AI is wiping out entry-level tech jobs, leaving graduates stranded
169 comments
·December 16, 2025Ifkaluva
scuff3d
In addition the industry has been going through a massive correction post Covid, and all the free money drying up. Any impact AI is having is all mixed up with that.
The expectations for juniors, and how seniors work with them, will certainly change, but it's way too early to be making doomsday predictions.
Of course, that's easy for me to say when I'm not the one who just spent thousands of dollars and 4 years of their to land in an environment where getting a job is going to be challenging to say the least.
ivape
Free money did not dry up. I genuinely couldn’t imagine the upteenth saas or data startup trend continuing for another several decades towards the end of the last one. There was almost nothing left to build until AI …
There were symptoms of it right here on HN. Lots of fiddling around with framework churn, not really building anything compelling. The 2010s were not inspiring in that regard, and I personally felt like it was an unworthy field … until AI reinvigorated it (speaking entirely from a creative standpoint).
ChrisbyMe
Agree, the death of the junior SWE is greatly exaggerated. (At least in FAANG)
Maybe there was some idea that if AI actually solved software engineering in a few years you wouldn't need any more SWEs. Industry is moving away from that idea this year.
groos
The death, maybe, but not the lack of hiring. At $BIGCORP, where I work, I haven't seen an externally hired junior dev in at least 2 years in an extended team of ~100 people.
Ifkaluva
My prediction is that you will see that trend reverse soon. Have the teams become top-heavy?
astrange
We are hiring juniors again now and haven't in the last few years.
godelski
I'm with you on this, though I do think some people are true believers. Say a lie enough times, right?
But a big part of it to me is looking at the job data[0]. If you look at devs during this period you can see that during the pandemic they hired more in early to mid 2022 but currently are lower than any other industry.
Tech loves booms and busts, with hiring and everything else. But more than anything the tech industry loves optics. The market has rewarded the industry for hiring during the pandemic and in the past year it has rewarded them for laying people off "because AI". And as the new year comes around they'll get rewarded for hiring again as they "accelerate development" even more. Our industry is really good at metric hacking and getting those numbers to keep going up. As long as it looks like a good decision then people are excited and the numbers go up.
I think the problem is we've perverted ("over optimized") the market. You have to constantly have stock growth. The goal is to become the best but you lose the game by winning. I think a good example of this is from an article a read a few months ago[1]. It paints AWS in a bad light but if you pull out the real data you'll see AWS had a greater increase in absolute users than GCloud (you can also estimate easily from the article). But with the stock market it is better to be the underdog with growth than the status quo with constant income[2].
What a weird way to optimize our businesses. You are rewarded for becoming the best, but you are punished for being the best. Feels like only a matter of time before they start tanking on purpose because you can't go up anymore, so you need to make room to go up[3]. I mean we're already trading on speculation. We're beyond tech demos pushing stock up (already speculative) and now our "demos" are not even demonstrations but what we envision tech that hasn't been built to look like. That's much more speculative than something that is in beta! IDK, does anyone else feel like this is insane? How far can we keep pushing this?
[0] Go to "Sector" then add "Software Development" to the chart https://data.indeed.com/#/postings
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/amazon-target...
[2] Doesn't take a genius to figure out you'll make more money had you invested $100 in GCloud vs $100 in AWS (in this example). The percentile differential is all that matters. Being percentile punishes having a large existing userbase. You have double the percentile growth going from 1 user to 100 than from 10 million to 500 million, yet any person who isn't severely mentally incapacitated would conclude the latter is a better business.
