1. The tax deduction change where costs couldn't be classified as an expense.
2. The saturation in people joining coding. At one point in time everyone wanted to be part of a bootcamp to earn that sweet coding salary.
3. Rising interest rates means the era of borrowing at low costs is over.
etc.
AI is last on my list for the reasons that people are being laid off. And its not because AI isn't helping people, rather it isn't helping people enough to justify the current layoffs.
And lets be honest - AI and employment is the hot topic right now. You should expect executives to say that they are jumping on the AI bandwagon and looking at time savings.
Once upon a time everyone wanted to add ML to their product. This is just going with the flow. Otherwise their stock prices will take a massive hit. Others yet want to showcase that they are doing everything to extract better margins. These statements can be slightly deceiving.
What does 30% of the code mean exactly? How much of it is going into the products and making into the market?
For now, AI is a convenient scapegoat. Maybe it becomes a force to reckon with and truly leads to people being laid off. Not today.
AI is on the top of rumors, but it's not a real cause of layoffs, just a nuance. And a great excuse. "Salesforce says AI bots now do 50% of the company's work" is highly exaggerated. Only AI tools approved for employee are Gemini, NotebookLM, Cursor, Warp 2, plus a few other. AI generated github PR review is a joke most of the times, and Slack AI is like a slot machine: sometimes got right, mostly not.
When the article mentions "tech-adjacent," I think it is worth keeping in mind that this includes a broad swath of jobs that would never had qualified for amortizing salaries as R&D. For example, I'm skeptical that the tax change will have an impact on the number of television and film producers that are currently unemployed due to a huge slowdown in greenlighting projects from streaming services. I feel there is a contraction happening (though, practically, it doesn't always appear that way) that is a greater source of consternation than amortizing developer salaries will alleviate.
AFAIKT 1. was reverted in the OBBB. And I suspect my recent influx of recruiter outreaching email is related to that. Give it 3 more months and things may trend upward.
Tbf, tfa only gave it an even chance. He's not saying things are gonna turn bad, he merely observes multiple issues which could create an anti-synergy which would likely end badly if realized.
Don't worry -- soon after that, there will be high demand for human coders as companies scramble to hire to rewrite all the buggy and vuln-ridden AI-hallucinated software. We're on the verge of two revolutions in tech, not one.
I shared your view a year ago. Hell half my posts here on HN are arguing against the annoying hype. Today I make heavy use of AI and my code quality has gone up, not down. It's better tested, better factored, with better error handling covering more edge cases
AI code is only buggy if no-one is guiding or reviewing it
I'm not sure how long we'll need someone in the middle to actually review the code
I view AI like a gas pedal. For an experienced driver it can really help. For someone new, straight into a wall. For some code you go straight for hours and barely touch the steering wheel. For some code it's all wheel and too much gas is a mistake.
That said, we will need less coders overall. Just like you don't need human drafters or calculators in the same way. It will cut the bottom out of the industry, and entry level will be expected operate like a senior from 10 years ago.
That works because you are a senior developer who knows how to properly use the AI tools. What 10 years from now? What happens when senior devs are retiring and we do t have replacements since we replaced junior devs with AI?
> I'm not sure how long we'll need someone in the middle to actually review the code
Always will, it's a question of how many people we need, not if. Well, until AGI (which I'm very bearish on in the near or even intermediate term) or some other monumental shift
I am senior developer and have easily and successfully avoided using Llm development these last few years. Nothing has changed for me and my team mates who do use it are slower than me and often don’t know what the Pr actually does.
You chose to invest in the downward career slope. That’s why your opinion has changed. If you continued to resist it you wouldn’t be looking to remove yourself from the auditing/coding position.
While we engineers understand how to judge and evaluate AI solutions, I am not sure Business Owners (BO) care.
BO's are ok with a certain percentage of bugs/rework/inefficiency/instability. And the tradeoff of eliminating (or marginalizing) Engineering may be worth the increased percentage of unfavorable outcomes.
This exactly. Instead of adding Adobe adding AI features to Acrobat that I don't want or need, I would like it to fix the fact that it still can't convert a DOCX to a PDF without messing up the tabs.
