9 ms·

I'm worried it might get bad

• thisisnotauser 1y ago
  Seems like a great opportunity for a non-traditional candidate with some backbone to pull an FDR on this Herbert Hoover.
  • cholantesh 1y ago
    Sure, provided they're not thoroughly wrung out by the compromised apparatus of their party - or just disappeared by Hoover*. Assuming that's a reasonable analogue - I'm not super knowledgeable about that era of US history so can't say for sure
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
• crop_rotation 1y ago
  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.
• 9999px 1y ago
  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.
  • mingus88 1y ago
    Yeah that’s interesting. Imagine what could happen if AI allowed us to work fewer hours and in exchange there was a program to enable people to pursue volunteer programs in their communities 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.
  • mongol 1y ago
    That change and everything else being equal means much less pay for workers. It is no golden bullet
    • matthewfcarlson 1y ago
      It’s a US problem, but I think most people wouldn’t take a 50% cut in pay and a loss of health insurance (since they aren’t full time).
    • 9999px 1y ago
      Wages didn't drop when going from the 12 to 10 to 8 hour working day. With adequate political power wielded by labor – hypothetical in the context of the article – there's no reason to suspect that wages would go down with further reductions in the working day.
  • CalRobert 1y ago
    Our entire economic system is built around ensuring we have scarcities of necessities (housing, mostly) so workers need to outcompete their peers to have access to said necessities. This results in reduced work weeks being a non starters as those who would like to avail of them are outbid by those who forego them.
    • quesera 1y ago
      I think this is probably correct. 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.
      • CalRobert 1y ago
        I think a lot of people would love to live frugally and work less but it’s hard to pull off. Wage arbitrage in low CoL locations works with remote work but that’s been drying up. And of course access to health care and good education is an issue if you require either.
• generalpf 1y ago
  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.
  • crop_rotation 1y ago
    If it was just Marc Benioff preaching then it would indeed not deserve much attention. However, most big companies at this point have internal roadmap to reduce workforce by large amounts.
    • bamboozled 1y ago
      Is this really because if AI or is it because of economic hardships ? 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.
    • dingnuts 1y ago
      only if they over hired during ZIRP. AI is just an excuse
    • WaltPurvis 1y ago
      I'm not saying I necessarily doubt this, but how do you know what the internal roadmaps of "most" big companies are?
  • maxehmookau 1y ago
    Agreed. I still think we're seeing layoffs due to _overhiring_ in 2020. AI makes a nice excuse when laying these people off because CEOs can say their huge investments in AI are starting to pay off because they don't need the humans. 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.
• JKCalhoun 1y ago
  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.
• coreyh14444 1y ago
  <sarcasm> At least the Trump administration is opening up opportunities picking strawberries in triple digit heat </sarcasm>
• Swizec 1y ago
  I know things are bad, we all know things are bad. But first you’ve got to get mad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwMVMbmQBug 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.
  • ncr100 1y ago
    1,000% yes. Make our WANTS known: 1) to ourselves, and 2) then to the world. And then, be the change that we want. - "knowing is half the battle" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c71nqMqmiaw 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-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.
  • Herring 1y ago
    Assuming it's not already too late. By the time my dad started exercising, he already had stage 4 cancer (without knowing it). He only did it for half a month, and was gone 6 months later. Speed of execution matters.
  • OldfieldFund 1y ago
    The thing is... do we really need so many developers and marketers?
    • abnercoimbre 1y ago
      I read it as a more general statement, not just tech workers.
• billfor 1y ago
  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…
  • Thrymr 1y ago
    Who is going to be buying ships?
  • mikestew 1y ago
    The technology revolution was so long ago that tech is all I’ve done, and I’m retired now. You think shipyard workers woke up one day in the 80s and said, “fuck welding, imma gonna go program me some computers?” I’ll just skip over the part where you ignored a lot of those jobs going overseas and are not coming back.
  • xlbuttplug2 1y ago
    Telling people in tech to touch grass is not the best recipe for upvotes it appears.
