Comment by BLKNSLVR | Hacker News Reader

Comment by BLKNSLVR | Hacker News Reader

It's an easy thing to say without giving specific time frames. At least when Elon makes grand pronouncements he risks getting it horribly wrong.

"told investors in May that she could see its operations head count falling by 10% in the coming years as the company uses new AI tools."

Here's a time-frame a bit more specific then "in the coming years", but still vague:

"Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said in May that half of all entry-level jobs could disappear in one to five years"

Repeating a comment I've read on HN before: Following on from cutting down entry-level jobs must imply cutting down on all those next levels up as well. Minimising the number of people coming through Gate 1 will necessarily reduce the number of people going through Gate 2 (yes, you can hire in people to go straight through Gate 2, but they'll have had to go through Gate 1 somewhere).

I suspect that if you’ve got your feet planted in the tech industry as an engineer, you have a long career with stagnant wages ahead of you

Followed by a huge boom in salaries once the workforce shrinks.

For example, go look at the hourly wage of a cobol programmer.

I knew a great graphics design artist ... really talented. Besides logos, slogans, art she could run print lines. Then www came out and she became despondent. Any fool can do this now she said. She was in NYC at the time. I told her 82 million times yes, but the top 10% can now charge more for the discerning customer who didn't want the bottom 75% of junk. She didn't buy that. And gave up. It's a shame in a way.

> Following on from cutting down entry-level jobs must imply cutting down on all those next levels up as well

Only if the amount of employees in each level is uniform.

I.e. if there are more entry level jobs than senior that wouldn't necessary be true.

There are always more entry level jobs, and some number of those entry level staff will inevitably exit the field or fail to progress to senior levels.

The only fields where this is not true are where the entry level pipeline has disappeared, but that’s a temporary effect because those more senior people will eventually move on also.

In the not-too-distant future, AI could replace up to 47% of jobs or more!

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