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That still seems super naive, at least if its extended to software engineering. Companies already treat software engineers like disposable cogs to be burnt out

That still seems super naive, at least if its extended to software engineering. Companies already treat software engineers like disposable cogs to be burnt out and discarded. I don't see how AI will improve that.

keiferski 8mo ago
I think if you’re legitimately providing value to the company, you aren’t disposable. If you are but still get canned, then you’re just dealing with irrational management, and that predates AI.
- fsckboy 8mo ago
  >irrational management, and that predates AI actually, it's AI that will be doing the predating
- pixl97 8mo ago
  Business can remain irrational longer than you can remain financially solvent.
- francisofascii 8mo ago
  the goalposts for providing value are changing faster than ever
- DrewADesign 8mo ago
  The problem isn’t whether or not companies need us— it’s about how many of us they need (demand), and how many of us there are (supply), because that determines our value. Companies pay people what they’ll work for, not based on how much they contribute to the bottom line; in economics, paying more than you have to for anything, including labor, is the irrational path. A steady, high demand for software developers has kept salaries high because that’s the only way they could get capable people to work for them. The higher-end of markets aren’t immune to this. As the demand for lower-level workers drops, people will upskill trying to move up rather than get lopped off. Since there are fewer positions the further up the hierarchy you get, you don’t need a huge increase in supply to affect demand. That’s when you start seeing the most experienced, highest-earning people getting shit-canned because someone is willing to do a good-enough version of their role for 2/3 their sizable salary. This can all happen without a single entire role being completely automated out of existence.
  - jurgenburgen 8mo ago
    Software is already fantastically profitable. Productive SaaS companies right now collect ~500k in revenue per employee. If what you describe happens (33% cut to salaries) then the bar for your own startup to be worth it is suddenly lower. If large companies don’t pay us good salaries then why would we not go and build better competitors without the legacy and dead weight?
    - DrewADesign 8mo ago
      Go for it. I got out of that ridiculous ouroboro of an industry years ago. That might be great for you, but surely you can’t imagine VC funding enough startups to save the software labor market? The tech workforce is giant. Do you think there are tens or hundreds of thousands of ways to make unique new software products where even a single digit percentage are commercially viable? Software isn’t fungible: it needs to solve specific problems that people have, and do it well enough to deal with the hassle of switching software. This isn’t an individual problem— it’s an industry-wide problem. (I pulled the 2/3 number out of a hat to illustrate the point. I put exactly zero analysis into that.)
    - palmotea 8mo ago
      > If what you describe happens (33% cut to salaries) then the bar for your own startup to be worth it is suddenly lower. That sounds like a material reduction in quality of life. Running a startup seems like it would entail way more hours worked and way more pressure, even if you were making better money. IMHO, that's not a good trade off.
      - bayarearefugee 8mo ago
        > Running a startup seems like it would entail way more hours worked and way more pressure, even if you were making better money. It is also ignoring scalability issues in the sense that if a large number of people now working regular jobs in tech are forced down this path, the amount of competition among these startups would be astronomical which would result is downward pressure on both the ability to fundraise and the ability to generate revenue for your particular startup. Impossible for me to believe each individual startup founder would find some profitable niche to fit into.