The lack of devs that understand the domain knowledge and the codebase will be the main issue.
I would say that the current capabilities of genAI is like a junior dev, sometimes even a mid-level. But one main difference is that a dev is slowly learning and improving and at some point will become a senior dev and also domain specialist.
If there is a codebase created by genAI, then it’s equivalent as if all devs left the company, so no one knows why some piece of code was created in a certain way, if it was part of the business logic or some implementation detail
I wonder if the codebase will be understandable at all.
You can most often “get used” to a codebase because they authors tend to stick to the same patterns in many ways, and they are somewhat coherent across time. After a bit you can kinda guess in what file is a feature implemented etc etc.
Will this still be true with ai doing most of the work?
The rate at which AI is capable of producing code is intractable for humans to deal with. Right now the bottleneck is human reviewers. If AI ever becomes effective at generating provably correct code, it's joever.
nah, just throw more hardware at it. never rewrite buggy code, increase processing power is the winner almost always. That's one of the things that is nice about opensource. You can't hide the crap code unless the users don't care at all.
Why not? Seems to match the trend of tech innovation creating more demand for tech.
The reality is lots of software problems can’t be solved with the level of “intelligence” LLMs have. And if they could, it wouldn’t be just software in danger - it’d be every human profession. Even the physical ones, since AI would quickly figure out how to build machinery to automate those.
Referencing Marc Benioff making bold claims about AI isn't much evidence, he's pulling these numbers out of thin air. Despite claiming they won't hire software engineers in 2025, there are plenty of positions open at Salesforce for software engineers.
Agreed. I still think we're seeing layoffs due to _overhiring_ in 2020. AI makes a nice excuse when laying these people off because CEOs can say their huge investments in AI are starting to pay off because they don't need the humans.
Turns out, they never needed those humans in the first place.
That doesn't answer the other side of the problem though, that it's so hard to find work right now, even for folks who would typically be very easy to employ.
Sure it does. If everybody overhired, then nobody needs to hire now. And the few places that do are inundated with all the laid-off job seekers, so odds on getting hired at one of them are very low.
Layoffs are one of the only ways way to cut spending before quarterly reports when the market is already saturated. The other way is to make the products cheaper (enshittification).
As far as more employable candidates go, I don't think executives realize the vast limitations of LLM. You have to remember they aren't technical people. They're thinking managers with no training are going to replace skilled employees--that there was a secret magic button that the lowly employees all knew about and it's now in their hands.
Sam Altman said there were now going to be one-person, billion-dollar companies. Reading between the lines, since there's not enough money for every person to do that, what does he intend for the remainder to become?
Can someone please refer me to the hard data on "overhiring in 2020"?
I was laid off as part of the initial panic in early 2020. The job market for IT for the entirety of 2020 was dead. D-E-A-D. There was a _very_ small pickup in the summer when people got more optimistic about the vaccines but it waned very quickly.
I'm in the Midwest so it might have been different in the West but I doubt it was that much different.
There was _some_ pickup in 2021, when companies realized the end of the world isn't happening soon, but it was not very significant. IT job market never really normalized, there was some pickup in 2022 but by then LLM hype started causing layoffs to go up and openings down.
If it was just Marc Benioff preaching then it would indeed not deserve much attention. However, most big companies at this point have internal roadmap to reduce workforce by large amounts.
Assuming it's not already too late. By the time my dad started exercising, he already had stage 4 cancer (without knowing it). He only did it for half a month, and was gone 6 months later. Speed of execution matters.
I agree with many of the author's observations. I see a lot of the same thing in my circles.
Where my views differ are when it comes to the leap between layoffs and AI.
Corporate leadership is eager to reduce the biggest source of cost (employees) and happy to use AI as cover. But it's not the reality. AI isn't adding productivity to the company's bottom line in numbers big enough to rationalize the layoffs.
I can point to zero tech roles eliminated where AI performed the same function. Despite the fact me and everyone in my circles use AI on a daily basis and are big proponents of it.