[3] Or at least play a game of hot potato. Sounds like a collusion ring in waiting. e.g. AWS stagnates, lets Azure take a bunch of users, Azure stagnates and users switch to AWS. Gives both the ability to "grow" and I'm sure all the users will be super happy with constantly switching and all the extra costs of doing so...
thinkingtoilet
At my company, we're actively lowering our off-shore dev count in favor or on-shore devs. We're small but we're growing so we're hiring about one junior dev a year. This alone doesn't mean anything, but adding another data point to the conversation.
dhruv3006
i guess the ai returns are not there as soon as it was expected.
cratermoon
I agree that AI wasn't genuinely replacing junior roles to any important extent, and the larger investment in AI is spot on. Fast Company had exactly this take in November in "AI isn’t replacing jobs. AI spending is". https://www.fastcompany.com/91435192/chatgpt-llm-openai-jobs...
"We’ve seen this act before. When companies are financially stressed, a relatively easy solution is to lay off workers and ask those who are not laid off to work harder and be thankful that they still have jobs. AI is just a convenient excuse for this cost-cutting. "
jajuuka
That narrative never sat right with me. That all these companies decided that AI was going to replace humans suddenly? Just an obvious pit to fall in to and one that conveniently feeds the AI is taking your job meme. Your read makes MUCH more sense.
alwillis
FAANG has shedded between 81,000 and 87,000 workers in the past 5 years; I suspect a significant chunk of these jobs aren't coming back.
Seems to me the companies are mostly in a holding pattern: sure, if an important project needs more bodies, it's probably okay to hire. I suspect that lots of teams have to make do until further notice.
Are some teams using AI instead of hiring junior engineers? I don't think there's any doubt about that. It's also a trial period to better understand what the value-add is.
Based on listening to engineers on various podcasts, almost all of them describe the current level of AI agents as being equivalent to a junior engineer: they're eager and think they know a lot but they also have a lot to learn. But we're getting closer to the point where a well-thought out Skill [1] can do a pretty convincing job of replacing a junior engineer.
But—at the rate AI is improving, a company that doesn't adopt AI for software engineering will be at a competitive disadvantage compared to its peers.
[1]: https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/equipping-agents-for-t...
Meta (Facebook)
2022: ~11,000 employees (13% of workforce)
2023: ~10,000 employees plus 5,000 open positions eliminated
2024: Multiple smaller rounds totaling ~100-200 employees
2025: ~3,600 employees (5% of workforce, performance-based cuts)
Total: Approximately 24,700-25,000 employees
Amazon
2022: ~10,000 employees
2023: ~17,000 employees (split between multiple rounds)
2024: Smaller targeted cuts
2025: ~14,000 employees announced
Total: Approximately 41,000+ employees
Google (Alphabet)
2023: ~12,000 employees (6% of workforce)
2024: Multiple smaller rounds, hundreds of employees
2025: Several hundred in Cloud division and other areas
Total: Approximately 15,000-20,000 employees
Apple
Apple has been an outlier among FAANG companies:
2022-2023: Minimal layoffs (hiring freeze instead)
2024: ~700+ employees (primarily from canceled Apple Car project and microLED display teams)
2025: Small cuts in sales and other divisions
Total: Approximately 800-1,000 employees (significantly less than peers)
Netflix
2022: ~450 employees across two rounds (150 + 300)
2023: Smaller targeted cuts in animation and drama divisions
2024-2025: Minimal additional cuts
Total: Approximately 500-600 employees
Overall FAANG Totals
Across all five companies over the past 5 years: approximately 81,000-87,000 workers
have been laid off, with the vast majority occurring in 2022-2023
during the post-pandemic correction period.JohnMakin
> Based on listening to engineers on various podcasts, almost all of them describe the current level of AI agents as being equivalent to a junior engineer: they're eager and think they know a lot but they also have a lot to learn. But we're getting closer to the point where a well-thought out Skill [1] can do a pretty convincing job of replacing a junior engineer.
The people that comment as such are either so disconnected from the software development process or so bought in on the hype that they are forgetting what the point of a junior role is in the first place.
