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My opinion is that AI isn’t actually the root of the problem here. It’s that we are heading towards a big recession. As in all recessions, people come up with

My opinion is that AI isn’t actually the root of the problem here. It’s that we are heading towards a big recession. As in all recessions, people come up with all sorts of reasons why everything is fine until it can’t be denied anymore. This time, AI was a useful narrative to have lying around.

osigurdson 1y ago
I think a kind of AI complacency has set in. Companies are just in chill mode right now, laying off people here and there while waiting for AI to get good enough to do actual work.
- baselessness 1y ago
  Everyone is bracing for a labor supply shock. It will move in the direction opposite what investors expect. 2030 will be 2020 all over again.
  - denkmoon 1y ago
    Why?
    - roncesvalles 1y ago
      1. OBBB rolled back the R&D deduction changes in Section 174 that (allegedly) triggered the layoffs and froze up hiring in 2022-2023. 2. It looks like rates will keep going down. 3. Fewer people are going into CS due to the AI hysteria. You might say oh there's a 4 year lag, but not quite. We should see an immediate impact from career changers, CS grads choosing between career and professional school, and those switching out of CS careers. The tech AI fear hysteria is so widespread that I've even heard of people avoiding non-SWE tech careers like PM.
    - rsynnott 1y ago
      If (a) companies lay too many people off because the magic robots will make engineers unnecessary and (b) the pipeline collapses, because being a software engineer is an undesirable career because it is being replaced by robots and (c) it emerges that the robots are kinda bullshit, then there's going to be one hell of a shortage. When I started a CS degree in 2003, we were still kinda in the "dot com crash has happened, no-one will ever hire a programmer again" phase, and there were about 50 people in my starting class. I think in the same course two years ago, there'd been about 200. The 'correct' number, for actual future demand, was certainly closer to 200 than 50, and the industry as a whole had a bit of a labour crunch in the early 10s in particular.
      - InsideOutSanta 1y ago
        I believe we are vastly underestimating the number of programmers needed, as some companies reap unusually high rewards from hiring programmers. Companies like Google can pay huge sums of money to programmers because they make even higher sums of money from the programmer's work. This means that they inflate programmer salaries, which makes it impossible for most companies that could benefit from software development to hire developers. We could probably have five times as many software developers as we have now, and they would not be out of work; they would only decrease average salaries for programmers.
        phatskat 1y ago
        But if only Google or similarly sized companies can pay that well, and there’s tons of programmers, obviously the average salary will balance out lower than what Google pay but will still be competitive to the thousands of programmers who didn’t get hired at Google.
        roncesvalles 1y ago
        >but will still be competitive to the thousands of programmers who didn’t get hired at Google Why would this be the case? Many programmers join Google or Meta (or similar tier companies) and immediately double or triple their income. Software salaries are famously bimodal and people often transition from the lower mode to the higher mode practically overnight. In fact (and I'm not an economist) I conjecture that the lower mode exists because the upper mode exists. That is, people purposefully don't really care what their salary is (i.e. don't put upward wage pressure) when they're at lower-mode companies because they know one day they'll make the leap to the upper-mode. In other words, the fact that Google-tier companies pay well allows other companies to pay poorly because those guys are just padding their resumes to get a 350k job at Google and don't really care whether Bank of Nowhere pays them $90k or $110k.
