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>Late 2022 Satya started taking about overall employment at Tech companies dropping due to AI. He said something like ‘Tech employment overall will grow but emp

>Late 2022 Satya started taking about overall employment at Tech companies dropping due to AI. He said something like ‘Tech employment overall will grow but employment at tech companies will shrink’. Normally, I am blase on the predictions that AI will replace dev jobs, but when one of the people saying this also happens to be one of the people with real power to make it happen I stand up and take notice. Yikes.

burkaman 3y ago
What does that quote mean? How can tech employment grow if tech company employment is shrinking?
- wing-_-nuts 3y ago
  It's another riff on 'software is eating the world'. Lots of companies would like custom software to help run their business, but are not, in fact, tech companies. If AI makes writing this software cheaper, and there is higher elastic demand at this lower price, then you'll see more devs working for old fashioned non tech companies. Tech companies, meanwhile, can accomplish their goals with fewer employees, so the number of people working directly for FAANG companies will shrink. That's my take on his comment, anyway.
  - burkaman 3y ago
    Ok, that seems like generally a good thing for most of us? His prediction is that employment opportunities will increase, and there will be a much more diverse pool of companies you can choose to work at.
    - wing-_-nuts 3y ago
      It's mixed. The reason for higher demand would be lower cost. I.e. perhaps lower median wages for the vast majority of folks where we have a bimodal peak at tech companies who have a small percentage of overall workers.
    - kevingadd 3y ago
      It's bad for technical workers because if you pivot from 'engineer #10 at a company that is big enough to have full-time QA, engineering managers, and an actual HR department' to 'engineer #2 at a company that doesn't have any QA or engineering managers', suddenly all of the important tasks those people were handling get handed off to whoever's unlucky enough to get the task, or worse, get handed off to the worst possible people. Essentially, the pool may be more "diverse" in the sense that there are more companies doing different things with AI, but if suddenly 90% of your job openings are tiny startups that might shut down next year where the HR and finance departments are both the CEO's wife, it makes it harder to stay in the field.
- _xivi 3y ago
  > How can tech employment grow if tech company employment is shrinking? He's saying that tech will be more accessible to small businesses and you'll have more internal tech teams working in non-tech companies. Similar to accounting, HR, etc.
zyang 3y ago
That's pure management fantasy. Given better tools people will build more ambitious things.
- JeremyNT 3y ago
  Like what exactly? More effective ads? More creative financial engineering products, like cryptocurrencies? In a hypothetical world where chatbots are powerful enough to eat artist, writer, and programmer jobs, we've reached an end state where HCI is close to perfect. The entire idea of designing specific software products doesn't even make sense when you can just throw an LLM at the problem. I remain skeptical that this is where we are, but if you take the first claim (that chatbots will imminently be capable of replacing existing tech roles) at face value, there aren't going to be any products left to build, because chatbots represent the final form of tech.

burkaman 3y ago

What does that quote mean? How can tech employment grow if tech company employment is shrinking?

wing-_-nuts 3y ago
It's another riff on 'software is eating the world'. Lots of companies would like custom software to help run their business, but are not, in fact, tech companies. If AI makes writing this software cheaper, and there is higher elastic demand at this lower price, then you'll see more devs working for old fashioned non tech companies. Tech companies, meanwhile, can accomplish their goals with fewer employees, so the number of people working directly for FAANG companies will shrink. That's my take on his comment, anyway.
- burkaman 3y ago
  Ok, that seems like generally a good thing for most of us? His prediction is that employment opportunities will increase, and there will be a much more diverse pool of companies you can choose to work at.
  - wing-_-nuts 3y ago
    It's mixed. The reason for higher demand would be lower cost. I.e. perhaps lower median wages for the vast majority of folks where we have a bimodal peak at tech companies who have a small percentage of overall workers.
  - kevingadd 3y ago
    It's bad for technical workers because if you pivot from 'engineer #10 at a company that is big enough to have full-time QA, engineering managers, and an actual HR department' to 'engineer #2 at a company that doesn't have any QA or engineering managers', suddenly all of the important tasks those people were handling get handed off to whoever's unlucky enough to get the task, or worse, get handed off to the worst possible people. Essentially, the pool may be more "diverse" in the sense that there are more companies doing different things with AI, but if suddenly 90% of your job openings are tiny startups that might shut down next year where the HR and finance departments are both the CEO's wife, it makes it harder to stay in the field.
_xivi 3y ago
> How can tech employment grow if tech company employment is shrinking? He's saying that tech will be more accessible to small businesses and you'll have more internal tech teams working in non-tech companies. Similar to accounting, HR, etc.

zyang 3y ago

That's pure management fantasy. Given better tools people will build more ambitious things.

JeremyNT 3y ago
Like what exactly? More effective ads? More creative financial engineering products, like cryptocurrencies? In a hypothetical world where chatbots are powerful enough to eat artist, writer, and programmer jobs, we've reached an end state where HCI is close to perfect. The entire idea of designing specific software products doesn't even make sense when you can just throw an LLM at the problem. I remain skeptical that this is where we are, but if you take the first claim (that chatbots will imminently be capable of replacing existing tech roles) at face value, there aren't going to be any products left to build, because chatbots represent the final form of tech.