We’ve been seeing layoffs for over 3 years…
That was before the pandemic and AI.
It was predictable that some layoffs would eventually happen, we just didn't know it would be so fast.
I wonder if it's AI, the market, both, or some other cause... :/
You think executives are gonna be saying, “yeah we’re laying off people because our revenue stinks and we have too high of costs!” They’re gonna tell people, “yeah, we definitely got AI. It’s AI, that’s our competitive edge and why we had to do layoffs. We have AI and our competitors don’t. That’s why we’re better. (Oh my god, I hope this works. Please get the stock back up, daddy needs a new yacht.)”
The layoffs started exactly as soon as the US government decided to stop giving free money to investment funds. A few days before they announced it.
A bit before it, it was clear it was going to happen. But I do agree that years earlier nobody could predict when it wold stop.
Depends on where too. Was just talking to a friend yesterday who works for a military sub (so not just software) and they said their projects are basically bottlenecked by hiring engineers.
This is already happening. Over the past 4-5 years I've known more than 30 senior devs either transition into areas other than development, or in many case, completely leave development all together. Most have left because they're getting stuck in situations like you describe. Having to pick up more managerial stuff and AI isn't capable of even doing junior level work so many just gave up and left.
Yes, AI is helping in a lot of different ways to reduce development times, but the offloading of specific knowledge to these tools is hampering actual skill development.
We're in for a real bumpy ride over the next decade as the industry comes to gripes with how to deal with a lot of bad things all happening at the same time.
My guess though is that the lack of hiring is simply a result of the over saturation of the market. Just looking at the growth of CS degrees awarded you have to conclude that we'd be in such a situation eventually.
These things don't happen overnight though, it'll probably take a few years yet for the shock of whatever is going on right now to really play out.
I think the demand for developers will similarly fluctuate wildly while LLM:s are still being improved towards the point of being better programmers than most programmers. Then programmers will go and do other stuff.
Being able to make important decisions about what to build should be one of those things that should increase in demand as the price of building stuff goes down. Then again, making important technical decisions and understand their consequences have always been part of what developers do. So we should be good at that.
They were most certainly not! Which is why you had a solid 60+ years of sail+steam ships. And even longer for cargo! [0]
Parent picked a great metaphor for AI adoption: superior in some areas, inferior in others, with the balance changing with technological advancement.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Great_Western https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Sirius_(1837) https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ap0dn/when_...
So what are the areas that AI are superior to traditional programming? If your answer is suggestion, then refinement with traditional tooling, then it's just a workflow addon like contextual help, google search, and github code search. And I prefer the others because they are more reliable.
We have six major phases in the software development lifecycle: 1) Planning, 2) Analysis, 3) Design, 4) Implementation, 5) Testing, 6) Maintenance. I failed to see how LLM assistance is objectively better even in part than not having it at all. Everything I've read is mostly anecdote where the root cause is inexperience and lack of knowledge.
Fintech unicorn that has AI in its name, but still forbids usage of LLMs for coding (my previous job) --> no hiring of juniors since 2023.
YC startup funded in 2024 heavily invested in AI (my current job) --> half the staff is junior.