    - ModernMech 1y ago
      Combine a bunch of factors: 1) fewer students are studying computer science, I'm faculty at a top CS program and we saw our enrollment decline for the first time ever. Other universities are seeing similar slowdowns of enrollment [1] 2) fewer immigrants coming to the united states to work and live, US is perhaps looking at its first population decline ever [2] 3) Current juniors are being stunted by AI, they will not develop the necessary skills to become seniors. 4) Seniors retiring faster because they don't want to have to deal with this AI crap, taking their knowledge with them. So we're looking at a negative bubble forming in the software engineering expertise pipeline. The money people are hoping that AI can become proficient enough to fill that space before before everything bursts. Engineers, per usual, are pointing out the problem before it becomes one and no one is listening. [1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/06/computer-science-bubble-ai/683242 https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/06/computer... [2]: https://nypost.com/2025/09/03/us-news/us-population-could-shrink-for-first-time-ever-in-2025-alarming-data-shows https://nypost.com/2025/09/03/us-news/us-population-could-sh...
aprilthird2021 1y ago
First thing I thought of was Benioff saying he cut thousands of customer support roles because AI can do it better then turning around and giving lackluster earnings report with revised down guidance and the stock tanks
isodev 1y ago
> we are heading towards a big recession Who is we? One country heading into a recession is hardly enough to nudge the trend of "all things code"
- colechristensen 1y ago
  America's recessions are global recessions.
  - brianmcc 1y ago
    Sadly yes - "When America sneezes, the World catches cold"
- danaris 1y ago
  Enough of the tech industry is America-based that a US recession is enough to do much more than nudge the trend of "all things code". Much as I would prefer that it were not so.
- viridian 1y ago
  The last US recession that didn't also pull in the rest of the western world was in 1982, over 40 years ago. Western Europe, Aus, NZ, Canada, and the US all largely rise and sink on the same tides, with differences measured in degrees.
- dragonwriter 1y ago
  If that “one country” is the US and not, say, Burkina Faso, it is a major impact on financing, and software has an unusually high share of positions dependent on speculative investment for future return rather than directly related to current operations.
some-guy 1y ago
I have never, ever seen SVPs, CEOs, and PMs completely misunderstand a technology before. And I agree with you, I think it's more of an excuse to trim fat--actual productivity is unlikely to go up (it hasn't at our Fortune 500 company)
- jrochkind1 1y ago
  > I have never, ever seen SVPs, CEOs, and PMs completely misunderstand a technology before. I'm legit not sure if that's sarcasm or not
- osigurdson 1y ago
  >> productivity is unlikely to go up I wonder how that would even be measured? I suppose you could do it for roles that do the same type of work every day. I.e. perhaps there is some statistical relevance to number of calls taken in a call center per day or something like that. One the software development side however, productivity metrics are very hard to quantify. Of course, you can make a dashboard look however you want, but impossible, essentially to tie those metrics to NPV.
  - chipsrafferty 1y ago
    Productivity = profit / employees

