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> found a 13% relative decline in employment for early-career workers (ages 22-25) in AI-exposed occupations since late 2022. For young software developers spec

> found a 13% relative decline in employment for early-career workers (ages 22-25) in AI-exposed occupations since late 2022. For young software developers specifically, employment fell almost 20% from its 2022 peak This is confounding AI-exposed white collar occupations with occupations that were overrepresented with extended remote work. I am on multiple boards and that was a major factor that disincentivized new grad hiring in the US, because a new grad salary in a white collar profession in the US is a mid-career salary in the rest of the world. AI is used as an excuse, but even most executives when polled agree that we do expect to see the amount of employees being hired at least in software adjacent roles to increase. I cannot justify hiring a mediocre new grad in Seattle for $120k who will end up using Claude Code anyhow when I can hire an early-career employee doing something similar in Romania or India for around $20k. The reality is a large portion of new grads and mid-career types who started their careers after 2020 are too mediocre for the TC paid. --- Edit: pulling a comment of mine from downthread > Why are then so many US developers still employed Becuase unlike the HN hivemind, a large portion of experienced developers in the US have found ways to realistically adopt new technologies where they are relevant. Reflexively being an AI fanatic or Luddite is stupid, but being a SWE who is able to to recognize and explain the value of these tools and their limits is extremely valuable. I can justify paying $300-400k TCs and 100% remote work if you are not a code monkey. This means being able to architect, manage upwards, do basic design and program management, hop onto customer calls, and keep upskilling on top of writing, testing, and reviewing code. We are not hiring SWEs to only push code. We hire SWEs in order to translate and implement business requirements into software. A developer who has a mindset like that is worth their weight in gold, and there are still plenty of these kinds of experienced developers in the US.

