Referencing Marc Benioff making bold claims about AI isn't much evidence, he's pulling these numbers out of thin air. Despite claiming they won't hire software engineers in 2025, there are plenty of positions open at Salesforce for software engineers.
Interesting that the author doesn't mention a reduction in working hours as a solution because I see that as THE solution. Federally mandate an 18 hour work week and job demand will soar. It's just as fanciful a thought as his other suggestions given how little power we have over the federal government to exercise our will.
I've been wondering when the other shoe was going to drop as well. I'm not in a panic, but let's just say that when I occasionally look to re-balance my finances I am no longer moving anything into the stock market.
AI will definitely have an impact of non physical jobs, and it is hard to see it slowing down. Anyone in any big enough company can easily see right now that there is a top level initiative to reduce employee count by never before imagined margins. And the AI is already good enough to achieve some large reductions. It is hard to see how this will all unfold.
Those people will go back to doing whatever they would have been doing before the technology revolution, which actually wasn’t so long ago…
Like maybe go work at a shipyard. We can only build two ships a year it seems…
Solid summary I think, but reading “what the country does if some significant percentage of our 100 million knowledge workers gets laid off because of AI” confused me deeply.
Does verifying the difference between whole milk and oat milk qualify the barista as a knowledge worker?
We’re damned both ways with AI. Either it’s a massive bubble that will pop or it does what it’s intended to do and automates a large portion of the workforce.
Edit: removed a comment about Ai investors getting bailed out because it was secondary to my main point
I've said this before, but the only thing that will convince me that these companies are actually laying people off due to AI will be when they start replacing their leadership staff with it.
Until that happens--IMO it's just an excuse to reduce the overhired workforce without tanking their stock.
While I have tremendous sympathy for anyone who loses their job, this feels very industry specific. Embedded and hardware spaces (like satellites) are doing really well, lots of advancement and hiring going on, while things such as data science are struggling to get relevant interviews. I'm also not a huge fan of industry specific hiring data, because it's usually tied to a specific HR/hiring software (like indeed), which holds hidden variables (like big companies may be more likely to use one hiring software than the other).
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.
Daniel's freaking out about an ongoing correction still playing out from '21, and finding struts to support his argument like the "30-50% of the work" is being "done by AI" nonsense lines spouted by talking suits. This is hogwash. It's standard corporate brain fart miss the actual point. Yes, 50%+ of code written might be done by AI, but pretending this is "AI doing the work" reveals the tumor that is management misapprehension of what's going on.
There's a correction coming, but not the one Daniel's fearmongering about.
> A very large number of people dread Monday, and that's not because they show up Monday morning and bring all their creativity and brilliance. It's because it's clocking in and clocking out on a job they'd rather not be doing.
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.
If we look back at all types of mechanization, all that happens is we keep our jobs, they get more complex and the jobs get harder and more technical.
in 2-10 years if my job as a software engineer is speedily porting and upgrading banking code with AI assitants then cool.
But I don't think we're going to see a crash. Human development doesn't stop. We're going to keep making new stuff and that takes people.
I'm worried too. I share most of his concerns, but I'm going to go one step further.
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.
Don't worry -- soon after that, there will be high demand for human coders as companies scramble to hire to rewrite all the buggy and vuln-ridden AI-hallucinated software. We're on the verge of two revolutions in tech, not one.
The lack of devs that understand the domain knowledge and the codebase will be the main issue.
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
nah, just throw more hardware at it. never rewrite buggy code, increase processing power is the winner almost always. That's one of the things that is nice about opensource. You can't hide the crap code unless the users don't care at all.
It might be informative to compare this with what happened when retailers introduced automated checkout machines. It seems that the net effect on staff sizes was not that dramatic. These stores need more anti-theft security people and some oversight. Not to mention the people they need for technical support. I wonder if there will develop a new category of skills for checking that AI produced code is correct, effective and optimal?
This article has been written once a week since the beginning of capitalism. Just insert your preferred $flavor_of_the_week global issues as supporting evidence for it.
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.
Take the even more global view of the United States. We can grow more than enough good food for everyone, and there is plenty of land. We have water, working infrastructure, and all the other ingredients.
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.
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 agree with many of the author's observations. I see a lot of the same thing in my circles.
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.
How do you jump from “not attributable to AI“ to “must be a recession”? I think it would be true for jobs that are not separable from companies economic activity, but it isn’t true for a good portion of tech jobs. A car manufacturer can’t sell the same amount of cars while reducing a half of assembly workers, but most tech giants can maintain profitable parts of their business with a fraction of their workforce (if not indefinitely then at least for some time). Some work can be eliminated altogether, some might be outsourced to other countries, some split among existing workers. I think that’s what’s happening.
Why it is happening, though? Hard to say for sure, but I don’t see why it couldn’t be a combination of tighter availability of capital, shrinking addressable market (due to deglobalization & demographics) and AI competition requiring huge capex
I'm curious at which point the AIs are doing all the jobs of corporations, so that they can sell their products and services to... no one, since everyone is unemployed ?
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.)
Soon developers will wish they unionized or had a culture of collective bargaining and rights. You're labor, you just thought you were above it all. I'm not spiteful. I wish you luck and hope you guys organize.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 77.6 ms ] threadhttps://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.
Does verifying the difference between whole milk and oat milk qualify the barista as a knowledge worker?
Edit: removed a comment about Ai investors getting bailed out because it was secondary to my main point
Until that happens--IMO it's just an excuse to reduce the overhired workforce without tanking their stock.
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.
There's a correction coming, but not the one Daniel's fearmongering about.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)