6 ms·

> Tell that to someone laid off when replaced by some "AI" system. What are some good examples? I am very skeptical of anyone losing their jobs to AI. People ar

> Tell that to someone laid off when replaced by some "AI" system. What are some good examples? I am very skeptical of anyone losing their jobs to AI. People are getting laid off for various reasons: - Companies are replacing American tech jobs with foreigners - Many companies hired more devs than they need - companies hired many devs during the pandemic, and don't need them anymore Some companies may claim they are replacing devs with AI. I take it with a grain of salt. I believe some devs were probably replaced by AI, but not a large amount. I think there may be a lot more layoffs in the future, but AI will probably account for a very small fraction of those.

theLiminator 2y ago
I imagine there aren't really layoffs, but slowing/stopping of hiring as you get more productivity out of existing devs. I imagine in the future, lots of companies will just let their employee base slowly attrition away.
lolinder 2y ago
> I believe some devs were probably replaced by AI, but not a large amount. I'm not even sold on the idea that there were any. The media likes to blame AI for the developer layoffs because it makes a much more exciting story than interest rates and arcane tax code changes. But the fact is that we don't need more than the Section 174 changes and the end of ZIRP to explain what's happened in tech. Federal economic policy was set up to direct massive amounts of investment into software development. Now it's not. That's a real, quantifiable impact that can readily explain what we've seen in a way that the current productivity gains from these tools simply can't. Now, I'll definitely accept that many companies are attributing their layoffs to AI, but that's for much the same reason that the media laps the story up: it's a far better line to feed investors than that the financial environment has changed for the worse.
- Mistletoe 2y ago
  But I see so many devs typing here saying how vital AI is to their writing code efficiently and quickly now. If that is true then you need way less devs. Are people just sitting idle at their desks? I do see quite a bit of tech layoffs for sure. Are you saying devs aren't part of the workers being laid off? >In 2024: At least 95,667 workers at U.S.-based tech companies have lost their jobs so far in the year, according to a Crunchbase News tally.
  - baq 2y ago
    Induced demand means we’ll need more devs than we have right now since every dev can produce more value (anyone using cursor for a longer while should be able to confirm that easily). The problem is different in the meantime: nobody wants to be paying for training of those new devs. Juniors don’t have the experience to call LLM’s bullshit and seniors don’t get paid to teach them since LLMs replaced interns churning out boilerplate.
  - tsimionescu 2y ago
    > Are you saying devs aren't part of the workers being laid off? No, they are saying that the reason for the layoffs is not AI, it is financial changes making devs too expensive. > If that is true then you need way less devs. This does not follow. First of all, companies take a long time to measure dev output, it's not like you can look at a burn down chart over two sprints and decide to fire half the team because it seems they're working twice as fast. So any productivity gains will show up as layoffs only after a long time. Secondly, dev productivity is very rarely significantly bounded by how long boilerplate takes to write. Having a more efficient way to write boilerplate, even massively more efficient, say 8h down to 1h, will only marginally improve your overall throughput, at least at the senior level: all that does is free you to think more about the complex issues you needed to solve. So if the task would have previously taken you 10 days, of which one day was spent on boilerplate, it may now take you, say, 8-9 days, because you've saved one day on boilerplate, plus some more minor gains here and there. So far from firing 7 out of every 8 devs, the 8h-to-1h boilerplate solution might allow you to fire 1 dev in a team of 10.
  - jdminhbg 2y ago
    > But I see so many devs typing here saying how vital AI is to their writing code efficiently and quickly now. If that is true then you need way less devs. Sure, in the same sense that editors and compilers mean you need way less devs.
  - guappa 2y ago
    A lot of devs are hacks. If an AI can do your job you had no value as a software developer.
  - 2y ago
rcpt 2y ago
It's pretty much impossible to get work as a copywriter now
- RamblingCTO 2y ago
  I was thinking about this. I think we have an overcorrection right now. People get laid off because of expected performance of AI, not real performance. With copywriting and software development we have three options: 1. leaders notice they were wrong, start to increase human headcount again 2. human work is seen as boutique and premium, used for marketing and market placement 3. we just accept the sub-par quality of AI and go with it (quite likely with copywriting I guess) I'd like to compare it with cinema and Netflix. There was a time where lost of stuff was mindless shit, but there was still place for A24 and it took the world by storm. What's gonna happen? No one knows. But anyway, I figure that 90% of "laid off because of AI" is just regular lay-offs with a nice sounding reason. You don't loose anything by saying that and only gain in stakeholder trust.
  - harvodex 2y ago
    90% might even be too low. If you look up business analyst type jobs on JP Morgan website they are still hiring a ton right now. What you actually notice is how many are being outsourced to other countries outside the US. I think the main process at work is 1% actual AI automation and a huge amount of return to the office in the US while offshoring the remote work under the cover of "AI".
davedx 2y ago
Yeah, the AgentForce thing is a classic example. Internal leaks say Salesforce is using it as cover for more regular (cost cutting based) layoffs. People who've actually evaluated AgentForce don't think it's ready for prime time. It's more smoke and mirrors (and lots of marketing).