baxtr 9mo ago
I am confused by your last paragraph. Is it AI or not? First three paragraphs sounded like it’s not…
- alephnerd 9mo ago
  It is not AI becuase employees hired in Romania and the US are both expected to be able to know how to use AI, which papers over performance issues in most cases that matter for a business (time to delivery), but I cannot justify hiring a deskilled NCG for $120k in the US. Edit: cannot reply > Why are then so many US developers still employed Becuase unlike the HN hivemind, a large portion of experienced developers in the US have found ways to realistically adopt new technologies where they are relevant. Reflexively being an AI fanatic or Luddite is stupid, but being a SWE who is able to tin recognize and explain the value of these tools and their limits is extremely valuable. I can justify paying $300-400k TCs if you are not a code monkey. This means being able to architect, manage upwards, do basic design and program management, hop onto customer calls, and keep upskilling on top of writing and reviewing code. We are not hiring SWEs to only push code. We hire SWEs in order to translate and implement business requirements into software. A developer who has a mindset like that is worth their weight in gold, and there are still plenty of these kinds of experienced developers in the US.
  - fruit2020 9mo ago
    Why are then so many US developers still employed? Some of them might be the best in the world, but they are a minority.
    - pixl97 9mo ago
      When I turn the brakes on my train why doesn't it stop instantly? The other thing is that regulations and tax related employment agreements between corporations and local governments are designed to prevent some offshoring of workers. It's not a binary situation.
  - baxtr 9mo ago
    Sounds as if the basic premise is that you’re hiring SWEs to deliver value to customers so that in turn the value of the company grows. More people need to understand that.
gordonhart 9mo ago
It's also more than a little misleading to compare to the 2022 peak. Anybody who was hiring software engineers in 2020-2022 or being hired as one knows that was a wild and unsustainable period.
- mjr00 9mo ago
  What, you mean a person who has only previous interacted with computers via smartphones taking a 6 month "JavaScript bootcamp" and getting a $150k/year salary on the other side isn't sustainable?
MontyCarloHall 9mo ago
>>Brynjolfsson found a 13% relative decline in employment for early-career workers (ages 22-25) in AI-exposed occupations since late 2022. For young software developers specifically, employment fell almost 20% from its 2022 peak >This is confounding AI-exposed white collar occupations with occupations that were overrepresented with extended remote work. Yup. If you look at Brynjolfsson's actual publication [0], you'll see that precipitous decline in hiring juniors in "AI-exposed occupations" starts in late 2022. This is when ChatGPT first came out, and far too early to see any effects of AI on the job market. You know what else happened in late 2022? The end of ZIRP and Section 174, which immediately put a stop to the frantic post-COVID overhiring of bootcamp juniors just to pad headcount and signal growth. The problem with Brynjolfsson's paper is that it doesn't effectively deconvolve "AI-exposed occupations" from "ZIRP/Section 174-exposed occupations," which overlap significantly. [0] https://digitaleconomy.stanford.edu/app/uploads/2025/11/CanariesintheCoalMine_Nov25.pdf https://digitaleconomy.stanford.edu/app/uploads/2025/11/Cana...
shzbzbjz 9mo ago
> I cannot justify hiring a mediocre new grad in Seattle for $120k who will end up using Claude Code anyhow when I can hire an early-career employee doing something similar in Romania or India for around $20k Yes you can. Life and business is not about profit. It’s about bettering the lives of people. Make it a priority to hire American because you’re an American company. You’re making a choice to prioritize profit (or foreign countries) over the country that you benefit from. This is an immoral and short sighted business decision, as you will eventually see a backlash from the host countries you’re effectively operating as a parasite in. Not trying to persuade you, just laying out there are alternatives that’ll be a reality eventually. Take a look at the current political swings in Japan, Restore Britain, etc.
- izzydata 9mo ago
  Capitalism really is like a disease of the mind. The idea that you absolutely have to and there are no alternatives to extracting as much wealth from a system as possible.
- MontyCarloHall 9mo ago
  >Life and business is not about profit. It’s about bettering the lives of people. This mentality results in the grass at the Taj Mahal being cut with hand tools [0], or Japan having a whole category of "useless jobs" like elevator operators [1, 2] that simply exist to provide employment. Taken to an extreme, this is the broken windows makework fallacy. If I smash a lot of windows, the local glazier gets paid handsomely, at the expense of everyone who had to pay for window replacements. [0] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wAH8jj9cm_o https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wAH8jj9cm_o [1] https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2015/06/13/2003620568 https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2015/06... [2] http://www.ageekinjapan.com/elevator-operator/ http://www.ageekinjapan.com/elevator-operator/
  - kolektiv 9mo ago
    Are those people cutting the grass/operating the elevators happier/unhappier than they would be otherwise? (I don't know, but perhaps you do). You seem to be strongly implying that this is in some way "wrong" rather than a subjectively different view of the purpose of human existence - for what reason? (I'll ignore the glazier example as it seems quite extreme, and also comes with more obvious/specific "victims").
raincole 9mo ago
> I cannot justify hiring a mediocre new grad in Seattle for $120k who will end up using Claude Code anyhow when I can hire an early-career employee doing something similar in Romania or India for around $20k. Of course it's not justified, but I don't think it has anything to do with Claude Code or AI. It has always been true that you can hire competent programmers from eastern European at a discounted price, since forever. If you believe (whether if this belief is based on reality or not) American programmers have "better working ethnics," "easier time to communicate with," or "skin in the game," then they still have these traits in AI era. If you don't then you should outsource anyway.

baxtr 9mo ago

I am confused by your last paragraph. Is it AI or not? First three paragraphs sounded like it’s not…

alephnerd 9mo ago
It is not AI becuase employees hired in Romania and the US are both expected to be able to know how to use AI, which papers over performance issues in most cases that matter for a business (time to delivery), but I cannot justify hiring a deskilled NCG for $120k in the US. Edit: cannot reply > Why are then so many US developers still employed Becuase unlike the HN hivemind, a large portion of experienced developers in the US have found ways to realistically adopt new technologies where they are relevant. Reflexively being an AI fanatic or Luddite is stupid, but being a SWE who is able to tin recognize and explain the value of these tools and their limits is extremely valuable. I can justify paying $300-400k TCs if you are not a code monkey. This means being able to architect, manage upwards, do basic design and program management, hop onto customer calls, and keep upskilling on top of writing and reviewing code. We are not hiring SWEs to only push code. We hire SWEs in order to translate and implement business requirements into software. A developer who has a mindset like that is worth their weight in gold, and there are still plenty of these kinds of experienced developers in the US.
- fruit2020 9mo ago
  Why are then so many US developers still employed? Some of them might be the best in the world, but they are a minority.
  - pixl97 9mo ago
    When I turn the brakes on my train why doesn't it stop instantly? The other thing is that regulations and tax related employment agreements between corporations and local governments are designed to prevent some offshoring of workers. It's not a binary situation.
- baxtr 9mo ago
  Sounds as if the basic premise is that you’re hiring SWEs to deliver value to customers so that in turn the value of the company grows. More people need to understand that.