If you hire a junior and they're exactly as capable as a junior 3 years later (about how far we're in now) many organizations would consider letting that employee go. The point of hiring a junior is that you get a (relative to the market) cheap investment with a long-term payoff. Within 1-2 years if they are any good, they will not be very junior any more (depending on domain, of course). There is no such promise or guarantee with AI, and employing an army of junior engineers that can't really "learn" is not a future I want to live in as a mid-career senior-ish person.
Of course, you can say "oh, it'll improve, don't worry" but I live in the present and I simply do not see that. I "employ" a bunch of crappy agents I have to constantly babysit only to output more work "units" I could before at the cost of some quality. If I had spent the money on a junior I would only have to babysit for the first little while and then they can be more autonomous. Even if they can improve beyond this, relying on the moat of "AI" provider companies to make this happen is not exactly comfortable either.
shagie
> The point of hiring a junior is that you get a (relative to the market) cheap investment with a long-term payoff.
This is only a consideration if you can pay enough to keep the junior for the long term pay off.
Companies that aren't offering Big Tech compensation find it very difficult to compete on this.
The best juniors will get a job paying more than your company can offer in 2 years. The worst juniors will remain the "still haven't progressed beyond what they could do after the first month."
In this situation, unless the company can continue to offer pay increases to match what Big Tech can offer, it is disadvantageous to hire a junior developer.
GoToRO
One of those companies sent me a linkedin request with a specific role. I searched on their website and there were very few roles and none like the one they proposed. So they are doing stealth hiring now. You can't let the world know you need people when you are supposed to use AI.
viccis
It doesn't help that a lot of the graduates I've talked to or interviewed seemed to treat a compsci degree as nothing more than a piece of paper they needed to get to be handed a high paying tech job. If you're motivated enough to learn enough job skills to be useful on your own then I guess you can treat your degree that way. But if you got through 4 years through cheating and minmaxing the easiest route possible and wound up with no retained skills to show for it? Congrats, you played yourself and fell for the "college is useless" meme. Coulda just skipped the student loans and bombed interviews without the 4 year degree.
worldsavior
> Coulda just skipped the student loans and bombed interviews without the 4 year degree.
I think college is useless for the ones out there whom already know how to code, collaborate and other skills the industry is looking for. Many out there are developing high level projects on GitHub and other places without having any degree.
Also, most of the stuff you learn in college has absolutely no relation to what you will do in the industry.
vunderba
Personally, I disagree. Software engineering encompasses a lot more than frontend dev work. In previous engineering positions, I’ve used linear regression, evolutionary computation, dynamic algorithms, calculus, image processing, linear algebra, circuit design, etc. almost all of which I originally learned as part of my computer science degree.
sfn42
Just because you won't use it doesn't mean it's not useful. Lots of programmers use math. Lots of programmers use DSA knowledge on a daily basis - and if you aren't you're probably writing bad code. I see a lot of O(n^2) code or worse making apps slow for no reason. Pretty basic stuff that most people don't understand despite taking a whole class on it.
Sure I learned lots of stuff I've never used. Like relational algebra. But I also learned lots of stuff I use a lot, and it's unlikely I'd have studied most of that stuff on my own. During my degree I also had time and opportunity to pursue lots of other topics outside the mandated course material, you're not limited to what they force you to learn.
So sure if you have the motivation, discipline and resourcefulness to learn all that stuff on your own go right ahead. Most people aren't even close. Most people are much better off with a degree.
lrvick
> motivation, discipline and resourcefulness
In my experience those that lack these do not have chance in tech in the first place, so save yourself lot of debt.
Capricorn2481
> Lots of programmers use DSA knowledge on a daily basis - and if you aren't you're probably writing bad code. I see a lot of O(n^2) code or worse making apps slow for no reason
I don't think one can seriously argue that. This as much a meme as anything. I know it's popular to rag on devs writing inefficient software, but there's plenty of apps with functions where a user couldn't possibly notice the difference between O(n^2) and O(1). You wouldn't take the time to make everything O(1) for no speedup because someone told you that's what good code is, that's just wasting dev time.
