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With little growth and hiring happening outside of firms betting the farm on AI—and getting the funding to stay alive and play the lottery—what is a random tech

With little growth and hiring happening outside of firms betting the farm on AI—and getting the funding to stay alive and play the lottery—what is a random tech employee supposed to do here? It seems like right now the most rational move to stay in the industry is to milk the AI wave as much as possible, learn all of the tools, get a big brand name on one's resume, and then land somewhere still-alive once the AI music stops? But ultimately if nothing outside of AI is growing, it's one big game of musical chairs and even that might not save you?

karlgkk 10mo ago
That “rational move” has always been a good move, regardless of AI. This is a boom/bust industry, and the next boom will come in a few years. While we’re at it, if you’re making engineer money, you should be targeting retirement at 50. I’m not saying you have to do that, but it sure helps to have that option.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- delfinom 10mo ago
  > if you’re making engineer money, SV & big tech engineer money. Majority of engineering fields do not make that kind of money to retire at 50. Comfortable compared to the rest of the country, sure.
  - karlgkk 10mo ago
    I think maybe that was implied, considering the topic of conversation and website we’re on. That said if you’re making $250k+ a year and not on track to retire by 50, seriously please open a retirement calculator and figure out what you need to do to get there.
    - ghaff 10mo ago
      Which is a pretty high salary in the US in tech generally. That said, a lot of people in US tech can probably retire relatively early if they run the numbers and don't have a lot of external expenses.
    - brandall10 10mo ago
      I wouldn't assume. The readership of HN is quite vast. I've never worked at big tech and don't plan to.
    - noncoml 10mo ago
      $250k+ a year means ~$12k monthly salary. A semi decent apartment in SV will cost you ~$3k Bills(phone, internet, electricity, etc) another $1k. If you are married, groceries at least $1k. Even if we assume you don’t do anything else in life, and you are in perfect health best case scenario would be $6k savings a month or $72k a year. It would take you 10 years to save $720k plus whatever you make from investments. That’s not enough to even buy you a house in SV. How are you going to retire? Unless you assume you will get $250k straight out of college and keep up salary raises for 25 years. Sure, if you don’t have kids, age with no health problems, never enjoy anything in life, you may be able to retire at 50 in Thailand or Philippines.
      - karlgkk 10mo ago
        Rent? Ever heard of equity? If you make 250k you can afford a nice condo. Right away that blows a huge hole in your math. Also $1k month on bills? Groceries too? Judging by your inflated costs for everything, and ann idea that a house (versus more modest accommodations) is what the goal is, you’ve got Lifestyle creep. And, things certainly get a lot easier when your spouse also works.
        reactordev 10mo ago
        Bro, not everyone has daddy to give them the down payment to buy anything remotely affordable in SV.
  - onraglanroad 10mo ago
    When you can retire depends on how little you need. Though, of course, if you're living from investment income you should be aware you're living off the work of other people.
    - anonymars 10mo ago
      Unless you're churning your own butter and manufacturing your own solar panels, isn't retirement inherently living off other people regardless of income?
      - reactordev 10mo ago
        Isn’t social security living off the backs of other people too?
        anonymars 10mo ago
