6 ms·

There's a vibe in at least the PNW that feels like the tech sector is sloughing jobs and avoiding creating new ones courtesy of AI. I genuinely wonder if that f

• giraffe_lady 7mo ago
  I'm not sure how much of it is actually AI vs just like, the bags of VC money have dried up and most tech companies can't anywhere near justify their personnel or often even existence without it. Like companies have been doing the RTO "stealth" layoffs for years now, it's not even news anymore, this was already well underway. There is also the obvious priapism of owners and investors to finally do to the remaining white collar workers what they have already done to everyone else. Whether or not AI actually can replace all these workers is nearly moot, they have fantasized about business without labor for so long they can't tell the difference from reality anymore.
  • nerdsniper 7mo ago
    Where is the money that was going to VC investments going now? With increasing inequality, I figure rich people have more money than ever that they need to figure out where to invest.
    • saalweachter 7mo ago
      Real estate?
      • bombcar 7mo ago
        Real estate is not doing well, it's "stalled" but not collapsing, but prices are staying steady and mortgage rates are not down to Covid levels.
      • esseph 7mo ago
        If so, not commercial. Commercial has been in a slow collapse + shell game of shifting the debt burden.
    • h2zizzle 7mo ago
      Interest on debt; shoring up the financial vehicles and insurance through which they diffused the catastrophic losses of their bad bets from the past few decades; stockpiled for the inevitable economic collapse and the feeding frenzy that will follow; land.
      • h2zizzle 7mo ago
        I just want everyone to understand that part of why everything is so expensive today is because our elite funneled the surpluses from the electronic revolution into boondoggles that not only didn't make back what they cost, but that demand even more labor, to this day, to cover maintenance and interest. >Yeah, screw DEI! lmao I'm talking about wars; sprawl; advertising and consumerism; wasteful or gatekept luxuries; feet-dragging on any number of technologies and policies that could have mitigated the damage, just to please incumbents. We temporarily made life spectacularly better for like 5-10% of the population, and doomed everyone to either generations of toil, or a hard reset in the form of a "burn it all down" revolution.
    • bigthymer 7mo ago
      More money is flowing into commodities. Gold price going up feeds into more mining.
    • JoeCortopassi 7mo ago
      The big money is going to the OpenAI/Anthropic types producing foundation models that have to raise billions on a regular basis. This is money that would normal be spread across the startup ecosystem instead of concentrated in a handful of massive companies. When it finally hits IPO, I'd bet that you see it start to get freed up for new investments Just to drive the point home, in 2019 the total VC market was ~$300 billion. To date, roughly $235 billion is tied up in just OpenAI ($168b) and Anthropic ($67b)
    • epistasis 7mo ago
      For a long time interest rates were incredibly low which led a ton of investors to put money into VC funds, despite their very high risk. When interest rates go up, money floods out of higher risk higher return areas like company formation, and floods back into buying bonds, so investors can collect the low-risk interest that didn't exist before.
• sybercecurity 7mo ago
  I don't know either. I do wonder if AI is just and excuse since saying "we have to let people go because the economy is bad and our costs are up." spooks investors while "We adopted magic AI and don't need people anymore" sounds like these companies are being proactive so investors don't dump their stocks.
  • bombcar 7mo ago
    Considering the first companies to claim AI has made many redundant are the same companies that overhired during Covid, I think it's pretty clear how the wind is blowing. Companies move in a group, if you're the only company doing layoffs you look weak and predators will pounce and the board will ask uncomfortable questions, but if everyone is doing it, they'll ask why you are NOT.
  • hnthrow0287345 7mo ago
    They also want to get as close to a skeleton crew as possible. They believe developers can do everything while simultaneously driving down the cost of developers. They've been boiling the frog with increasing job requirements since at least one or two decades ago, and AI is conveniently aligned towards this goal.
• root_axis 7mo ago
  The idea doesn't really make sense to me. We know LLMs increase productivity, especially for coding, but increasing productivity shouldn't make you fire people unless your business has already exhausted any potential for growth. Instead we would expect the increased productivity to grow businesses further and increase hiring for all other tasks that LLMs are still not good at.
  • thunky 7mo ago
    > Instead we would expect the increased productivity to grow businesses further This assumes infinite demand which is not a good assumption imo. Especially if people are losing their jobs.
    • root_axis 7mo ago
      You're right. My point is that AI isn't at the heart of the job shedding, it's just a scapegoat for other structural problems in the economy.
    • _Tev 7mo ago
      > This assumes infinite demand which is not a good assumption imo. Yes, but "AI replaces people by improving productivity by 20-50%" is clearly a case of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy. So maybe the "people are losing their jobs" is just totally unrelated to AI . . . but people keep repeating that "companies can do same work with fewer people thanks to AI" nonsense, so there will always be a need to remind them how actual economics work.