• cwmoore 1y ago
  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?
  • OgsyedIE 1y ago
    The quote links to a BIS report which establishes that, yes, the 170-million strong US workforce really does have 100 million (actual) knowledge workers and baristas don't count. Service workers are outnumbered by computer jobs.
    • cwmoore 1y ago
      They do run computers at Starbuck’s. Can’t imagine a definition that includes 1B people globally, 1/10th in the US. BLS link 404’d for me: https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-5/pdf/what-is-the-gig-economy.pdf https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-5/pdf/what-is-the-gig-ec...
• an0malous 1y ago
  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
  • philipkglass 1y ago
    Investors weren't bailed out following the pop of the dot com bubble. I don't think that AI investors will be bailed out afterward if this is another bubble.
    • matthewfcarlson 1y ago
      Dot com pop caused significant repercussions for many people. I don’t think GP implied the AI bubble would get bailed out, just that if it pops, life gets unpleasant for lots of folks.
      • philipkglass 1y ago
        I think that the parent comment was edited after I replied. I wouldn't have said anything except for the original mention of an investor bailout.
    • ave_b_2011 1y ago
      Housing was another bubble, and those investors got bailed out. “Too big to fail”, I believe, is still the prevailing neoliberal wisdom. This is quite a large bubble and seemingly one of the only bright spots in the US economy. I give it a 85%+ chance of a bailout when the tech bubble pops.
    • NitpickLawyer 1y ago
      Investors in the dotcom bubble were different than the investors in AI, IMO. The current run is led by tech giants, not VCs. How much money are VCs throwing around, compared to FAAMG? They will find a way to get the money back, somehow.
• amilios 1y ago
  Whats the rebuttal to UBI just causing massive inflation again?
  • JKCalhoun 1y ago
    I've never been a fan of UBI (and I'm often downvoted for that, ha ha). I like the idea of mandating an 18 hour work week or similar though. It still keeps the incentive to work — still rewards those who want to achieve more. One wonders though what impact that will have on society — so much additional free time. More television binging? I hope not.
    • edoceo 1y ago
      Why do folk "need" to work? To justify their existence? Don't we have a duty of care for fellow humans?
      • cwmoore 1y ago
        Many people work so that other people don’t let them starve or put them in prison.
      • AnimalMuppet 1y ago
        Folk need to work to justify their existence to themselves. Just yesterday, there was an article here about why people feel bad about themselves when they aren't being productive. Our own psychology aside, people need to work because at present robots cannot make all the stuff we want. So if we (society as a whole) want all this stuff, then we need to work. We have a duty to treat our fellow humans with dignity and humanity. I'm not sure that extends to providing for those who can work but won't, though - not when there's work that society as a whole needs done.
      • JKCalhoun 1y ago
        Curiously, and this is probably just me, but I find I need to work in order to enjoy (value) my leisure time. Odd, I know.
• andyfilms1 1y ago
  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.
  • aaomidi 1y ago
    Why would leadership replace themselves?
    • ncr100 1y ago
      Would they replace themselves in countries (e.g. Germany, France) where they have more of a civil responsibility, beyond countries like USA where they have a stock-holder responsibility? - corporate social responsibility (CSR) Does this mandate self-termination when financially reasonable?
  • preommr 1y ago
    They are firing leadership. 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.
    • icedchai 1y ago
      Many companies I’m familiar with were overstaffed with middle managers. Managers with 3 reports. I even know of one with a single report.
  • FredPret 1y ago
    Layoffs are generally good for stock prices, at least in the very short term
• guywithahat 1y ago
  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.
• itsalotoffun 1y ago
  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.
  • arduanika 1y ago
    I want to upvote this because I agree with your points, but can't because the last line is needlessly rude to the author.
    • itsalotoffun 1y ago
      Fair enough (and edited). I get angry at Chicken Littles spraying their anxieties all over other people because they can. It's not okay.
      • arduanika 1y ago
        I do too. :) But your earlier line about meds didn't even make sense in this context, if you think it through. Now you have my upvote.