        Childhood too, no? Maybe it turns out life was the original "pyramid scheme"
        reactordev 10mo ago
        Childhood was that new car smell and your parents dreaming of the kind of equity they’ll get only to get frustrated with all the maintenance.
        onraglanroad 10mo ago
        Yes, they both are, it's just less obvious for investment income.
      - incompatible 10mo ago
        Isn't getting wages in a wealthy country so that you can afford a multiple of work hours from poorly-paid people elsewhere inherently living off other people?
        10mo ago
  - reactordev 10mo ago
    This. People act like we’ve gotten $200k+ for more than a decade. Most of us haven’t. It wasn’t until 10 year into my career that I hit $100k so this is boomer math that doesn’t account for inflation of everything.
  - wakawaka28 10mo ago
    A majority of software engineers don't make enough money to retire at 50. People who have retired so young tend to be very lucky in both employment and their investments. Most probably stayed unmarried, inherited significant amounts of money, and/or married into even more money. It also helps to be lucky enough to start with a $100k+ job at age 23 and never have any bad luck to set you back. I've met people who check some/all of these boxes, and even they seem to not be retiring at 50.
swatcoder 10mo ago
If you're a tech employee in a large company with lucrative compensation, you should be aggressively reducing your expenses and banking your excess so you can weather what might be long period of unemployment and can adapt more smoothly to employment at more modest compensation when you manage to get back in. Unless you're working very obviously outside the blast radius of an AI-bubble correction (you'd know if you were) or are a very high-value VIP (again, you'd know), you should assume you'll be spending some time without a job within the next few years. Possibly a long time. You might get lucky, but it's not really going to be in your control and "milking the AI wave, learning all the tools" isn't going to change your odds much. It really is musical chairs. Whether you lose your job will depend on where you happen to be standing when the music stops. And there are going to be so many other people looking for the same new chair as you, with resumes that look almost exactly like yours, that getting a new job will basically come down to a lottery draw. If you think the AI stuff is cool, study it and play with it. Otherwise, just save money and start working on the outline for that novel you've been thinking about writing.
pbkompasz 10mo ago
That is a —good— point.
dspillett 10mo ago
> what is a random tech employee supposed to do here? My plan as someone who was thinking of leaving tech anyway (remote work is not for me, and practically any new tech job I get will be at least as remote as this one has become if not more so, and I want to program not manage programmers, artificial or otherwise) is to stay where I am pushing through to the other side if possible and if not, I'll find myself redundant. At that point I'll end up on a lower wage doing something else from the ground up, but if LLMs are going to be what we are told they are programming will become a minimum wage job for most anyway. Either way, sticking where I am for now, tightening the purse strings a bit, saving as much as I can, is the best course of action.
torginus 10mo ago
Do you think this has something to do with the current US policy of antagonizing most of the Western world? Tech and software's investment balance sheet comes down to a largely fixed cost of development vs. a large customer base where every customer has little to no additional cost. If you manage to burn the bridges or at least scare hundreds of millions of those people into exploring alternatives, that really eats into your total target market in the long run.