- echelon 8mo ago
  > I think if you’re legitimately providing value to the company, you aren’t disposable. Businesses want worker fungibility and to reduce bus favor from having single point of failures. That usually, but not always, flies in the face of irreplaceability.
  - keiferski 8mo ago
    In a perfect world, yes. In most companies, finding good talent is a much harder problem than having too much of it.
- Lord-Jobo 8mo ago
  The value-cost ratio is all that matters to a company. Yes, that implies that they are assuming all variations of value are achievable by AI which isn’t true and probably won’t ever be. But they do think that, nearly all of them. Because they don’t understand value. This has been true since the very first corporation. And that’s the problem. They will see a totally cheesed and squeezed metric telling them AI can reach 40% of the value of a “ ___ engineer “ at 10% of the cost and lay off engineers until shit starts exploding. And the stock market will strongly reward that decision.
- direwolf20 8mo ago
  I was and I did. Now there's nobody on the team who can fulfil something we promised to our biggest customer a few months ago. Shrug not my problem because I don't work there.
- lanfeust6 8mo ago
  Only quibble that in some areas like the games industry, being disposable (qua susceptibility to layoffs) was closer to the status quo well before AI came around.
- darth_avocado 8mo ago
  > I think if you’re legitimately providing value to the company, you aren’t disposable. Employees in knowledge work don’t generate constant value at all times. And companies want value at all times (that needs to be ever increasing). You’re not disposable at all point in time if you’re providing value at that point in time.
- _DeadFred_ 8mo ago
  Companies shutdown profitable divisions/products because they aren't profitable enough. 'Providing value' is determined at a whim and by metrics out of your control.
onehair 8mo ago
AI isn't an adequate replacement for experienced software engineers, that is true. But employers think it is, and are falling for the hype and are affecting engineers left and right regardless. Whether I'm wrong or they're wrong is immaterial. They're still replacing SWEs with AI.
roncesvalles 8mo ago
>Companies already treat software engineers like disposable cogs to be burnt out and discarded. I'm sorry but this is simply false. Nothing has really changed on the ground for SWEs. Nothing at all. Compensation is still sky high. Interviews are still the same. Career progression is the same. Everything takes the same amount of time. It's all business as usual for software engineering as a profession. AI is just one more tool in the toolkit; some devs use it, some don't. No engineering org has fallen for any hype in a meaningful way. Ultimately SWE teams on the frontline are busy doing what they always do, mostly in the way that they've always been doing. The only thing that's changed in a remarkable way is how disconnected the rhetoric on social media is from ground reality. Anyone telling you AI is even replacing 5% of SWEs in the industry is a jobless hack.
- dataflow 8mo ago
  > I'm sorry but this is simply false. Nothing has really changed on the ground for SWEs. Nothing at all. Compensation is still sky high. Interviews are still the same. Career progression is the same. Everything takes the same amount of time. That's not remotely what I'm hearing or seeing from those who are on the job market.
  - roncesvalles 8mo ago
    The tech job market hasn't been "easy" for many years (basically since 2015 except for a ~2 year boom from mid 2020 to mid 2022). People always find different things to attribute the difficulty to. I remember way back in the day when bootcamps were the boogeyman.