• tayo42 1y ago
  > 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.
• gonzo41 1y ago
  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.
• AnimalMuppet 1y ago
  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.
• mholt 1y ago
  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.
  • aaomidi 1y ago
    I wouldn’t bet on this
    • lucasyvas 1y ago
      Just become a black hat then. It will be easy to find problems in everything but the very top percent of AI generated software.
      • aaomidi 1y ago
        I had Claude Code do some of the challenges at defcon, it was doing surprisingly well. (I did make sure the challenges didn’t ban AI).
        • NDizzle 1y ago
          I love love love Claude Code. It's my weapon of choice. However, we're still a ways off. The most recent thing I did prior to typing this comment was have it look at a cosmosdb integration and recommend changes to my CosmosClientOptions to reduce CPU, based on a few exceptions I'm seeing. It recommended 5 changes to 5 settings, and every single one of them was outside of the allowed range for those 5 settings. I told it as much, and asked nicely (always nicely, I don't want to be on the Singularity's naughty list) to try again, those aren't valid values. It came back with 4/5 values within the allowed scope, one still outside of the scope, and 2 of the 4 that were accurate were the same values that I already have configured. Not there yet. Better every day, but definitely not there.
          • hyperliner 1y ago
• herodotus 1y ago
  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?
  • Zigurd 1y ago
    They also need more people to restock abandoned carts because I'm not going to wait for two other people who got stuck in their automated checkout lines to get help from the one ineffective person who is stuck with the job of making this stupidity work.
  • edoceo 1y ago
    My first real job in software was QA/Test (90s) and it seems my last job will be too.
• ramesh31 1y ago
  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.
• hyperhello 1y ago
  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.
  • mritterhoff 1y ago
    It sounds like you're advocating for degrowth? Why would Americans willingly embrace being poorer?
• CalRobert 1y ago
  Surprised he didn’t also mention US national debt and servicing it as interest rates rise.
  • mikestew 1y ago
    Why would he? I’ve been hearing concerns about national debt my whole life (including the 80s when interest rates were a hell of a lot higher than now), and I’m retirement age. I’m not saying those chickens won’t eventually come home to roost, but probably not anytime soon. The U. S. has become quite skilled at giving that tin can a swift kick down the road.
    • CalRobert 1y ago
      I generally agree but servicing costs alone are over a trillion a year and have doubled in the last five or so, which is worrying. I don’t see how current leadership can address this https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-big-beautiful-bill-federal-debt-servicing-cost-what-to-know/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-big-beautiful-bill-federa...
    • mritterhoff 1y ago
      True, but as a percentage of GDP we're at historical (peacetime) highs.
    • readthenotes1 1y ago
      Because paying the interest on the debt is now the fourth leading cost of the federal government, and since we are running an ever-increasing deficit, it will only grow. The chickens are flocking around the roost now.
  • myvoiceismypass 1y ago
    > US national debt and servicing it 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.
• strict9 1y ago
  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.
  • fuzzfactor 1y ago
    "Tech" layoffs are a canary. 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.
• OgsyedIE 1y ago
  Many commenters say that AI is overblown and they're right. But the rise in labor precarity in almost all sectors is real. 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.
  • tsvetkov 1y ago
    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
• phtrivier 1y ago
  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.)
• dsr_ 1y ago
  That layoffs-each-year graph is a prime example of "that's not a suitable graph for that data".
• LurkandComment 1y ago
  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.
  • mml 1y ago
    after 30y of this business, i’m dumbfounded we haven’t organized. doctors, lawyers, plumbers etc seem to benefit hugely from professional orgs and unions in their corner. i guess we are too well paid. (all of the above make more than you do, and it’s because they are organized)
• otikik 1y ago
  > We start to see unrest and/or riots against "the rich" because there are no jobs, and people are being evicted I am surprised this has not already happened. The combination of rampant inequality and lax gun laws (in some states) is very explosive.