karlgkk 10mo ago

That “rational move” has always been a good move, regardless of AI. This is a boom/bust industry, and the next boom will come in a few years. While we’re at it, if you’re making engineer money, you should be targeting retirement at 50. I’m not saying you have to do that, but it sure helps to have that option.

deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
delfinom 10mo ago
> if you’re making engineer money, SV & big tech engineer money. Majority of engineering fields do not make that kind of money to retire at 50. Comfortable compared to the rest of the country, sure.
- karlgkk 10mo ago
  I think maybe that was implied, considering the topic of conversation and website we’re on. That said if you’re making $250k+ a year and not on track to retire by 50, seriously please open a retirement calculator and figure out what you need to do to get there.
  - ghaff 10mo ago
    Which is a pretty high salary in the US in tech generally. That said, a lot of people in US tech can probably retire relatively early if they run the numbers and don't have a lot of external expenses.
  - brandall10 10mo ago
    I wouldn't assume. The readership of HN is quite vast. I've never worked at big tech and don't plan to.
  - noncoml 10mo ago
    $250k+ a year means ~$12k monthly salary. A semi decent apartment in SV will cost you ~$3k Bills(phone, internet, electricity, etc) another $1k. If you are married, groceries at least $1k. Even if we assume you don’t do anything else in life, and you are in perfect health best case scenario would be $6k savings a month or $72k a year. It would take you 10 years to save $720k plus whatever you make from investments. That’s not enough to even buy you a house in SV. How are you going to retire? Unless you assume you will get $250k straight out of college and keep up salary raises for 25 years. Sure, if you don’t have kids, age with no health problems, never enjoy anything in life, you may be able to retire at 50 in Thailand or Philippines.
    - karlgkk 10mo ago
      Rent? Ever heard of equity? If you make 250k you can afford a nice condo. Right away that blows a huge hole in your math. Also $1k month on bills? Groceries too? Judging by your inflated costs for everything, and ann idea that a house (versus more modest accommodations) is what the goal is, you’ve got Lifestyle creep. And, things certainly get a lot easier when your spouse also works.
      - reactordev 10mo ago
        Bro, not everyone has daddy to give them the down payment to buy anything remotely affordable in SV.
- onraglanroad 10mo ago
  When you can retire depends on how little you need. Though, of course, if you're living from investment income you should be aware you're living off the work of other people.
  - anonymars 10mo ago
    Unless you're churning your own butter and manufacturing your own solar panels, isn't retirement inherently living off other people regardless of income?
    - reactordev 10mo ago
      Isn’t social security living off the backs of other people too?
      - anonymars 10mo ago
        Childhood too, no? Maybe it turns out life was the original "pyramid scheme"
        reactordev 10mo ago
        Childhood was that new car smell and your parents dreaming of the kind of equity they’ll get only to get frustrated with all the maintenance.
      - onraglanroad 10mo ago
        Yes, they both are, it's just less obvious for investment income.
    - incompatible 10mo ago
      Isn't getting wages in a wealthy country so that you can afford a multiple of work hours from poorly-paid people elsewhere inherently living off other people?
      - 10mo ago
- reactordev 10mo ago
  This. People act like we’ve gotten $200k+ for more than a decade. Most of us haven’t. It wasn’t until 10 year into my career that I hit $100k so this is boomer math that doesn’t account for inflation of everything.
- wakawaka28 10mo ago
  A majority of software engineers don't make enough money to retire at 50. People who have retired so young tend to be very lucky in both employment and their investments. Most probably stayed unmarried, inherited significant amounts of money, and/or married into even more money. It also helps to be lucky enough to start with a $100k+ job at age 23 and never have any bad luck to set you back. I've met people who check some/all of these boxes, and even they seem to not be retiring at 50.

swatcoder 10mo ago

If you're a tech employee in a large company with lucrative compensation, you should be aggressively reducing your expenses and banking your excess so you can weather what might be long period of unemployment and can adapt more smoothly to employment at more modest compensation when you manage to get back in. Unless you're working very obviously outside the blast radius of an AI-bubble correction (you'd know if you were) or are a very high-value VIP (again, you'd know), you should assume you'll be spending some time without a job within the next few years. Possibly a long time. You might get lucky, but it's not really going to be in your control and "milking the AI wave, learning all the tools" isn't going to change your odds much. It really is musical chairs. Whether you lose your job will depend on where you happen to be standing when the music stops. And there are going to be so many other people looking for the same new chair as you, with resumes that look almost exactly like yours, that getting a new job will basically come down to a lottery draw. If you think the AI stuff is cool, study it and play with it. Otherwise, just save money and start working on the outline for that novel you've been thinking about writing.

pbkompasz 10mo ago

That is a —good— point.

dspillett 10mo ago

> what is a random tech employee supposed to do here? My plan as someone who was thinking of leaving tech anyway (remote work is not for me, and practically any new tech job I get will be at least as remote as this one has become if not more so, and I want to program not manage programmers, artificial or otherwise) is to stay where I am pushing through to the other side if possible and if not, I'll find myself redundant. At that point I'll end up on a lower wage doing something else from the ground up, but if LLMs are going to be what we are told they are programming will become a minimum wage job for most anyway. Either way, sticking where I am for now, tightening the purse strings a bit, saving as much as I can, is the best course of action.

torginus 10mo ago

Do you think this has something to do with the current US policy of antagonizing most of the Western world? Tech and software's investment balance sheet comes down to a largely fixed cost of development vs. a large customer base where every customer has little to no additional cost. If you manage to burn the bridges or at least scare hundreds of millions of those people into exploring alternatives, that really eats into your total target market in the long run.