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If we were in the boom times, less hiring would be a convincing signal. But the global economist is toast right now. There are very very good reasons not to hir

If we were in the boom times, less hiring would be a convincing signal. But the global economist is toast right now. There are very very good reasons not to hire engineers, and it’s plausible AI has nothing to do with it. Anecdotally there’s no way AI has enabled me to replace a junior hire. AI has major problems, although it’s a fantastic tool, right now I’m seeing a boost similar to the emergence of stack overflow. That might increase but even then we may just see higher productivity.

HPsquared 1y ago
I think it'll be a Jevons' paradox thing. If developer productivity improves, that just increases the scope of possible projects.
- lesuorac 1y ago
  But what new projects do you need? The west is in a world of abundance. We do not need 5 more ChatGPTs. It's better business to have one half price ChatGPT than 3 full priced ones. Jevon's Paradox requires an very large unmet consumer demand.
  - orwin 1y ago
    I work in network security, specifically on the automation team. As we articulate more and more processes, products, monitoring together, new demand is created, and our scope grows (unlike our team right now). Being able to automatically write unit tests with minor inputs on my part, creating mocks and sometimes (mostly on front end work or on basic interface) even generating code makes me more 'productive' (not a huge increase but we work with a lot of proprietary stuff), and I'm okay with it. I also use it as a rubber duck under advices from someone on HN and it was a great idea.
  - HPsquared 1y ago
    It's hard to predict the details of emergent phenomena.
  - fragmede 1y ago
    > Everything that can be invented has been invented. -Charles H. Duell, Commissioner of the US Patent Office, circa 1889
- BugheadTorpeda6 1y ago
  I think recent history has made Solows paradox more interesting than Jevons, which is mostly a thing talked about by people with something to sell related to AI it seems, and less so by economists. Seems to have applied much better early in the industrial revolution. I'm not sure economists even work on Jevons anymore (or if it was ever a very interesting topic for them, the writing on it seems very sparse in comparison).
  - HPsquared 1y ago
    In either case, developers won't have to worry about career longevity.
rhubarbtree 1y ago
I came here to contradict myself. A dev camp CEO I know got in touch this week. They are seeing junior devs turned away due to AI. Yes it’s assistive but the issue with juniors in particular is the entry level tasks they usually done are easier with AI

HPsquared 1y ago

I think it'll be a Jevons' paradox thing. If developer productivity improves, that just increases the scope of possible projects.

lesuorac 1y ago
But what new projects do you need? The west is in a world of abundance. We do not need 5 more ChatGPTs. It's better business to have one half price ChatGPT than 3 full priced ones. Jevon's Paradox requires an very large unmet consumer demand.
- orwin 1y ago
  I work in network security, specifically on the automation team. As we articulate more and more processes, products, monitoring together, new demand is created, and our scope grows (unlike our team right now). Being able to automatically write unit tests with minor inputs on my part, creating mocks and sometimes (mostly on front end work or on basic interface) even generating code makes me more 'productive' (not a huge increase but we work with a lot of proprietary stuff), and I'm okay with it. I also use it as a rubber duck under advices from someone on HN and it was a great idea.
- HPsquared 1y ago
  It's hard to predict the details of emergent phenomena.
- fragmede 1y ago
  > Everything that can be invented has been invented. -Charles H. Duell, Commissioner of the US Patent Office, circa 1889
BugheadTorpeda6 1y ago
I think recent history has made Solows paradox more interesting than Jevons, which is mostly a thing talked about by people with something to sell related to AI it seems, and less so by economists. Seems to have applied much better early in the industrial revolution. I'm not sure economists even work on Jevons anymore (or if it was ever a very interesting topic for them, the writing on it seems very sparse in comparison).
- HPsquared 1y ago
  In either case, developers won't have to worry about career longevity.

rhubarbtree 1y ago

I came here to contradict myself. A dev camp CEO I know got in touch this week. They are seeing junior devs turned away due to AI. Yes it’s assistive but the issue with juniors in particular is the entry level tasks they usually done are easier with AI