I think the author's biggest incorrect assertion is accepting corporate PR as gospel like this:
>Salesforce says AI bots now do 50% of the company's work. They're pushing what they call a "digital workforce" where AI agents handle customer service, sales, and even coding tasks.
All of these companies have great incentive to say AI is replacing workers. But so far no proof has been offered.
Eventually we will get a recession. For a lot of people that work in tech it feels like we are already in one.
But I do not share the author's concerns with AI taking everyone's jobs in the next few months or years.
But not because of tech, AI, or things like that. It's the rate of pay.
When prosperity is the thing that's receding, money counts more than ever because lack of money threatens more than could be imagined.
And even though it's not as common as it should be, employees can be fairly valued as an asset. In a good way, where you're much happier being valued like that than not.
So even a company that values their people more so than most, will have to make sacrifices on all fronts when the going gets rough, like they don't have to do for years in a row when things are merely non-ideal.
This can cause some of the highest-paid people to get kicked out much earlier, like few have seen before. Even in companies that are not trying to preserve as much head-count until things turn around, they may have no real choice.
A lot of non-tech high-dollar people are also being shed, and it looks like on the increase. Consumers may not have enough accumulated wealth any more to be able to bail out a consumer economy.
I share the concern based on the current productivity expectations but I did stumble across something recently which makes me feel a lot better. There was a change in the tax code that coincides with the beginning of the post-pandemic layoffs[1]. This was changed back last month by the BBB which likely means a bunch of new R&D spend for big tech. I think this is why we are seeing intense M&A activity and if we can keep the AI hype under control it will probably lead to new hiring as well.
> 1. Layoffs and slowdown are global, not only in US.
Dunno about that. I've moved twice since 2022 (in Ireland), and the market is definitely less crazy but there's still (apparently) lots of work about. To be fair, I interview well and am pushing 15 years experience with a bunch of "prestigious" companies.
Definitely seemed like it much worse in the US. Then again, it was never as insane as the 2010's seemed for the US so maybe there was less over-hiring.
> 2. Expenses are still deductable, but over longer period. It makes no difference for big corporations.
The rate of change between full and 20% deduction definitely had a big impact on smaller companies hiring of software/data people. If you were a megacorp it mattered less but still not trivial.
1. There are fewer new products normal people want to buy, especially in tech.
2. Inflation is making the everyday things people need more expensive.
3. VC money for the most popular products ran out and companies are jacking up prices.
4. Concerns over tech's impact on health is limiting tech use and more negative sentiment.
All of this is causing a slowdown in tech and AI could be the perfect fix:
1. Shiny new product for people to buy.
2. Reduce costs and increase margins right when it's most needed.
3. Justify more investment in the space (super intelligence = best VC investment ever).
4. Solve bread and butter problems in health, education, etc. if safety is prioritized.
My guess is that this need for AI is causing a lot of the tech sector to overestimate how quickly AI will revolutionize things, similar to getting "flying car" predictions right at the top of the automotive s-curve.
I believe AI will have a big impact in the long-term but no where close to as quickly as most people believe, and that the short-term impact will be limited to more narrow use cases. I also believe we're going to see a big rebound to people doing work in the next few years.
Many here likely disagree with me and it will be interesting to see how everything plays out.
I was wondering how much was due to over hiring during the crazy 2020-2021. Multiple companies increased their headcount by more than 50%, or even by 100% during the two years. That does not make business or technical sense at all, as tech companies are supposed to scale their services with technology instead of people. Companies add people only if they want to invest in new areas, but exactly how many new areas can we get in merely two years?
50% or 100%? Which companies? All the biggest companies increased by some durin 2020~2022, but not really all that much more than their historical growth rates.
What did happen uniformly is that all essentially stopped hiring after 2022.
Readit News
1. The tax deduction change where costs couldn't be classified as an expense.
2. The saturation in people joining coding. At one point in time everyone wanted to be part of a bootcamp to earn that sweet coding salary.
3. Rising interest rates means the era of borrowing at low costs is over.
etc.