gordonhart 9mo ago

It's also more than a little misleading to compare to the 2022 peak. Anybody who was hiring software engineers in 2020-2022 or being hired as one knows that was a wild and unsustainable period.

mjr00 9mo ago
What, you mean a person who has only previous interacted with computers via smartphones taking a 6 month "JavaScript bootcamp" and getting a $150k/year salary on the other side isn't sustainable?

MontyCarloHall 9mo ago

>>Brynjolfsson found a 13% relative decline in employment for early-career workers (ages 22-25) in AI-exposed occupations since late 2022. For young software developers specifically, employment fell almost 20% from its 2022 peak >This is confounding AI-exposed white collar occupations with occupations that were overrepresented with extended remote work. Yup. If you look at Brynjolfsson's actual publication [0], you'll see that precipitous decline in hiring juniors in "AI-exposed occupations" starts in late 2022. This is when ChatGPT first came out, and far too early to see any effects of AI on the job market. You know what else happened in late 2022? The end of ZIRP and Section 174, which immediately put a stop to the frantic post-COVID overhiring of bootcamp juniors just to pad headcount and signal growth. The problem with Brynjolfsson's paper is that it doesn't effectively deconvolve "AI-exposed occupations" from "ZIRP/Section 174-exposed occupations," which overlap significantly. [0] https://digitaleconomy.stanford.edu/app/uploads/2025/11/CanariesintheCoalMine_Nov25.pdf https://digitaleconomy.stanford.edu/app/uploads/2025/11/Cana...

shzbzbjz 9mo ago

> I cannot justify hiring a mediocre new grad in Seattle for $120k who will end up using Claude Code anyhow when I can hire an early-career employee doing something similar in Romania or India for around $20k Yes you can. Life and business is not about profit. It’s about bettering the lives of people. Make it a priority to hire American because you’re an American company. You’re making a choice to prioritize profit (or foreign countries) over the country that you benefit from. This is an immoral and short sighted business decision, as you will eventually see a backlash from the host countries you’re effectively operating as a parasite in. Not trying to persuade you, just laying out there are alternatives that’ll be a reality eventually. Take a look at the current political swings in Japan, Restore Britain, etc.

izzydata 9mo ago
Capitalism really is like a disease of the mind. The idea that you absolutely have to and there are no alternatives to extracting as much wealth from a system as possible.
MontyCarloHall 9mo ago
>Life and business is not about profit. It’s about bettering the lives of people. This mentality results in the grass at the Taj Mahal being cut with hand tools [0], or Japan having a whole category of "useless jobs" like elevator operators [1, 2] that simply exist to provide employment. Taken to an extreme, this is the broken windows makework fallacy. If I smash a lot of windows, the local glazier gets paid handsomely, at the expense of everyone who had to pay for window replacements. [0] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wAH8jj9cm_o https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wAH8jj9cm_o [1] https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2015/06/13/2003620568 https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2015/06... [2] http://www.ageekinjapan.com/elevator-operator/ http://www.ageekinjapan.com/elevator-operator/
- kolektiv 9mo ago
  Are those people cutting the grass/operating the elevators happier/unhappier than they would be otherwise? (I don't know, but perhaps you do). You seem to be strongly implying that this is in some way "wrong" rather than a subjectively different view of the purpose of human existence - for what reason? (I'll ignore the glazier example as it seems quite extreme, and also comes with more obvious/specific "victims").

raincole 9mo ago

> I cannot justify hiring a mediocre new grad in Seattle for $120k who will end up using Claude Code anyhow when I can hire an early-career employee doing something similar in Romania or India for around $20k. Of course it's not justified, but I don't think it has anything to do with Claude Code or AI. It has always been true that you can hire competent programmers from eastern European at a discounted price, since forever. If you believe (whether if this belief is based on reality or not) American programmers have "better working ethnics," "easier time to communicate with," or "skin in the game," then they still have these traits in AI era. If you don't then you should outsource anyway.