keiferski 8mo ago

I think if you’re legitimately providing value to the company, you aren’t disposable. If you are but still get canned, then you’re just dealing with irrational management, and that predates AI.

fsckboy 8mo ago
>irrational management, and that predates AI actually, it's AI that will be doing the predating
pixl97 8mo ago
Business can remain irrational longer than you can remain financially solvent.
francisofascii 8mo ago
the goalposts for providing value are changing faster than ever
DrewADesign 8mo ago
The problem isn’t whether or not companies need us— it’s about how many of us they need (demand), and how many of us there are (supply), because that determines our value. Companies pay people what they’ll work for, not based on how much they contribute to the bottom line; in economics, paying more than you have to for anything, including labor, is the irrational path. A steady, high demand for software developers has kept salaries high because that’s the only way they could get capable people to work for them. The higher-end of markets aren’t immune to this. As the demand for lower-level workers drops, people will upskill trying to move up rather than get lopped off. Since there are fewer positions the further up the hierarchy you get, you don’t need a huge increase in supply to affect demand. That’s when you start seeing the most experienced, highest-earning people getting shit-canned because someone is willing to do a good-enough version of their role for 2/3 their sizable salary. This can all happen without a single entire role being completely automated out of existence.
- jurgenburgen 8mo ago
  Software is already fantastically profitable. Productive SaaS companies right now collect ~500k in revenue per employee. If what you describe happens (33% cut to salaries) then the bar for your own startup to be worth it is suddenly lower. If large companies don’t pay us good salaries then why would we not go and build better competitors without the legacy and dead weight?
  - DrewADesign 8mo ago
    Go for it. I got out of that ridiculous ouroboro of an industry years ago. That might be great for you, but surely you can’t imagine VC funding enough startups to save the software labor market? The tech workforce is giant. Do you think there are tens or hundreds of thousands of ways to make unique new software products where even a single digit percentage are commercially viable? Software isn’t fungible: it needs to solve specific problems that people have, and do it well enough to deal with the hassle of switching software. This isn’t an individual problem— it’s an industry-wide problem. (I pulled the 2/3 number out of a hat to illustrate the point. I put exactly zero analysis into that.)
  - palmotea 8mo ago
    > If what you describe happens (33% cut to salaries) then the bar for your own startup to be worth it is suddenly lower. That sounds like a material reduction in quality of life. Running a startup seems like it would entail way more hours worked and way more pressure, even if you were making better money. IMHO, that's not a good trade off.
    - bayarearefugee 8mo ago
      > Running a startup seems like it would entail way more hours worked and way more pressure, even if you were making better money. It is also ignoring scalability issues in the sense that if a large number of people now working regular jobs in tech are forced down this path, the amount of competition among these startups would be astronomical which would result is downward pressure on both the ability to fundraise and the ability to generate revenue for your particular startup. Impossible for me to believe each individual startup founder would find some profitable niche to fit into.
echelon 8mo ago
> I think if you’re legitimately providing value to the company, you aren’t disposable. Businesses want worker fungibility and to reduce bus favor from having single point of failures. That usually, but not always, flies in the face of irreplaceability.
- keiferski 8mo ago
  In a perfect world, yes. In most companies, finding good talent is a much harder problem than having too much of it.
Lord-Jobo 8mo ago
The value-cost ratio is all that matters to a company. Yes, that implies that they are assuming all variations of value are achievable by AI which isn’t true and probably won’t ever be. But they do think that, nearly all of them. Because they don’t understand value. This has been true since the very first corporation. And that’s the problem. They will see a totally cheesed and squeezed metric telling them AI can reach 40% of the value of a “ ___ engineer “ at 10% of the cost and lay off engineers until shit starts exploding. And the stock market will strongly reward that decision.
direwolf20 8mo ago
I was and I did. Now there's nobody on the team who can fulfil something we promised to our biggest customer a few months ago. Shrug not my problem because I don't work there.
lanfeust6 8mo ago
Only quibble that in some areas like the games industry, being disposable (qua susceptibility to layoffs) was closer to the status quo well before AI came around.
darth_avocado 8mo ago
> I think if you’re legitimately providing value to the company, you aren’t disposable. Employees in knowledge work don’t generate constant value at all times. And companies want value at all times (that needs to be ever increasing). You’re not disposable at all point in time if you’re providing value at that point in time.
_DeadFred_ 8mo ago
Companies shutdown profitable divisions/products because they aren't profitable enough. 'Providing value' is determined at a whim and by metrics out of your control.

onehair 8mo ago

AI isn't an adequate replacement for experienced software engineers, that is true. But employers think it is, and are falling for the hype and are affecting engineers left and right regardless. Whether I'm wrong or they're wrong is immaterial. They're still replacing SWEs with AI.

roncesvalles 8mo ago

>Companies already treat software engineers like disposable cogs to be burnt out and discarded. I'm sorry but this is simply false. Nothing has really changed on the ground for SWEs. Nothing at all. Compensation is still sky high. Interviews are still the same. Career progression is the same. Everything takes the same amount of time. It's all business as usual for software engineering as a profession. AI is just one more tool in the toolkit; some devs use it, some don't. No engineering org has fallen for any hype in a meaningful way. Ultimately SWE teams on the frontline are busy doing what they always do, mostly in the way that they've always been doing. The only thing that's changed in a remarkable way is how disconnected the rhetoric on social media is from ground reality. Anyone telling you AI is even replacing 5% of SWEs in the industry is a jobless hack.

dataflow 8mo ago
> I'm sorry but this is simply false. Nothing has really changed on the ground for SWEs. Nothing at all. Compensation is still sky high. Interviews are still the same. Career progression is the same. Everything takes the same amount of time. That's not remotely what I'm hearing or seeing from those who are on the job market.
- roncesvalles 8mo ago
  The tech job market hasn't been "easy" for many years (basically since 2015 except for a ~2 year boom from mid 2020 to mid 2022). People always find different things to attribute the difficulty to. I remember way back in the day when bootcamps were the boogeyman.