AI is last on my list for the reasons that people are being laid off. And its not because AI isn't helping people, rather it isn't helping people enough to justify the current layoffs.
And lets be honest - AI and employment is the hot topic right now. You should expect executives to say that they are jumping on the AI bandwagon and looking at time savings.
Once upon a time everyone wanted to add ML to their product. This is just going with the flow. Otherwise their stock prices will take a massive hit. Others yet want to showcase that they are doing everything to extract better margins. These statements can be slightly deceiving.
What does 30% of the code mean exactly? How much of it is going into the products and making into the market?
For now, AI is a convenient scapegoat. Maybe it becomes a force to reckon with and truly leads to people being laid off. Not today.
AI code is only buggy if no-one is guiding or reviewing it
I'm not sure how long we'll need someone in the middle to actually review the code
That said, we will need less coders overall. Just like you don't need human drafters or calculators in the same way. It will cut the bottom out of the industry, and entry level will be expected operate like a senior from 10 years ago.
Always will, it's a question of how many people we need, not if. Well, until AGI (which I'm very bearish on in the near or even intermediate term) or some other monumental shift
You chose to invest in the downward career slope. That’s why your opinion has changed. If you continued to resist it you wouldn’t be looking to remove yourself from the auditing/coding position.
In the middle between AI and what?
While we engineers understand how to judge and evaluate AI solutions, I am not sure Business Owners (BO) care.
BO's are ok with a certain percentage of bugs/rework/inefficiency/instability. And the tradeoff of eliminating (or marginalizing) Engineering may be worth the increased percentage of unfavorable outcomes.
I would say that the current capabilities of genAI is like a junior dev, sometimes even a mid-level. But one main difference is that a dev is slowly learning and improving and at some point will become a senior dev and also domain specialist.
If there is a codebase created by genAI, then it’s equivalent as if all devs left the company, so no one knows why some piece of code was created in a certain way, if it was part of the business logic or some implementation detail
You can most often “get used” to a codebase because they authors tend to stick to the same patterns in many ways, and they are somewhat coherent across time. After a bit you can kinda guess in what file is a feature implemented etc etc.
Will this still be true with ai doing most of the work?
Oh…
The reality is lots of software problems can’t be solved with the level of “intelligence” LLMs have. And if they could, it wouldn’t be just software in danger - it’d be every human profession. Even the physical ones, since AI would quickly figure out how to build machinery to automate those.
Turns out, they never needed those humans in the first place.
That doesn't answer the other side of the problem though, that it's so hard to find work right now, even for folks who would typically be very easy to employ.
As far as more employable candidates go, I don't think executives realize the vast limitations of LLM. You have to remember they aren't technical people. They're thinking managers with no training are going to replace skilled employees--that there was a secret magic button that the lowly employees all knew about and it's now in their hands.
Sam Altman said there were now going to be one-person, billion-dollar companies. Reading between the lines, since there's not enough money for every person to do that, what does he intend for the remainder to become?
I was laid off as part of the initial panic in early 2020. The job market for IT for the entirety of 2020 was dead. D-E-A-D. There was a _very_ small pickup in the summer when people got more optimistic about the vaccines but it waned very quickly.
I'm in the Midwest so it might have been different in the West but I doubt it was that much different.
There was _some_ pickup in 2021, when companies realized the end of the world isn't happening soon, but it was not very significant. IT job market never really normalized, there was some pickup in 2022 but by then LLM hype started causing layoffs to go up and openings down.
I’m just one consumer but due to inflation my spending is down massively. Also because of all the doom predictions. I’m saving way more money.
I’m sure this is slowing things down and as I said, because of the piece of eggs , I’m can’t be the only one spending less.
If you look at reality. Companies at the top of the revenue pyramid just don’t pay enough tax, and it’s borked everything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwMVMbmQBug
Here’s the thing: We’re in the complaining stage. It doesn’t hurt enough yet. When it does, we’ll stop complaining and do something.
Complaining is a good first step! That’s how it starts.
- "knowing is half the battle" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c71nqMqmiaw
- "be the change you want to see in the world" - https://josephranseth.com/gandhi-didnt-say-be-the-change-you...