In fact, one of the first things you learn is that O(1) can be slower. Constant time is not good if the constant is big and n is small.
trhway
It has happened several times - junior web devs can't find jobs, junior Java devs can't find jobs, etc... usually after a surge wave in the related tech area. We had large overall surge in tech around Covid time, and as usually there is some adjustment now.
ivape
The dotcom bubble had comp sci lecture halls with students overflowing into the hallway. I don’t blame people, it’s migratory. Jobs and resources are there, so, go there.
Then we blame the other group of students for not going there and picking majors where the jobs aren’t.
We need some kind of apprenticeship program honestly, or AI will solve the thing entirely and let people follow their honest desires and live reasonably in the world.
bossyTeacher
> AI will solve the thing entirely and let people follow their honest desires and live reasonably in the world.
I always find hilarious that people treat transformer tech as a public good. Transformers, like any other tech out there owned by large tech companies. Short of forcing the few companies who own the top models to abide to your rule, there is no chance OpenAI is going to give itself up to the government. And even if they did, it means nothing if Microsoft/Amazon/Google/etc do not provide you with the facilities to deploy the model.
A much realistic solution is that Big Tech will collude with governments to keep certain autonomy and restrict its use only for the elites
alecco
AI? Ah, India.
"Over $50 billion in under 24 hours: Why Big Tech is doubling down on investing in India" https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/11/big-tech-microsoft-amazon-go...
GoatInGrey
I can confirm from consulting experience that India is where the jobs went. My office provides professional services to North American and European industrial customers in manufacturing and distribution. Roughly 85% of these customers have fully Indian IT teams. Running a SOQL query in our Salesforce instance for 'Devi', 'Singh', and 'Kumar' yields over two thousand hits across client contacts, even.
Since the workers are hired for cost over quality, they're typically incompetent. Though many have learned to parasitize SME and support staff expertise by asking highly specific questions in an extended sequence. It's a salami-slicing strategy where the majority of the work ends up being performed by those SMEs and support staff while the incompetent workers collect the paychecks and credit. I'm pushing my teams to more aggressively identify and call out this behavior, but it's so systemic that it's an endless battle with every new project coming in the door.
Personal frustrations aside, it's very dangerous from both economic and national security perspectives for India to be building and administering so much of the West's IT infrastructure. Our entire economy depends on it, yet we're voluntarily concentrating that dependency in a single foreign nation. A Pacific conflict alone could sever us from the majority of our IT workforce, regardless of India's intentions.
btech1232132
Currently looking for a new role in biotech and it seems like at many companies it is almost 40:1 india vs united states roles being posted. This is in R&D not even manufacturing.
daheza
If the US actually cared about retaining jobs for the people they would enforce ratios of onshore / offshore with heavy taxes if companies did not reach that ratio.
Companies don't want to pay US salaries, cost of living in the US are not going down, costs of engineering talent in India is cheaper, you can hire 2 devs for the cost of 1 US dev. Why would you ever have any US engineering devs?
It won't change organically unless the costs of India engineers goes up or the costs of US engineers goes down.
reop2whiskey
the US could just require indians be paid the same as US workers then companies would be incentivized to hire more from home. You are correct, it is far cheaper to hire indians due to tax incentivize and regulations
exceptione
> If the US actually
Who has more control over government, the people or the 0.0001%? There is no "US", you are not part of the club.
esseph
Microsoft recently announced the intent to train 20 MILLION Indian workers.
papichulo4
Saying that "we're firing to use AI" makes you look like you have ROI on your AI investments and you're keeping up.
In fact there are possibly other macro-economic effects at play:
1. The inability to deduct engineering for tax purposes in the year they were spent: "Under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) from 2017, the law requires companies to amortize (spread out) all domestic R&D expenses, including software development costs, over five years, starting in tax years after December 31, 2021, instead of deducting them immediately. This means if you spend $100,000 on software development in 2023, you can only deduct 1/5th (or $20,000) each year over five years"
2. End of zero-interest rates.
3. Pandemic era hiring bloat - let's be honest we hired too many non-technical people, companies are still letting attrition take place (~10%/yr where I am) instead of firing.