  • hungryhobbit 1y ago
    The rich have been very effective at convincing the poor to use those guns against each other (and scientists) instead of the people responsible for their poverty.
  • dingnuts 1y ago
    the gun laws are stricter in the States with more inequality
    • dalyons 1y ago
      A trivial google shows thats wrong, it doesn’t look to be a strong correlation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_income_inequality https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_terr...
  • hyperliner 1y ago
    [dead]
  • lif 1y ago
    good old 'panem et circensis' at work: we're never had more effective 'circensis' (Tiktok, video-games, etc.) the 'panem' part? yeah, that might be a problem, given (further) inflation
  • lossolo 1y ago
    It’s a cycle that is always interrupted by war or revolution. The wealthy in the US do not understand what a revolution is, they believe that laws written on paper are as unbreakable as the laws of physics. Laws only function when the vast majority of society agrees to abide by them. Once people have nothing left to lose, it will be too late.
• agentultra 1y ago
  I’m not confident that AI can be used in place of human knowledge workers. 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.
• outside1234 1y ago
  He doesn't even get into the police state that is being methodically constructed around us by the regime.
• sys32768 1y ago
  The trades sure aren't hurting. Where I live, a county of about 120k in the Rockies, appliance repair shops are booking six weeks out, and roofers can book out as long as six months.
  • enraged_camel 1y ago
    This is going to change fast once the recession hits. Because what happens during recessions is that households abandon all but the most critical home repair and home improvement projects, and trade businesses shutter in large numbers.
• adonese 1y ago
  I can see the author's point but im failing to link it to ai. The ai im using now is a good as a productivity booster for otherwise already well defined problem-- and decently good engineers. I dont think the layoffs are due to that. It is affecting entry jobs rather badly, but that (anecdotely) constitutes minority.
  • readthenotes1 1y ago
    ADP's June employment report was pretty dismal, much worse than the blowout BLS report that came out the next day. It was more in line with the revision that came out 2 months later. 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...
• AstroBen 1y ago
  I have no idea where this will go but I'm really not optimistic about the future of software development work. AI is already scarily good today. Sure I can still add value as a senior right now.. but there's no reason why that has to continue to be the case
• vishvananda 1y ago
  I share the concern based on the current productivity expectations but I did stumble across something recently which makes me feel a lot better. There was a change in the tax code that coincides with the beginning of the post-pandemic layoffs[1]. This was changed back last month by the BBB which likely means a bunch of new R&D spend for big tech. I think this is why we are seeing intense M&A activity and if we can keep the AI hype under control it will probably lead to new hiring as well. [1]: https://qz.com/tech-layoffs-tax-code-trump-section-174-microsoft-meta-1851783502 https://qz.com/tech-layoffs-tax-code-trump-section-174-micro...
  • ponector 1y ago
    I don't think this tax change had huge impact. Two reasons: 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.
    • disgruntledphd2 1y ago
      > 1. Layoffs and slowdown are global, not only in US. 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.
• Sebb767 1y ago
  > And I think that then leads to calls for: > - 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.
• righthand 1y ago
  > Homelessness skyrockets because people can't pay their rent, but now it's whole families on the streets > 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.
  • quesera 1y ago
    How about "activities we consider crimes today"? A society always exists, even in a total dissolution of the previously-existing social order (which we are not truly contemplating here).
    • righthand 1y ago
      Yes we are not contemplating that but the article was.
• stego-tech 1y ago
  I share the same concerns as the author. People like to dispute individual issues by saying they’re caused by X or will even out with Y or the government can just do Z if the people voted for it, or that this is all irrelevant anyway because it’s never happened in the data before and therefore extremely unlikely or impossible to ever happen in the future. 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.
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• IAmGraydon 1y ago
  I think some of his worries are well founded and others are not. I believe AI is not going to replace everyone or even most. Instead, it will eventually be seen for what it is - not actually intelligent, and the bubble that was built on those hopes and dreams will collapse, kicking off a market crash. At the same time, Trump's tariffs are going to spike inflation, preventing the Fed from cutting. That will further Trump's fight with Powell, which will lead to him installing a puppet. Said puppet will cut rates, leading to record-setting inflation that could lead us into something resembling the Great Depression. That is a very likely outcome, in my opinion.
