6 ms·

Tech Workers Face Evaporating Financial Security as AI Transforms Industry

46 points by nlpnerd 3mo ago

pir8life4me 3mo ago
Big company layoffs are probably more aligned with offshoring than AI, but they'll never admit it. Zuckerbergs 8 billion dollar VR metaverse flop has something to do with this maybe? Last time I checked AI isn't killing jobs if the other news is to be believed.
- yieldcrv 3mo ago
  Zuck has spent more than 8 billion on the metaverse
  - blitzar 3mo ago
    By literal order of magnitude
  - pir8life4me 3mo ago
    How much? I think I got 8 bill from AI so ....
- nlpnerd 3mo ago
  OP here, and I agree it's probably not AI directly and more of dealing with the post Covid overhiring, and CAPEX for AI investments. Enterprise adoption is definitely not happening as fast as the AI proponents (startups, frontier labs, big tech) would like people to believe (probably the reason why frontier labs are going the FDE/consulting path). So it's unlikely that the impact on productivity is enough to produce the alleged impact.
  - aurareturn 3mo ago
    It's a combination of Covid over hiring, CapEx for AI hardware, AND you don't need as many software developers anymore per product.
    - adrian_b 3mo ago
      I doubt very much that COVID over-hiring has any relevance today. COVID is now ancient history and there have already been several years of big layoffs when every time I hear the attempt of explaining them through COVID over-hiring. That may have been right a couple of years ago, but since then every company that had over-hired must have already disposed of the surplus.
      - nlpnerd 3mo ago
        The mad rush and overhiring didn't stop immediately after Covid. I know of cases where experienced software engineers were getting picked up by big tech with huge increments as late as end of 2023. My impression is that the current trend for layoffs only really began around early 2025. For reference, the layoffs during the dotcom bubble I was told took around 2 years to plateau
    - pir8life4me 3mo ago
      So then why aren't bad decision making execs being let go? If they can't forecast demand or headcount they should be replaced by confident sounding AI.
    - lux-lux-lux 3mo ago
      We’re going to be well into the Diamond Age before people stop attributing layoffs to ‘Covid overhiring.’
      - aurareturn 3mo ago
        Big tech employee counts are still nearly 2x higher now than 2019.
        strken 3mo ago
        In 2019 I bet they were more than 2x what they were in 2012.
        lux-lux-lux 3mo ago
- pjmlp 3mo ago
  It certainly is killing jobs in agency work, plenty of stuff that used to be done by content teams like translations or image assets, now are 100% AI generated. Also delivery teams have been decreased, as now there is more that can be done with less folks. Which started with move to cloud, focus on SaaS ready made products instead of custom development, serverless instead of microservices, low code/no code tooling, and now AI agents for SaaS product integrations. This is the usual meme only happens when it comes to me kind of thing.
  - pir8life4me 3mo ago
    The lady in the article was a $500k/yr exec, not an illustrator. Neither was her husband iirc. Layoffs are usually across teams not "illustrators and translators". AI isn't killing jobs.
- pjc50 3mo ago