4. Strong dollar. My company is moving seats to Canada, Ireland, and India instead of hiring in the US. Getting 1.5-2 engineers in Ireland instead of 1 senior on the US west coast.
Otherwise AI is an accelerator to make more money, increase profits and efficiency. Yes it has a high cost, but so does/did Cloud, every SaaS product we've bought/integrated.
causal
No it's not. There is no shortage of tech problems to solve and there are no tech jobs that AI can do alone.
AI is sucking up investment and AI hype is making executives stupid. Hundreds of billions of dollars that used to go towards hiring is now going towards data centers. But AI is not doing tech jobs.
These headlines do nothing but increase the hype by pointing towards the wrong cause entirely.
Edit: You cannot square these headlines https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46289160
jpalomaki
It might be a question of where the seniors put their time: coaching juniors or working with AI tools.
llmslave
My senior SWE job at FAANG has essentially turned into prompting Opus 4.5.
There is almost no reason to delegate the work, especially low level grunt work.
People disputing this are either in denial, or lacking the skill set to leverage AI.
One or two more Opus releases from anthropic and this field is cooked
drivebyhooting
What kind of work do you do that is simple enough that can be accomplished solely through prompting?
hu3
What kind of work do you do that CANT BE divided enough into tasks that can be accomplished mostly through prompting?
llmslave
distributed systems, log diving, deployments, etc
hactually
any sort of web tech based development.
Frontend, backend, animations, design, infra, distributed systems engineering, networking.
Capricorn2481
It's a troll account called llmslave made a couple months ago. Odds are low it's even a human.
null
gervwyk
It all depends on how you prompt. and the prompt system you’ve setup.. when done well, you just “steer” the code /system. Quite amazing to see it come together. But there are multiple layers to this.
extrabajs
> lacking the skill set to leverage AI
It possible that your job is simply not that difficult to begin with?
llmslave
yes, but so are most jobs like mine
wanderlust123
What job is so difficult that LLMs cant allow an experienced user an order of magnitude gain in efficiency?
wilsonnb3
An order of magnitude, really? An experienced user with an LLM is going to accomplish in 2026 what would have otherwise taken until 2036?
icedchai
The problem is many users are not experienced. And the more they rely on AI to do their work, the less likely they are to ever become experienced.
An inexperienced junior engineer delegating all their work to an LLM is an absolute recipe for disaster, both for the coworkers and product. Code reviews take at least 3x as long. They cannot justify their decisions because the decisions aren't theirs. I've seen it first hand.
harisec
Unfortunatelly, i have the same experience.
bojan
It seems you've registered this account a couple of months ago only to basically repeat this opinion over and over (sprinkled with some anti-science opinions on top).
Really weird.
petersellers
username checks out
samdoesnothing
The best part about your account is the people who don't understand the satire and unironically agree with you :D
trhway
great engineering effort was spent to make software at FAANG built on clear service oriented modular architectures, and thus easy to develop for. Add to that good organization of process where engineers spend most of their time doing actual dev work.
Enterprise software is different beast - large fragile [quasi]monoliths, good luck for [current] AI to make a meaningful fixes and/or feature development in it. And even if AI manages to speed up actual development multiple times, the impact would be still small as actual development takes relatively small share of overall work in enterprise software. Of course it will come here too, just somewhat later than at places like FAANG.
lrvick
Unfortunately if it takes you 4 years to significantly upskill in tech, you are learning way too slow to survive in this industry. Most of the major innovators I know are dropouts, because they realized college is suited to train you to work in academia, where very few jobs exist, almost no one worth working for cares about degrees anymore, and the debt only makes surviving harder.
IMO the best education and credentials come from picking interesting projects you have no idea how to do, then learn everything in your way to ship them as open source so potential employers can see your work.