• quesera 1y ago
  The layoff chart, created by AI, would be more impactful (and simultaneously less confusing, which is rare!) if it expressed the 2025 value as an extrapolated run-rate, or as a predicted range.
• xunil2ycom 1y ago
  If humans are replaced en masse by AI agents, companies will save billions until there is nobody left who can pay for their products and/or services because we're all destitute and on the dole. I'm scheduled to retire in about 9 years. I'm not sure I'm going to make it that long.
  • Nevermark 1y ago
    Owners of capital and machine labor can continue making bank and driving demand, even if there are no more human laborers making any money. 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.
  • jofla_net 1y ago
    Very true, If you take the number of tech jobs lost over the last couple years(in article) and multiply out, say, roughly $125K gross salary yearly, cut that in half for taxes (and things i missed) and you still are out tens of billions of dollars that people wont have to spend on things, big things. 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."
    • bamboozled 1y ago
      According to other people, the robots will also be consumers. Us "regular folk" are really just in for the ride now aren't we?
  • pupppet 1y ago
    We’ve orchestrated our own demise by valuing ever increasing revenue above all else. The cancer must grow, to hell with the host.
• bwfan123 1y ago
  In tech, change is the only constant. From embedded software in assembly to mobile/web development in javascript to jit-compiled python. This is not easy on engineers or on businesses as they have to keep reskilling at all times. The silver lining to AI is that it is poor at reskilling itself which is why the data-cutoff is circa 2024 for some models.
  • stego-tech 1y ago
    It’s constant, sure, but the rate of change is not. We’re still in the explosion brought about by silicon-based microprocessors, and that appears to be slowing down significantly as we’ve eked out all the easy gains in performance, power, and efficiency. I’m in the camp that believes, within my lifetime, tech innovation as we view it today will gradually slow and stagnate, resulting in a collapse of languages, models, and products into a handful of standards - and which every business, school, government, and person builds on top of or around until the next big explosion happens. It’s why Big Tech is so adamant about selling walled gardens: deep down, they know everyone is pining to be the next IBM juggernaut. 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.
• chaseadam17 1y ago
  Here's another possibility: 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.
• dysoco 1y ago
  I don't want to come off as insensitive, and as a developer with a few years of experience and about to graduate, I'm obviously a bit worried about AI as well. However, this reads like an American overpanicking because they're used to living with a certain employment and economic stability that is just not the norm in most of the world, and are coming to terms with instability for the first time. 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.
  • quesera 1y ago
    I think there's some truth to this. There's lots of room in the middle of the pack. 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.
• jmaestrooper 1y ago
  Sure, it wasn't bad when IT caused automation and elimination of many job positions and entire occupations, both manual and office. Now that we're on the receiving end of it, it is a bad thing all of a sudden. 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.
• xlbuttplug2 1y ago
  Why did this fall off the first page so hard? Regardless of the quality of the post, it was getting good engagement I thought.
  • CalRobert 1y ago
    At least it isn’t flagged? Negative takes on AI do poorly here
    • 93po 1y ago
      ____ does good/poorly on HN is often repeated but usually never true. I see constant negativity on AI, and in fact I see it overwhelmingly more negative than positive takes. but i also have my own bias in what i see, and probably falling to the same phenomenon as you
• motorest 1y ago
  I think the so-called elites are already smelling blood in the water, from the way some billionaires are investing in doomsday bunkers. 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.
• thegrim33 1y ago
  So, the guy who's a founder of an AI company and makes money if he convinces people to buy into his AI project, is making some alarmist/doomer post about how crazy AI has gotten and how many jobs it's supposedly taking. He presents such thoughts as if they're some gnawing worry he just randomly needs to share. 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.