theLiminator 2y ago

I imagine there aren't really layoffs, but slowing/stopping of hiring as you get more productivity out of existing devs. I imagine in the future, lots of companies will just let their employee base slowly attrition away.

lolinder 2y ago

> I believe some devs were probably replaced by AI, but not a large amount. I'm not even sold on the idea that there were any. The media likes to blame AI for the developer layoffs because it makes a much more exciting story than interest rates and arcane tax code changes. But the fact is that we don't need more than the Section 174 changes and the end of ZIRP to explain what's happened in tech. Federal economic policy was set up to direct massive amounts of investment into software development. Now it's not. That's a real, quantifiable impact that can readily explain what we've seen in a way that the current productivity gains from these tools simply can't. Now, I'll definitely accept that many companies are attributing their layoffs to AI, but that's for much the same reason that the media laps the story up: it's a far better line to feed investors than that the financial environment has changed for the worse.

Mistletoe 2y ago
But I see so many devs typing here saying how vital AI is to their writing code efficiently and quickly now. If that is true then you need way less devs. Are people just sitting idle at their desks? I do see quite a bit of tech layoffs for sure. Are you saying devs aren't part of the workers being laid off? >In 2024: At least 95,667 workers at U.S.-based tech companies have lost their jobs so far in the year, according to a Crunchbase News tally.
- baq 2y ago
  Induced demand means we’ll need more devs than we have right now since every dev can produce more value (anyone using cursor for a longer while should be able to confirm that easily). The problem is different in the meantime: nobody wants to be paying for training of those new devs. Juniors don’t have the experience to call LLM’s bullshit and seniors don’t get paid to teach them since LLMs replaced interns churning out boilerplate.
- tsimionescu 2y ago
  > Are you saying devs aren't part of the workers being laid off? No, they are saying that the reason for the layoffs is not AI, it is financial changes making devs too expensive. > If that is true then you need way less devs. This does not follow. First of all, companies take a long time to measure dev output, it's not like you can look at a burn down chart over two sprints and decide to fire half the team because it seems they're working twice as fast. So any productivity gains will show up as layoffs only after a long time. Secondly, dev productivity is very rarely significantly bounded by how long boilerplate takes to write. Having a more efficient way to write boilerplate, even massively more efficient, say 8h down to 1h, will only marginally improve your overall throughput, at least at the senior level: all that does is free you to think more about the complex issues you needed to solve. So if the task would have previously taken you 10 days, of which one day was spent on boilerplate, it may now take you, say, 8-9 days, because you've saved one day on boilerplate, plus some more minor gains here and there. So far from firing 7 out of every 8 devs, the 8h-to-1h boilerplate solution might allow you to fire 1 dev in a team of 10.
- jdminhbg 2y ago
  > But I see so many devs typing here saying how vital AI is to their writing code efficiently and quickly now. If that is true then you need way less devs. Sure, in the same sense that editors and compilers mean you need way less devs.
- guappa 2y ago
  A lot of devs are hacks. If an AI can do your job you had no value as a software developer.
- 2y ago

rcpt 2y ago

It's pretty much impossible to get work as a copywriter now

RamblingCTO 2y ago
I was thinking about this. I think we have an overcorrection right now. People get laid off because of expected performance of AI, not real performance. With copywriting and software development we have three options: 1. leaders notice they were wrong, start to increase human headcount again 2. human work is seen as boutique and premium, used for marketing and market placement 3. we just accept the sub-par quality of AI and go with it (quite likely with copywriting I guess) I'd like to compare it with cinema and Netflix. There was a time where lost of stuff was mindless shit, but there was still place for A24 and it took the world by storm. What's gonna happen? No one knows. But anyway, I figure that 90% of "laid off because of AI" is just regular lay-offs with a nice sounding reason. You don't loose anything by saying that and only gain in stakeholder trust.
- harvodex 2y ago
  90% might even be too low. If you look up business analyst type jobs on JP Morgan website they are still hiring a ton right now. What you actually notice is how many are being outsourced to other countries outside the US. I think the main process at work is 1% actual AI automation and a huge amount of return to the office in the US while offshoring the remote work under the cover of "AI".

davedx 2y ago

Yeah, the AgentForce thing is a classic example. Internal leaks say Salesforce is using it as cover for more regular (cost cutting based) layoffs. People who've actually evaluated AgentForce don't think it's ready for prime time. It's more smoke and mirrors (and lots of marketing).