If you can get a degree on a scholarship for free, wonderful, but college should be viewed as more of a hobby or a way to network, rather than a way of obtaining marketable technical skills.
Ifkaluva
I don’t agree that “college is to train you to work in academia”.
I work in FAANG, none of my colleagues are dropouts.
Many BigTech founders are dropouts, but that’s a separate game altogether.
lrvick
I would agree FAANGs are an exception who have historically hired almost exclusively academics who hire other academics, and it shows. They let many coast for years at a time and get away with being a specialist unable to deliver value outside of their specialization or rapidly learn new skills. Many get the job with academic success and treat the job as a continuation of their academic career. Many get "tenure" and can do whatever they want and are effectively paid to just not work for competitors.
I know lots of people working at those orgs that brag about how well they get away with doing nothing of value and we all know these people (but of course not everyone is like that).
No offense but I do not feel the overwhelming majority of roles at these companies are delivering value to humanity apart from shareholders, or something most people should aspire towards in a career, and do not think most of the skills learned in these orgs are all that useful in the world outside those walls.
Also those same FAANGs are clearly aware of the above at some level and doing mass layoffs, or not replacing people who leave, and those workers are having a really hard time finding a home in the non-FAANG working world where they are expected to be highly motivated generalists.
beej71
Reminds me of that comic where the dog runs a ball up to his owner with the thought bubble "Throw!" When the owner goes to take the ball, the dog steps back, thinking, "No take! Only throw!"
So in the glorious future, well only need senior devs to manage AI. No juniors! Only seniors!
rgreeko42
Outsourcing, end of ZIRP, end of R&D tax credit. Macro-economic conditions are pushing companies to do more with fewer people. AI might be helping with this, but it's pure marketing BS to blame it for the state of tech employment.
cadamsdotcom
If only there were some kind of tool that junior engineers could use to build portfolio pieces to differentiate themselves.
And if only there were some kind of tool that junior engineers could use to upskill themselves to mid-level.
Sadly we’ll have to wait until at least 2022 for that.
techblueberry
Not that like I think one should put too much stock in head lines. But "Wiping Out"
seems to translate to a 6.1% unemployment rate and 16.5% underemployment rate?
https://www.finalroundai.com/blog/computer-science-graduates...
schubidubiduba
I think the numbers you are arguing with here are for all employees, not just fresh graduates.
Blame the article for using suboptimal numbers, but the "wiping out" part is definitely justified when talking about jobs for graduates
shagie
When you see 6.1% unemployment for computer science new grads, that invariably comes from
https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market#--:...
Computer Science is tied for fourth lowest underemployment and is the 7th highest unemployment... and is also the highest early career median wage.
That needs to be compared to the underemployment chart https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market#--:... and the unemployment chart https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market#--:... (and make sure to compare that with 2009).
Computer science is not getting wiped out by AI. Entry level jobs exist, though people may need to reset their expectations (note that median job being $80k) from getting a $150k job out of college - that was always the exception rather than the average.
There are average jobs out there that people with a "want to be on the coast and $150k" or "must be remote so I don't relocate" are thumbing their nose at.
Majora320
I see people posting this all the time without mentioning that the page says "based on data from 2023." As someone who graduated in 2025, I can tell you that the market has changed significantly since then - Trump won election in 2024 and tariffs went into effect in 2025, for one.
causal
It would be justified if AI were actually the cause, but this article does nothing to prove that. The only "tech jobs" that can even demonstrate direct replacement are call-center type roles. Everything else is just loosely blamed on AI, which is a convenient scapegoat as billions of dollars of investment are redirected from hiring to building data centers.
gruez
>I think the numbers you are arguing with here are for all employees, not just fresh graduates.
