI on a daily basis and are big proponents of it.
I think the author's biggest incorrect assertion is accepting corporate PR as gospel like this:
>Salesforce says AI bots now do 50% of the company's work. They're pushing what they call a "digital workforce" where AI agents handle customer service, sales, and even coding tasks.
All of these companies have great incentive to say AI is replacing workers. But so far no proof has been offered.
Eventually we will get a recession. For a lot of people that work in tech it feels like we are already in one.
But I do not share the author's concerns with AI taking everyone's jobs in the next few months or years.
But not because of tech, AI, or things like that. It's the rate of pay.
When prosperity is the thing that's receding, money counts more than ever because lack of money threatens more than could be imagined.
And even though it's not as common as it should be, employees can be fairly valued as an asset. In a good way, where you're much happier being valued like that than not.
So even a company that values their people more so than most, will have to make sacrifices on all fronts when the going gets rough, like they don't have to do for years in a row when things are merely non-ideal.
This can cause some of the highest-paid people to get kicked out much earlier, like few have seen before. Even in companies that are not trying to preserve as much head-count until things turn around, they may have no real choice.
A lot of non-tech high-dollar people are also being shed, and it looks like on the increase. Consumers may not have enough accumulated wealth any more to be able to bail out a consumer economy.
I was wondering how much was due to over hiring during the crazy 2020-2021. Multiple companies increased their headcount by more than 50%, or even by 100% during the two years. That does not make business or technical sense at all, as tech companies are supposed to scale their services with technology instead of people. Companies add people only if they want to invest in new areas, but exactly how many new areas can we get in merely two years?
What did happen uniformly is that all essentially stopped hiring after 2022.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/numb...
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MSFT/microsoft/num...
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/number-...
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/META/meta-platform...
I think we’re seeing the early signs of that now, as everyone giddily trips over each other to rush into the “next big thing” rather than invest into the serious R&D necessary to make real gains. We’re managing modern technologies with centuries-old methods of corporate and political governance, complete with infighting and backstabbing. In a vacuum, no rational person would have ever backed the current explosion of LLMs given the more prescient problems facing the species, yet here we are squandering water and energy on prediction machines instead solar farms, battery storage, materials science, and infrastructure replacement.
I already see personal evidence in the IT side of things. For all the bickering supporters do between VMs and Containers and K8s and Public Cloud, all I see is just different ways of packaging software with differing sets of limitations or use cases. Everyone is so fiercely competing to make their chosen tech reign supreme over all that they pay no attention to us IT folks just wishing someone would make their container or Helm chart as easy to deploy and support as a modern Linux VM might be and integrating disparate tech instead of seeking to replace and dominate their competitors. There’s a very real attitude among my peers that, despite their advantages, containers are often little more than packages with extra steps and infrastructure for their existing use cases. Whether they’re right or wrong is irrelevant, because they’re making the decisions in their employer.
Change still feels fast and explosive because folks are focusing on niche research papers, extravagant moonshots, and the various implementations of things in SV circles. Outside those, however?
It’s slow. It’s stagnant. It’s boring, because nobody actually listens to what the physical majority has to say about products - only what the biggest paying customers (economic majority) want.
I dont think the layoffs are due to that. It is affecting entry jobs rather badly, but that (anecdotely) constitutes minority.
The ADP Chief economist said that the problem wasn't that companies are laying off, is that they aren't replacing attrition - - that they can get the same work done without doing so and hinted at AI productivity boost as a reason.
I know it's a raging battle here, but just simply having a search engine that works again is a huge productivity gain...
Assuming that's a reasonable analogue - I'm not super knowledgeable about that era of US history so can't say for sure
If the effect size isn't attributable to AI, then it must be the case that we have been in an unacknowledged recession for over a year.
Oh, ok, these are the people the OP is worried about. If they have been at all reasonable with their money, they'll be fine...
He's worried about what it says about the state of the industry and hiring. If people like that can't get jobs, those less talented who have been making less money, certainly won't.
https://careers.salesforce.com/en/jobs/jr307625/software-eng...
This was one of the top jobs listed. Of course I have no idea if they are hiring people or not, but it’s at least listed.
The rest is just giving people money to do what they please. Really. Do we need faster technology? Do we need to alloy new metals or develop new medicines?
No. We could live the spartan life of fifty years ago, or a hundred. The population will keep reliably replenishing. The rest is all just fashion.
When, not if, AI takes over crummy jobs that people don’t want to do, and society makes a mass change to deal with that, you’ll be surprised how fast it goes back to whatever equilibrium there is.
i guess we are too well paid.
(all of the above make more than you do, and it’s because they are organized)
I come from a country where emigrating in search of new work, or trying to reinvent yourself and switch jobs, driving an Uber or flipping burgers if necessary to stay afloat, etc. is the norm. We've had a lot of political and economic instability, science and health defunding, etc., and yes, it's not great, but also people just... live on, and manage to do okay.
Yes, I know about the recent advancements in AI, but barring the AGI case which I believe is a bit overblown in this article, I think the rest, especially the Trump situation, tariffs, unrest, etc., will pass as well.
But that would be a serious, violent, downgrade from the American self-image. We are bred on American Exceptionalism. If this myth is destroyed, we don't have a replacement ideology.
The ROW can decide that Americans are silly people who should get over themselves. But that will not convince Americans to accept the change calmly. And when Americans are not calm, the ROW suffers too. One way or another.