  Offshoring is passé. If you want to give out a set of written instructions, get back something which literally meets the spec but is otherwise inadequate, and babysit overseeing trying to get the results you actually wanted, you can feed it to an LLM for a lot less a lot quicker.
- vovavili 3mo ago
  Offshore engineers tend to require just as much micromanagement and perfect clarification as an LLM, so if anything I would expect the demand for offshore engineers to fall much faster than for local talent.
  - Daishiman 3mo ago
    Bad offshore engineering teams may need that. The other teams that work as you should you just don't hear about.
    - yieldcrv 3mo ago
      I find it more similar to LLM use and prompting style, I’ve taken many teams that Product Managers and non technical founders considered to be bad, and spoke a more universal programming and system architecture language with clearer scope and continuity of tasks to unlock their capabilities
  - owebmaster 3mo ago
    That's quite the interesting assumption. As an "offshore" engineer, I have worked with hundreds of US engineers and none of them were significantly more competent than me if they were. No micromanagement required.
- consumer451 3mo ago
  > Zuckerbergs 8 billion dollar VR metaverse flop has something to do with this maybe? I believe that was an investment into controlling the next platform, so what happened on iOS with could never happen to them again. What's far crazier and more applicable to the current balance sheet is the $14.3B acqui-hire of Alexandr Wang. But, what do I know?
- Havoc 3mo ago
  Or my personal favorite - offshore teams being confidently wrong after having asked AI
kotaKat 3mo ago
"Tech workers"? "a salary of more than $500,000 in her most recent position, as a mid-tier executive at Meta" I'm sorry, but if you're making over half a million in TC a year, you can have an emergency fund set aside as an overpaid executive. How many actual tech workers (the ones making under $100k, lol) are facing even harder financial security than the first-world-problems of some Facebook exec who could afford two nannies?
- NewCzech 3mo ago
  One of the things that surprised me in Silicon Valley is that my colleagues who were making $500K-$1M a year levered up their lives and saved surprisingly little. Multiple houses, $200K cars, nannies, very expensive vacations, you name it.
  - blitzar 3mo ago
    People are yet to realise that the "tech bro" genome isn't different from the "finance bro" genome.
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
  - bumblehean 3mo ago
    Many people across all income levels are really bad at dealing with personal finances and long-term financial planning.
- branon 3mo ago
  My thoughts were along this line too. Being laid off is unfortunate, but being laid off after making $500k/yr for a mid-level managerial position is a karmic self-correction. The opening sentence of the article even tacitly admits this - "Susan Smith considered herself a winner in the American economic lottery" - the operative word here is "lottery" and I am not altogether surprised the type of person to coast on Facebook money for decades found themselves hard up after it got cut off.
- 0xmattf 3mo ago
Suzuran 3mo ago
CLOSED WONTFIX Working as intended
steve-atx-7600 3mo ago
“…who had worked on well-being and safety issues for Meta” Never saw that one coming.