If you click through to new york fed's website, the unemployment figures are 4.8% for "recent college graduates (aged 22-27)", 2.7% for all college graduates, and 4.0% for all workers. That's elevated, but hardly "wiping out".
griffzhowl
The article refers to this article from May, which claims a 50% reduction in graduate tech hiring since pre-pandemic levels, 25% reduction since 2023
https://www.signalfire.com/blog/signalfire-state-of-talent-r...
shagie
The chart with that data is https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6516123533d9510e36f3259c/...
Starting at 2019 and saying "pre-pandemic levels" might be a bit disingenuous since that was a leap to a boom... and the bust we're seeing now.
https://www.cbre.com/insights/articles/tech-boom-interrupted
At $113B, 2019 was the third-highest year on record for VC deal volume.
2019 had the second-highest volume of “mega rounds” ($100M deals or greater)–mega rounds represented 44% of total annual deal volume.
Revenue grew by an average of 12.2% in 2019 and the total revenues of the tech giants was greater than the GDP of four of the G20 nations.
griffzhowl
Thanks for the context, but there hasn't been a general tech sector crash since 2019, so I don't think the 2000-03 comparison is apt.
And while 2019 might have been third-highest year for investment in 2020, according to this it's been surpassed in 2021, 2022, and 2024
https://kpmg.com/xx/en/media/press-releases/2025/01/2024-glo...
So why have graduate hires continued to decline since 2023? It seems funds have been diverted from junior hiring into AI investments.
However, as others have remarked, this might be a case of "AI is not taking your jobs, AI investment is taking your jobs"
Junior hiring might pick up again once the spending spree is over
Bender
What happens when there are no more entry-level humans to be promoted to mid-level, and so on?
palmotea
> What happens when there are no more entry-level humans to be promoted to mid-level, and so on?
No business cares about that question, just like the Onceler didn't care how many Truffula trees were left. It's not their problem. Business is business, and business must grow, regardless of crummies in tummies, you know.
doctorwho42
It even has a name, tragedy of the commons. I have been saying it constantly for the last few years with all this AI hype over LLM's going on. But with business focus really narrowing down to short time frames, what do you expect
astrange
The "business" doesn't care about this, but individual employees care about their job duties, not their business. And some of them do have a job duty where they care about this.
(i.e. this cynical complaint is exactly the opposite of the cynical complaint about managers/directors engaging in empire building.)
disgruntledphd2
That line always hits hard whenever I read that story to my kids.
azemetre
Well looked at what has always happened in society when young people have no hope for the future: massive societal disruption mostly in the forms of revolution + violence.
Since this isn't the 1800s anymore there won't be any major revolutions but I expect way more societal violence going forward. If you have no hope for the future it's not hard to go to very dark paths quickly, usually through no fault of your own sadly.
Now add how easy it is for malicious actors to get an audience and how LLM tech makes this even easier to do. Nice recipe for a powder keg.
r_lee
Well I have an idea:
what if we all just blame the youth?
I think that might fix the situation
samdoesnothing
> Since this isn't the 1800s anymore there won't be any major revolutions
I'm sure they were saying the same thing in the 1800s
rs999gti
In the cobol world, lots of highly paid senior consultants, who come in and out of retirement to support systems.
Other than that, I am guessing junior roles will move offshore to supply the body shops where the corporate IT work has been going.
I’m not sure if this is true.
At the company where I work (one of the FAANGs), there is suddenly a large number of junior IC roles opening up. This despite the trend of the last few years to only hire L5 and above.
My read of the situation:
- junior level jobs were sacrificed as cost cutting measures, to allow larger investment in AI
- some analysts read this as “the junior levels are being automated! Evidence: there is some AI stuff, and there are no junior roles!”
- but it was never true, and now the tide is turning.
I’m not sure I ever heard anybody in my company claim that the dearth of junior openings was due to to “we are going to automate the juniors”. I think all of that narrative was external analysts trying to read the tea leaves too hard. And, wannabes like Marc Benioff pretending to be tech leaders, but that’s a helpful reminder that Benioff is simply “not serious people”.