osigurdson 1y ago

I think a kind of AI complacency has set in. Companies are just in chill mode right now, laying off people here and there while waiting for AI to get good enough to do actual work.

baselessness 1y ago
Everyone is bracing for a labor supply shock. It will move in the direction opposite what investors expect. 2030 will be 2020 all over again.
- denkmoon 1y ago
  Why?
  - roncesvalles 1y ago
    1. OBBB rolled back the R&D deduction changes in Section 174 that (allegedly) triggered the layoffs and froze up hiring in 2022-2023. 2. It looks like rates will keep going down. 3. Fewer people are going into CS due to the AI hysteria. You might say oh there's a 4 year lag, but not quite. We should see an immediate impact from career changers, CS grads choosing between career and professional school, and those switching out of CS careers. The tech AI fear hysteria is so widespread that I've even heard of people avoiding non-SWE tech careers like PM.
  - rsynnott 1y ago
    If (a) companies lay too many people off because the magic robots will make engineers unnecessary and (b) the pipeline collapses, because being a software engineer is an undesirable career because it is being replaced by robots and (c) it emerges that the robots are kinda bullshit, then there's going to be one hell of a shortage. When I started a CS degree in 2003, we were still kinda in the "dot com crash has happened, no-one will ever hire a programmer again" phase, and there were about 50 people in my starting class. I think in the same course two years ago, there'd been about 200. The 'correct' number, for actual future demand, was certainly closer to 200 than 50, and the industry as a whole had a bit of a labour crunch in the early 10s in particular.
    - InsideOutSanta 1y ago
      I believe we are vastly underestimating the number of programmers needed, as some companies reap unusually high rewards from hiring programmers. Companies like Google can pay huge sums of money to programmers because they make even higher sums of money from the programmer's work. This means that they inflate programmer salaries, which makes it impossible for most companies that could benefit from software development to hire developers. We could probably have five times as many software developers as we have now, and they would not be out of work; they would only decrease average salaries for programmers.
      - phatskat 1y ago
        But if only Google or similarly sized companies can pay that well, and there’s tons of programmers, obviously the average salary will balance out lower than what Google pay but will still be competitive to the thousands of programmers who didn’t get hired at Google.
        roncesvalles 1y ago
        >but will still be competitive to the thousands of programmers who didn’t get hired at Google Why would this be the case? Many programmers join Google or Meta (or similar tier companies) and immediately double or triple their income. Software salaries are famously bimodal and people often transition from the lower mode to the higher mode practically overnight. In fact (and I'm not an economist) I conjecture that the lower mode exists because the upper mode exists. That is, people purposefully don't really care what their salary is (i.e. don't put upward wage pressure) when they're at lower-mode companies because they know one day they'll make the leap to the upper-mode. In other words, the fact that Google-tier companies pay well allows other companies to pay poorly because those guys are just padding their resumes to get a 350k job at Google and don't really care whether Bank of Nowhere pays them $90k or $110k.
  - ModernMech 1y ago
    Combine a bunch of factors: 1) fewer students are studying computer science, I'm faculty at a top CS program and we saw our enrollment decline for the first time ever. Other universities are seeing similar slowdowns of enrollment [1] 2) fewer immigrants coming to the united states to work and live, US is perhaps looking at its first population decline ever [2] 3) Current juniors are being stunted by AI, they will not develop the necessary skills to become seniors. 4) Seniors retiring faster because they don't want to have to deal with this AI crap, taking their knowledge with them. So we're looking at a negative bubble forming in the software engineering expertise pipeline. The money people are hoping that AI can become proficient enough to fill that space before before everything bursts. Engineers, per usual, are pointing out the problem before it becomes one and no one is listening. [1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/06/computer-science-bubble-ai/683242 https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/06/computer... [2]: https://nypost.com/2025/09/03/us-news/us-population-could-shrink-for-first-time-ever-in-2025-alarming-data-shows https://nypost.com/2025/09/03/us-news/us-population-could-sh...

aprilthird2021 1y ago

First thing I thought of was Benioff saying he cut thousands of customer support roles because AI can do it better then turning around and giving lackluster earnings report with revised down guidance and the stock tanks

isodev 1y ago

> we are heading towards a big recession Who is we? One country heading into a recession is hardly enough to nudge the trend of "all things code"

colechristensen 1y ago
America's recessions are global recessions.
- brianmcc 1y ago
  Sadly yes - "When America sneezes, the World catches cold"
danaris 1y ago
Enough of the tech industry is America-based that a US recession is enough to do much more than nudge the trend of "all things code". Much as I would prefer that it were not so.
viridian 1y ago
The last US recession that didn't also pull in the rest of the western world was in 1982, over 40 years ago. Western Europe, Aus, NZ, Canada, and the US all largely rise and sink on the same tides, with differences measured in degrees.
dragonwriter 1y ago
If that “one country” is the US and not, say, Burkina Faso, it is a major impact on financing, and software has an unusually high share of positions dependent on speculative investment for future return rather than directly related to current operations.

some-guy 1y ago

I have never, ever seen SVPs, CEOs, and PMs completely misunderstand a technology before. And I agree with you, I think it's more of an excuse to trim fat--actual productivity is unlikely to go up (it hasn't at our Fortune 500 company)

jrochkind1 1y ago
> I have never, ever seen SVPs, CEOs, and PMs completely misunderstand a technology before. I'm legit not sure if that's sarcasm or not
osigurdson 1y ago
>> productivity is unlikely to go up I wonder how that would even be measured? I suppose you could do it for roles that do the same type of work every day. I.e. perhaps there is some statistical relevance to number of calls taken in a call center per day or something like that. One the software development side however, productivity metrics are very hard to quantify. Of course, you can make a dashboard look however you want, but impossible, essentially to tie those metrics to NPV.
- chipsrafferty 1y ago
  Productivity = profit / employees