46 points by nlpnerd 3mo ago

Big company layoffs are probably more aligned with offshoring than AI, but they'll never admit it. Zuckerbergs 8 billion dollar VR metaverse flop has something to do with this maybe? Last time I checked AI isn't killing jobs if the other news is to be believed.

yieldcrv 3mo ago
Zuck has spent more than 8 billion on the metaverse
- blitzar 3mo ago
  By literal order of magnitude
- pir8life4me 3mo ago
  How much? I think I got 8 bill from AI so ....
nlpnerd 3mo ago
OP here, and I agree it's probably not AI directly and more of dealing with the post Covid overhiring, and CAPEX for AI investments. Enterprise adoption is definitely not happening as fast as the AI proponents (startups, frontier labs, big tech) would like people to believe (probably the reason why frontier labs are going the FDE/consulting path). So it's unlikely that the impact on productivity is enough to produce the alleged impact.
- aurareturn 3mo ago
  It's a combination of Covid over hiring, CapEx for AI hardware, AND you don't need as many software developers anymore per product.
  - adrian_b 3mo ago
    I doubt very much that COVID over-hiring has any relevance today. COVID is now ancient history and there have already been several years of big layoffs when every time I hear the attempt of explaining them through COVID over-hiring. That may have been right a couple of years ago, but since then every company that had over-hired must have already disposed of the surplus.
    - nlpnerd 3mo ago
      The mad rush and overhiring didn't stop immediately after Covid. I know of cases where experienced software engineers were getting picked up by big tech with huge increments as late as end of 2023. My impression is that the current trend for layoffs only really began around early 2025. For reference, the layoffs during the dotcom bubble I was told took around 2 years to plateau
  - pir8life4me 3mo ago
    So then why aren't bad decision making execs being let go? If they can't forecast demand or headcount they should be replaced by confident sounding AI.
  - lux-lux-lux 3mo ago
    We’re going to be well into the Diamond Age before people stop attributing layoffs to ‘Covid overhiring.’
    - aurareturn 3mo ago
      Big tech employee counts are still nearly 2x higher now than 2019.
      - strken 3mo ago
        In 2019 I bet they were more than 2x what they were in 2012.
      - lux-lux-lux 3mo ago
pjmlp 3mo ago
It certainly is killing jobs in agency work, plenty of stuff that used to be done by content teams like translations or image assets, now are 100% AI generated. Also delivery teams have been decreased, as now there is more that can be done with less folks. Which started with move to cloud, focus on SaaS ready made products instead of custom development, serverless instead of microservices, low code/no code tooling, and now AI agents for SaaS product integrations. This is the usual meme only happens when it comes to me kind of thing.
- pir8life4me 3mo ago
  The lady in the article was a $500k/yr exec, not an illustrator. Neither was her husband iirc. Layoffs are usually across teams not "illustrators and translators". AI isn't killing jobs.
pjc50 3mo ago
Offshoring is passé. If you want to give out a set of written instructions, get back something which literally meets the spec but is otherwise inadequate, and babysit overseeing trying to get the results you actually wanted, you can feed it to an LLM for a lot less a lot quicker.
vovavili 3mo ago
Offshore engineers tend to require just as much micromanagement and perfect clarification as an LLM, so if anything I would expect the demand for offshore engineers to fall much faster than for local talent.
- Daishiman 3mo ago
  Bad offshore engineering teams may need that. The other teams that work as you should you just don't hear about.
  - yieldcrv 3mo ago
    I find it more similar to LLM use and prompting style, I’ve taken many teams that Product Managers and non technical founders considered to be bad, and spoke a more universal programming and system architecture language with clearer scope and continuity of tasks to unlock their capabilities
- owebmaster 3mo ago
  That's quite the interesting assumption. As an "offshore" engineer, I have worked with hundreds of US engineers and none of them were significantly more competent than me if they were. No micromanagement required.
consumer451 3mo ago
> Zuckerbergs 8 billion dollar VR metaverse flop has something to do with this maybe? I believe that was an investment into controlling the next platform, so what happened on iOS with could never happen to them again. What's far crazier and more applicable to the current balance sheet is the $14.3B acqui-hire of Alexandr Wang. But, what do I know?
Havoc 3mo ago
Or my personal favorite - offshore teams being confidently wrong after having asked AI

kotaKat 3mo ago

"Tech workers"? "a salary of more than $500,000 in her most recent position, as a mid-tier executive at Meta" I'm sorry, but if you're making over half a million in TC a year, you can have an emergency fund set aside as an overpaid executive. How many actual tech workers (the ones making under $100k, lol) are facing even harder financial security than the first-world-problems of some Facebook exec who could afford two nannies?

NewCzech 3mo ago
One of the things that surprised me in Silicon Valley is that my colleagues who were making $500K-$1M a year levered up their lives and saved surprisingly little. Multiple houses, $200K cars, nannies, very expensive vacations, you name it.
- blitzar 3mo ago
  People are yet to realise that the "tech bro" genome isn't different from the "finance bro" genome.
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
- bumblehean 3mo ago
  Many people across all income levels are really bad at dealing with personal finances and long-term financial planning.
branon 3mo ago
My thoughts were along this line too. Being laid off is unfortunate, but being laid off after making $500k/yr for a mid-level managerial position is a karmic self-correction. The opening sentence of the article even tacitly admits this - "Susan Smith considered herself a winner in the American economic lottery" - the operative word here is "lottery" and I am not altogether surprised the type of person to coast on Facebook money for decades found themselves hard up after it got cut off.
0xmattf 3mo ago

Suzuran 3mo ago

CLOSED WONTFIX Working as intended

steve-atx-7600 3mo ago

“…who had worked on well-being and safety issues for Meta” Never saw that one coming.