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New Harvard's study (62M workers, 285k firms) shows firms adopting generative AI cut junior hiring sharply while continuing to grow senior roles — eroding the b
by zeuch 1y ago
New Harvard's study (62M workers, 285k firms) shows firms adopting generative AI cut junior hiring sharply while continuing to grow senior roles — eroding the bottom rungs of career ladders and reshaping how careers start.
- FrustratedMonky 1y agoIn 10 years where do the senior dev's come from? Real question. Seems like with lower entry level jobs now, in 10 years there won't be seniors to hire.
- cubefox 1y agoIn 10 years a lot of the senior developers might be cut as well due to strongly improved AI.
- candiddevmike 1y agoI think a large chunk of people are naively assuming exponential growth and no longer needing senior devs in 10 years.
- thw_9a83c 1y agoI suppose the idea is that those junior developers who weren't hired will spend 10 years doing intensive, unpaid self-study so that they can knock on the door as experienced seniors by that time.
- planccck 1y agoAre you serious? How on earth are these people going to eat or pay rent for 10 years? As well, most companies would laugh you out the door if you were applying a senior role without any experience working in the role.
- thw_9a83c 1y ago> Are you serious? No, I was being sarcastic.
- selimthegrim 1y agoLaugh all you want, for some people it’s more real than you think.
- thw_9a83c 1y agoI'm not laughing at all. I'm definitely not making fun of those who may be affected by this. My sarcasm was directed at people or companies planning to implement such ideas.
- softwaredoug 1y agoJunior devs eventually will have been brought up with agentic coding, etc. Hopefully whatever the "new way" becomes is how they'll be taught. Currently part of the problem is the taboo using AI coding in undergrad CS programs. And I don't know the answer. But someone will find the right way to teach new/better ways of working with and without generative AI. It may just become second nature to everyone.
- Workaccount2 1y agoKids are always the best with technology. The generation in high school right now will be god tier at getting results from LLMs.
- swexbe 1y agoMight have been the case before. But these days, kids are brought up on locked-down content-focused machines (e.g. ipads). They struggle with anything harder than restarting an app.
- bopbopbop7 1y agoHow are high school kids that barely know the basics of the topic going to get “god tier” results from LLMs?
- hattmall 1y agoI can see how that would seem logical, but imo the issue with it not following the normal trend is the inconsistency and inaccurate results of LLMs.
- dandellion 1y agoWhen my little cousin was three and already knew how to use the phone by himself people were claiming he was gonna be a tech wizard and everybody was talking about digital natives. But when he got to high school he didn't know how to turn a computer on. How useful is it to be god tier at getting results from LLMs, if you have zero clue if the result you got is any good?
- basscomm 1y ago
- rs999gti 1y ago> In 10 years where do the senior dev's come from? From company interns. Internships won't go away, there will just be less of them. For example, some companies will turn down interns because they do not have the time to train them due to project load. With AI, now employed developers can be picky on whether or not to take on interns.
- throwawayoldie 1y agoIn 10 years, the management (or "leadership" if you like the taste of boot) responsible for doing the cutting will have moved on to something else, with no consequences for them.
- neutronicus 1y agoFrom the bread line, after they've all been displaced by AI, if you happen to need one for God knows what reason, the CEOs are hoping
- ModernMech 1y agoThey will be promoted but they won't have the requisite experience. We'll have people in the highest positions with the usual titles, but they will be severely underqualified. Enshitification will ensue.
- gruez 1y agoEven if we grant this is going to be a problem, it makes no sense for any individual company to do anything about it. Why take on the cost of training a junior when they can bail in a few years? This is especially true if you're not a big tech company, which puts you at risk of having your junior-turned-senior employees poached by big tech.
- zxor 1y agoGive your juniors reasons to stay at your company? It's not hard if the company cares at all.
- gruez 1y ago>It's not hard if the company cares at all. It's pretty hard for a non-big tech company to pay big tech level salaries.
- zxor 1y agoYou can incentivize people to stay with things other than salary. Salary plays a part of course, but there is a lot of other aspects that make staying at a job worthwhile.
- zelda420 1y agoAnd most of my friends and colleagues would take a full remote role that pays half what big tech, 5 days in office pays. Add in an extra week of PTO and you have a great pitch to devs.
- krapht 1y agoI'll believe it when I see it reflected in applicant resumes. (east coast tech firm)
- zelda420 1y agoWhat do you mean? You’re not getting applicant resumes to your smaller org? I personally turned down an Apple offer because they required 3 days in office and went this a much smaller fully remote team.
- JustExAWS 1y agoSeniors that are 30 years old will still be around and now then they will make more money.
- pdntspa 1y agoThere will still be plenty of seniors, they will be in the 40s and 50s. The problem you speak of is much further out, once those seniors retire.
- oinfoalgo 1y ago10 years is Hassabis current AGI projection. I think this is the gambit that we have already committed to.
- rd 1y agoWhat was the incentive for companies to train juniors into seniors in the past, post job-hopping era? Curious to know if that incentive has warped in the past two decades or so as someone who's starting their career now.
- hackable_sand 1y agoCompanies are organisms
- gruez 1y agoHow does that answer the question?
- hackable_sand 1y agoParent should be able to deduce and internalize the information they need from this analogy.
- bix6 1y agoThere is no incentive now because the social contract is broken and there is too much mobility. Best you can do is find a supportive boss / a company that provides training opportunities.
- zapnuk 1y agoSame as always? Cheap labor. It doesn't take that much to train someone to be somewhat useful, in mmany cases. The main educators are universities and trade schools. Not companies. And if they want more loyalty the can always provide more incentives for juniors to stay longer. At least in my bubble it's astonishing how it's almost never worth it to stay at a company. You'd likely get overlooked for promotions and salary rises are almost insultingly low.
- TuringNYC 1y ago>> What was the incentive for companies to train juniors into seniors in the past, post job-hopping era? You get a lot in the interim!!! I started at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture.) The annual attrition was ~20%, but they still invested over a year of training into me. But it worked: - They needed grunt work in early years (me, working 75hr billable weeks). Not sure how much of this is viable now given LLMs - They had great margins on the other four years. Not sure how much of this is viable now, as margins have shrunk in the past 25yrs as there is more way competition - They used me to train the next cohort in years 4/5 - I appreciated the training and give them 60hr billable weeks on average for five years It was a brutal and exhausing five years but i'm forever thankful to AndersenConsulting/Accenture for the experience.