1. There are fewer new products normal people want to buy, especially in tech.
2. Inflation is making the everyday things people need more expensive.
3. VC money for the most popular products ran out and companies are jacking up prices.
4. Concerns over tech's impact on health is limiting tech use and more negative sentiment.
All of this is causing a slowdown in tech and AI could be the perfect fix:
1. Shiny new product for people to buy.
2. Reduce costs and increase margins right when it's most needed.
3. Justify more investment in the space (super intelligence = best VC investment ever).
4. Solve bread and butter problems in health, education, etc. if safety is prioritized.
My guess is that this need for AI is causing a lot of the tech sector to overestimate how quickly AI will revolutionize things, similar to getting "flying car" predictions right at the top of the automotive s-curve.
I believe AI will have a big impact in the long-term but no where close to as quickly as most people believe, and that the short-term impact will be limited to more narrow use cases. I also believe we're going to see a big rebound to people doing work in the next few years.
Many here likely disagree with me and it will be interesting to see how everything plays out.
There's no trickle down just trickle up. Giving Bezos, Zuckerberg, Benoiff, corporations more money isn't going to create more jobs.
If there's no money for consumers to spend these B2C companies will have less need for B2B software that most of us build.
This is a management problem. I don't think it's that hard to figure out how to motivate people. Give them some autonomy and respect. This isn't even hidden knowledge.
But businesses and managers for some reason totally forget this, and treat everyone as cogs in a machine and completely replaceable, monitored by metrics.
Or is the strategy of everyone to sell to the same 0.01% of the population ?
(Also, hilarious that the author mentions UBI as a potential solution. UBI is a massive transfer of wealth. Governements are elected nowadays on the promise of guaranteeing wealth is not transfered - see the recent tax bill in the USA ; and any mention of "taxes" in a political campaign.)
As a final note, however, most engineers will find a point in their career where the skills they've developed are obsolete or outdated, and that is terrifying to me.
> 2022: 93,000 employees laid off
> 2023: 200,000 employees laid off (peak)
> 2024: 150,000 employees laid off
> 2025: 70,000 employees laid off (through July)
Any figures on how this compares with the COVID surge in hiring? As in, are we at a net-negative and if so by how much?
We have a president who is 1) prone to make seat-of-the-pants decisions and 2) prone to over-reach presidential power. And we're going to have a population that is 1) desperate for a quick fix and 2) not willing to let anything stand in the way. The combination is a recipe for further erosion (or the complete destruction) of separation of powers, and also for catastrophic mistakes. If we slide into tyranny (whether or not it keeps a democratic facade) and have Trump - with no restraints - trying to fix the economy, God help us all.
Whole point is contradiction of entire article.
Unfortunately we know from hundreds of years of experience now that the only actual way of identifying a recession is in hindsight. Everything else is just doomerism.
As for the upcoming crisis, there's an increase in inequality and further accumulation of wealth among fewer and fewer individuals. As long as these individuals continue to spend their newly acquired wealth to compensate for lower spend by the less fortunate (which is exactly what's been happening), the economy will be fine.
And I just stare slackjawed at these people, at how they’re so focused on a narrow vertical or “historical data”, that they fail to even consider the larger picture. It’s why I trot out and bang my drum of “if we replace all the workers with AI then who is going to have money to spend to continue propping up the economy” every time boosters dismiss any social or economic concerns.
By a combination of neglect, malice, misinformation, partisanship, ignorance, and a cadre of new gods (“Big Data”, “the Algorithm”, the myriad of Rationalist cults, “AI”, crypto, etc), we have effectively stockpiled a warehouse full of leaking fuel barrels and dynamite and been commanded to take up smoking by our leaders and Capitalists, assured everything will turn out okay.
And you know what? Maybe it will turn out okay. Maybe this all is just a giant nothingburger. Maybe this is the start of a Golden Age of humanity, where dreams are attainable and fortune is infinite. Maybe this is just a speedbump on the path to extended lifespans, curing diseases, solving climate change. Maybe we’re just overreacting.
But the data sets, the lived experiences, the tone of existence doesn’t lie. Things are presently bad. The current patterns and trends suggest this will get a lot worse.
Maybe we’re wrong, but what I fear more is that we might be right and have done nothing.
More at my site (in profile; no sales and low stylistic ambition), if you click on "Things I want to say" (about 1/2-way down), then "On peace amid commotion" (also about 1/2-way down), then skim that page and click at least the last link. Then read the entire page and click the links that seem most interesting.). We really can be OK despite things. (Thoughtful comments appreciated with any downvotes.)
What strikes me as odd as that, even with all the signs of an impeding crisis, US's oligarchs still double down on eliminating the little social safety nets that the US managed to provide to it's population. It's as if they learned nothing from the french revolution, and they think they can exist in a world where society succumbs to poverty and mysery. No wonder we're seeing tech bros pushing for a US dictatorship.
If you’re in software and maintaining a React application front end I can see the appeal: it takes so much code just to add a button. And it’s not like the web platform is going to get good.
It’s automated copy-pasting from stack overflow and GitHub. That can be useful.
But it’s also pretty meh. Humans stop reading code deeply enough to catch errors when they read more than a couple hundred lines of code in an hour. Someone still has to be liable for those errors when they cause harm to customer businesses and assets. Maybe AI and agent tooling will get good enough to keep that error rate low enough to be tolerable.
But maybe not.
What is concerning is that capital is getting so much support from the state. Labourers are being left in the lurch. I think part of that “redistribution of wealth,” needs to involve getting capital to support and work with labour instead of just exploiting it and squeezing everyone dry.
It’s wealth inequality and climate at the end of the day.
/s
> - Redistribution of wealth
We can talk about excessively wealthy individuals all day, but I'm pretty sure that most knowledge workers are not going to be on the receiving side of wealth redistribution. This is even more likely to be true for the programmers affected by these tech layoffs.