  • stego-tech 1y ago
    Just because there is a conflict of interest doesn’t completely invalidate the argument being made. Marketing slop routinely makes it to the front page here and elsewhere with nobody batting an eye, but someone posting a personal take on their personal blog is now somehow a self-serving plug for…remind me where the product link is in that document again? I couldn’t find it. Part of recognizing bias and conflicts of interest is also being able to recognize when, despite that, they’re still right.
  • rez0__ 1y ago
    what product does he sell
• thisisit 1y ago
  There has been convergence of many events: 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.
  • yegle 1y ago
    AFAIKT 1. was reverted in the OBBB. And I suspect my recent influx of recruiter outreaching email is related to that. Give it 3 more months and things may trend upward.
    • ffsm8 1y ago
      Tbf, tfa only gave it an even chance. He's not saying things are gonna turn bad, he merely observes multiple issues which could create an anti-synergy which would likely end badly if realized.
  • adregan 1y ago
    When the article mentions "tech-adjacent," I think it is worth keeping in mind that this includes a broad swath of jobs that would never had qualified for amortizing salaries as R&D. For example, I'm skeptical that the tax change will have an impact on the number of television and film producers that are currently unemployed due to a huge slowdown in greenlighting projects from streaming services. I feel there is a contraction happening (though, practically, it doesn't always appear that way) that is a greater source of consternation than amortizing developer salaries will alleviate.
• ziofill 1y ago
  > We're already primed to fight with each other because we no longer share a common reality. This is the really scariest part to me.
  • cwmoore 1y ago
    Me too.
  • _hcuq 1y ago
    Yep
• brothrock 1y ago
  For what it’s worth Salesforce.com is hiring Software Engineers. https://careers.salesforce.com/en/jobs/jr307625/software-engineering-amts-new-grad/ 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.
  • AstroBen 1y ago
    new grads, too
• lcall 1y ago
  Life has many stresses, but things can actually be OK with each of us, despite commotion and problems. In my church of 17.5 million members in most countries, we have made promises with God to help each other and we try to help others in need, in many nations ($1.5 billion last year and growing). That is far from the total level of need, but God has also promised to help us and guide us as individuals and families if we really strive to keep our promises and do our part; He has promised peace in this life and eternal life in the world to come. And there are programs for developing and serving in employment, education, resilience, service to community, etc. And very local congregation has a bishop (unpaid) with access to resources to help meet needs and achieve self-reliance. 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.)
• ct 1y ago
  The wealth gap and wages not keeping up with inflation is a large part of the problem. 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.
• hintymad 1y ago
  > Tech layoffs by year 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?
  • rsanek 1y ago
    50% or 100%? Which companies? All the biggest companies increased by some durin 2020~2022, but not really all that much more than their historical growth rates. What did happen uniformly is that all essentially stopped hiring after 2022. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/number-of-employees https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/numb... https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MSFT/microsoft/number-of-employees https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MSFT/microsoft/num... https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/number-of-employees https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/number-... https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/META/meta-platforms/number-of-employees https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/META/meta-platform...
• tasuki 1y ago
  > These are people who've been making over $100-200K in tech or tech-adjacent for over a decade. 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...
  • insane_dreamer 1y ago
    He's not worried about whether they'll be okay. 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.
• insane_dreamer 1y ago
  > Tech layoffs by year: > 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?
• ivape 1y ago
  Okay, so you don't make anymore money and die homeless. Whatever. To have to constantly worry about this for eternity is such a waste of life.
  • glaarinee 1y ago
    I gather you have never been homeless
• p3rls 1y ago
  learn2plumb noobs
• sub7 1y ago
  ok doomer the counter argument is obviously that it will be fine and keep getting better for the average person like it has for 100s of years
• ropable 1y ago
  I read this article and thought "Thanks heavens the US Federal government is appointing a highly-qualified and unbiased head of their Bureau of Labor Statistics so we all have perfect confidence in their future employment numbers". /s
• t0bia_s 1y ago
  My best advice right now is honestly—not trying to scare people—just to look around and appreciate what we/you have right now. Whole point is contradiction of entire article.