Personally I want a more human-first world, and a less money-first world. This touches on many areas needing change.
Where my views differ are when it comes to the leap between layoffs and AI.
Corporate leadership is eager to reduce the biggest source of cost (employees) and happy to use AI as cover. But it's not the reality. AI isn't adding productivity to the company's bottom line in numbers big enough to rationalize the layoffs.
I can point to zero tech roles eliminated where AI performed the same function. Despite the fact me and everyone in my circles use AI on a daily basis and are big proponents of it.
I think the author's biggest incorrect assertion is accepting corporate PR as gospel like this:
>Salesforce says AI bots now do 50% of the company's work. They're pushing what they call a "digital workforce" where AI agents handle customer service, sales, and even coding tasks.
All of these companies have great incentive to say AI is replacing workers. But so far no proof has been offered.
Eventually we will get a recession. For a lot of people that work in tech it feels like we are already in one.
But I do not share the author's concerns with AI taking everyone's jobs in the next few months or years.
But not because of tech, AI, or things like that. It's the rate of pay.
When prosperity is the thing that's receding, money counts more than ever because lack of money threatens more than could be imagined.
And even though it's not as common as it should be, employees can be fairly valued as an asset. In a good way, where you're much happier being valued like that than not.
So even a company that values their people more so than most, will have to make sacrifices on all fronts when the going gets rough, like they don't have to do for years in a row when things are merely non-ideal.
This can cause some of the highest-paid people to get kicked out much earlier, like few have seen before. Even in companies that are not trying to preserve as much head-count until things turn around, they may have no real choice.
A lot of non-tech high-dollar people are also being shed, and it looks like on the increase. Consumers may not have enough accumulated wealth any more to be able to bail out a consumer economy.
[1]: https://qz.com/tech-layoffs-tax-code-trump-section-174-micro...
1. Layoffs and slowdown are global, not only in US.
2. Expenses are still deductable, but over longer period. It makes no difference for big corporations.
Dunno about that. I've moved twice since 2022 (in Ireland), and the market is definitely less crazy but there's still (apparently) lots of work about. To be fair, I interview well and am pushing 15 years experience with a bunch of "prestigious" companies.
Definitely seemed like it much worse in the US. Then again, it was never as insane as the 2010's seemed for the US so maybe there was less over-hiring.
> 2. Expenses are still deductable, but over longer period. It makes no difference for big corporations.
The rate of change between full and 20% deduction definitely had a big impact on smaller companies hiring of software/data people. If you were a megacorp it mattered less but still not trivial.
1. There are fewer new products normal people want to buy, especially in tech.
2. Inflation is making the everyday things people need more expensive.
3. VC money for the most popular products ran out and companies are jacking up prices.
4. Concerns over tech's impact on health is limiting tech use and more negative sentiment.
All of this is causing a slowdown in tech and AI could be the perfect fix:
1. Shiny new product for people to buy.
2. Reduce costs and increase margins right when it's most needed.
3. Justify more investment in the space (super intelligence = best VC investment ever).
4. Solve bread and butter problems in health, education, etc. if safety is prioritized.
My guess is that this need for AI is causing a lot of the tech sector to overestimate how quickly AI will revolutionize things, similar to getting "flying car" predictions right at the top of the automotive s-curve.
I believe AI will have a big impact in the long-term but no where close to as quickly as most people believe, and that the short-term impact will be limited to more narrow use cases. I also believe we're going to see a big rebound to people doing work in the next few years.
Many here likely disagree with me and it will be interesting to see how everything plays out.
I was wondering how much was due to over hiring during the crazy 2020-2021. Multiple companies increased their headcount by more than 50%, or even by 100% during the two years. That does not make business or technical sense at all, as tech companies are supposed to scale their services with technology instead of people. Companies add people only if they want to invest in new areas, but exactly how many new areas can we get in merely two years?
What did happen uniformly is that all essentially stopped hiring after 2022.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/numb...
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MSFT/microsoft/num...
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/number-...
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/META/meta-platform...