  • mixdup 7mo ago
    In a shrinking economy there isn't much growth. They can take the productivity gains to shrink their payrolls and get the same output with fewer people That said I don't think there is a ton of productivity growth yet with LLMs that would show up in the numbers that are getting thrown around. Companies are just finally seeing that they have a bunch of people not doing much at all and cleaning house
• luxuryballs 7mo ago
  I can only speak from anecdotal experience in that I just witnessed this week, dev team leads and architects “replaced” by Claude code, they kept the offshore junior-mid coders and are giving them $20/mo pro accounts… (doesn’t that seem a little backwards?)
  • inwnvoo 7mo ago
    [dead]
  • slantedview 7mo ago
    This is absolutely backwards.
  • dboreham 7mo ago
    Always good to see an A/B test done.
• bombcar 7mo ago
  There were definitely some companies that clearly overhired during Covid that are now "resetting" and blaming/crediting AI is certainly an excuse they can use.
• jandrewrogers 7mo ago
  In Washington it is much broader than the tech sector. Washington is being buried in indefensibly bad legislation that is extremely hostile to large companies and tech companies of every size for openly ideological reasons. It has rapidly become one of the worst business environments in the country when it used to be one of the best. Many companies have stopped or reduced hiring in Seattle and are moving operations to other States; there is a new announcement in the news every other day. I know several longtime residents that have recently moved out of State or are no longer domiciled there as a consequence. There was an article in the news just this week that housing prices are starting to decline rapidly in Seattle. It is looking like they couldn't help themselves and killed the golden goose.
  • Der_Einzige 7mo ago
    Seattle and Portland OR are ground zero for the burgeoning anti-AI movement.
  • galleywest200 7mo ago
    Golden Goose? WA has a massive budget shortfall.
    • jandrewrogers 7mo ago
      There has been zero accountability for that massive budget shortfall. Revenue has increased 2x over the last decade with nothing to show for it. People are rightly skeptical of giving them even more money. And they have gone about trying to increase revenue even more in just about the most toxic ways possible, which will almost certainly erode the tax base. That state desperately needs to restructure its finances but the legislature is almost complete captured by clueless ideologues. Washington isn't California. Most of the attraction of living there historically was its extremely business-friendly environment. I've lived a large fraction of my life in Washington and I'm watching the State commit suicide in real-time.
      • HEmanZ 7mo ago
        “ Most of the attraction of living there historically was its extremely business-friendly environment.” How old are you? What propaganda told you this? In my generation (young millennial/genz) the attraction of living in Seattle, which pulled me and almost a dozen professional friends at this point has been: - high quality urban living in a temperate environment. Including access to great parks, waterfront, bikeability in the city - access to great outdoors and regional amenities like skiing, ocean fishing, hiking, wine country - liberal policies and general friendly society (it’s friendlier here than the east coast) - no state income tax (we’re all very high tax bracket) - a high enough income population that you can find a plethora of high-end products and services that cluster around high income earners (only a few us cities have this stronger than Seattle I feel)
• AndrewKemendo 7mo ago
  I mean Dorsey literally just said publicly that he’s laying off people in order to utilize AI like what more clear point do you want? Whether or not you believe that this is a good or bad move, correct or lying move, whether AI is capable or not, “AI” is the reason that CEOs are utilizing to cut roles The timing of this is based on the fact that Capital is striking from deploying money to anything else outside of the largest deals that include AI as promise of higher profits But ultimately it comes down to the fact that the people in control with all the money believe that the future is gonna need less human workers and is prioritizing giving money to organisms that will shed their workforces in order to run an experiment in AI capturing value on behalf of investors without having the additional overhead of personnel
  • greedo 7mo ago
    Sure, a CEO has never lied before about the reasons for layoffs.
    • shimman 7mo ago
      I think COVID ruined people's ability to critically think. The amount of people in both journalism and across the economy, people are just taking the words of others (often those with malicious intents) with zero critical thought being applied. For Block's case they have had multiple layoffs over the last 5 years, hardly the sign of an AI apocalypse and more of a sign of a business leader that only survived because of free money.
      • greedo 7mo ago
        I agree 100%. I think that many business "leaders" will use AI as a cudgel to control their budgets.
  • epistasis 7mo ago
    Dorsey is in a huge bind with runway and lack of revenue. Blaming AI for a massive cut needed just to get by lets investors trick themselves into believing that he has a plan that makes the company grow to reach the level of profitability that the stock prices suggests will happen. And perhaps Dorsey has a long enough of a runway for something to come along to save the company from eventual collapse. Maybe not, since firing 40% of a company tends to put a damper on innovative efforts that would massively grow revenues.
• nitwit005 7mo ago
  AI isn't causing the job losses in health and hospitality.